VacationSelector

Philadelphia or Rotterdam?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Philadelphia
51
match

Wins on nightlife and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Rotterdam
✓ Best match
54
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

PhiladelphiaRotterdam
Beaches & swimming. Rotterdam leads by 37 points.37
PhiladelphiaRotterdam
Score037
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km122
Coast distance13 km24 km
Water distance24 km
Places to eat. Philadelphia leads by 5 points.5
PhiladelphiaRotterdam
Score7772
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,714862
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3546
Museums & heritage. Philadelphia and Rotterdam are level on 60.
PhiladelphiaRotterdam
Score6060
Museums within 10 km8941
Museums within 2 km of centre4820
Share of museums within 2 km %5449
Unesco sites within 50 km15
Nightlife. Philadelphia leads by 10 points.10
PhiladelphiaRotterdam
Score5949
Drinking venues within 4 km930542
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre575378
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6270
Nightclubs within 4 km4140
Nature & day trips. Philadelphia leads by 7 points.7
PhiladelphiaRotterdam
Score4942
Protected land share 50 km %1410
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8979
Park area within 2 km75 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 9 points.9
PhiladelphiaRotterdam
Score5362
Tourist attractions within 2 km1627
Park area within 2 km75 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km48
Sights concentration. Philadelphia leads by 3 points.3
PhiladelphiaRotterdam
Score5451
Notable places within 2 km8874
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rotterdam leads by 15 points.15
PhiladelphiaRotterdam
Score4358
Price level global10079.2
Daily budget€181
Year-round weather. Philadelphia leads by 4 points.4
PhiladelphiaRotterdam
Score6056
Monthly daytime high5.2 °C to 31 °C6.2 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall69 mm to 112 mm42 mm to 85 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

When should you go?

The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Philadelphia
5
7
12
18
24
28
31
30
26
20
13
8
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Philadelphia
No coastline within reach
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Philadelphia
79
69
101
88
86
103
111
109
112
88
74
101
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Philadelphia
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Philadelphia
4
5
6
7
9
9
8
9
7
7
5
5
Rotterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Philadelphia: 1991-2020 normals, Philadelphia International Airport (11.3 km from centre). Rotterdam: 1993-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Rotterdam Airport Zestienhoven (3.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromPhiladelphiaRotterdam
DublinDUB
6 h 50 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
MadridMAD
7 h 35 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
CopenhagenCPH
8 h 5 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 40 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
ManchesterMAN
7 h 0 m
no fares
JFK · 140 km
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 47 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
13 h 40 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
8 h 5 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
2 h 0 m
€156-208
AMS · 47 km
CuracaoCUR
4 h 25 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
9 h 55 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
HoustonIAH, HOU
3 h 10 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
10 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
TokyoHND, NRT
13 h 30 m
€989-1136
JFK · 140 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-08 to 2026-10, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasurePhiladelphiaRotterdam
Official languageDutch
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112 or 911
Elevation12 m10 m
Main airportPhiladelphia International Airport (PHL)11 km from centre128 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasurePhiladelphiaRotterdam
City population1,603,797664,311
People per km²4,3392,080
Museums within 10 km5440
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km15
Distinct cuisines in the centre7577
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Philadelphia or Rotterdam somewhere new.

Browse every destination we have measured

Sources

© OpenStreetMap contributors, data available under the Open Database Licence. Place counts include data from Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA Permissive 2.0), assembled from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and other providers. Notable-place counts from Wikidata (CC0), weighted by Wikipedia language editions. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.