VacationSelector

Rotterdam or San Jose?

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

Your match

Rotterdam
✓ Best match
54
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage with your weighting.

San Jose
39
match

Wins on year-round weather and nature & day trips 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 Jose
Beaches & swimming. Rotterdam leads by 29 points.29
RotterdamSan Jose
Score378
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km221
Coast distance24 km14 km
Water distance24 km14 km
Places to eat. Rotterdam leads by 31 points.31
RotterdamSan Jose
Score7241
Restaurants within 2 km of centre862313
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4616
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 34 points.34
RotterdamSan Jose
Score6026
Museums within 10 km4120
Museums within 2 km of centre209
Share of museums within 2 km %4945
Unesco sites within 50 km50
Nightlife. Rotterdam leads by 18 points.18
RotterdamSan Jose
Score4931
Drinking venues within 4 km542231
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre37888
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7038
Nightclubs within 4 km4016
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 28 points.28
RotterdamSan Jose
Score4270
Protected land share 50 km %1026
Landscape blanket share 50 km %02
Land share of disc %7991
Park area within 2 km61 hectares101 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 29 points.29
RotterdamSan Jose
Score6233
Tourist attractions within 2 km272
Park area within 2 km61 hectares101 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km82
Sights concentration. Rotterdam leads by 37 points.37
RotterdamSan Jose
Score5114
Notable places within 2 km749
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rotterdam leads by 15 points.15
RotterdamSan Jose
Score5843
Price level global79.2100
Daily budget€181
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 29 points.29
RotterdamSan Jose
Score5685
Monthly daytime high6.2 °C to 22.1 °C15.4 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm0 mm to 78 mm
Dry months08
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 Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Rainfall, mm
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Daylight, hours per day
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
San Jose
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 Jose
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 Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromRotterdamSan Jose
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
DublinDUB
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 40 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 45 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 57 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
10 h 0 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
9 h 45 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
SFO · 57 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 Jose
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 m25 m
Main airportRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureRotterdamSan Jose
City population664,3111,013,240
People per km²2,0802,167
Museums within 10 km4019
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km50
Distinct cuisines in the centre7730
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 Jose 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.