VacationSelector

Rotterdam or San Francisco?

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

Your match

Rotterdam
54
match

Wins on museums & heritage and value for money with your weighting.

San Francisco
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather 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.

RotterdamSan Francisco
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 23 points.23
RotterdamSan Francisco
Score3760
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km2244
Coast distance24 km2 km
Water distance24 km2 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 11 points.11
RotterdamSan Francisco
Score7283
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8622,359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4639
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 16 points.16
RotterdamSan Francisco
Score6044
Museums within 10 km4157
Museums within 2 km of centre2029
Share of museums within 2 km %4951
Unesco sites within 50 km50
Nightlife. San Francisco leads by 19 points.19
RotterdamSan Francisco
Score4968
Drinking venues within 4 km5421,434
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre378928
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7065
Nightclubs within 4 km4097
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 18 points.18
RotterdamSan Francisco
Score4260
Protected land share 50 km %1017
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %7957
Park area within 2 km61 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 5 points.5
RotterdamSan Francisco
Score6257
Tourist attractions within 2 km2748
Park area within 2 km61 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km81
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 12 points.12
RotterdamSan Francisco
Score5163
Notable places within 2 km74147
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rotterdam leads by 15 points.15
RotterdamSan Francisco
Score5843
Price level global79.2100
Daily budget€181
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 22 points.22
RotterdamSan Francisco
Score5678
Monthly daytime high6.2 °C to 22.1 °C14 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm0 mm to 105 mm
Dry months07
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
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
San Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Sea temperature, °C
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Rainfall, mm
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Daylight, hours per day
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Rotterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
San Francisco
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Rotterdam: 1993-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Rotterdam Airport Zestienhoven (3.9 km from centre). San Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromRotterdamSan Francisco
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
DublinDUB
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 40 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€159-284
RTM · 5 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 45 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 18 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
10 h 0 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 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

MeasureRotterdamSan Francisco
Official languageDutch
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112 or 911911
Elevation10 m16 m
Main airportRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinationsSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureRotterdamSan Francisco
City population664,311873,965
People per km²2,0801,455
Museums within 10 km4050
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km50
Distinct cuisines in the centre77108
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Rotterdam or San Francisco 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.