VacationSelector

Rotterdam or Sao Paulo?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Rotterdam
54
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Sao Paulo
56
match

Wins on year-round weather and nightlife 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.

RotterdamSao Paulo
Beaches & swimming. Rotterdam leads by 37 points.37
RotterdamSao Paulo
Score370
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km220
Coast distance24 km51 km
Water distance24 km
Places to eat. Sao Paulo leads by 1 points.1
RotterdamSao Paulo
Score7273
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8621,735
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4627
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 17 points.17
RotterdamSao Paulo
Score6043
Museums within 10 km4182
Museums within 2 km of centre2026
Share of museums within 2 km %4932
Unesco sites within 50 km50
Nightlife. Sao Paulo leads by 23 points.23
RotterdamSao Paulo
Score4972
Drinking venues within 4 km5421,747
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre378896
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7051
Nightclubs within 4 km40118
Nature & day trips. Sao Paulo leads by 9 points.9
RotterdamSao Paulo
Score4251
Protected land share 50 km %1026
Landscape blanket share 50 km %015
Land share of disc %7995
Park area within 2 km61 hectares52 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 7 points.7
RotterdamSao Paulo
Score6255
Tourist attractions within 2 km2738
Park area within 2 km61 hectares52 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km81
Sights concentration. Rotterdam leads by 1 points.1
RotterdamSao Paulo
Score5150
Notable places within 2 km7468
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sao Paulo leads by 23 points.23
RotterdamSao Paulo
Score5881
Price level global79.246.1
Daily budget€181
Year-round weather. Sao Paulo leads by 27 points.27
RotterdamSao Paulo
Score5683
Monthly daytime high6.2 °C to 22.1 °C22.8 °C to 29.2 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm26 mm to 297 mm
Dry months01
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
Sao Paulo
28
29
28
27
24
23
23
25
25
27
27
28
Sea temperature, °C
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Sao Paulo
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Sao Paulo
297
259
206
89
64
55
53
26
82
128
146
234
Daylight, hours per day
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sao Paulo
13
13
12
12
11
11
11
11
12
13
13
14
Sunshine, hours per day
Rotterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Sao Paulo
4
6
6
5
5
5
6
6
5
6
5
5

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). Sao Paulo: 1991-2020 normals, Sao Paulo (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromRotterdamSao Paulo
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
10 h 30 m
€739-741
GRU · 21 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
9 h 40 m
€576-611
GRU · 21 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
11 h 45 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
15 h 0 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
Rio de JaneiroGIG, SDU, RRJ
11 h 55 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
1 h 5 m
€190-227
GRU · 21 km
Buenos AiresEZE, AEP
14 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
2 h 40 m
€281-355
GRU · 21 km
SantiagoSCL
14 h 45 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
3 h 45 m
€255-300
GRU · 21 km
BogotaBOG
11 h 5 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
5 h 45 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
Punta CanaPUJ
9 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
6 h 50 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 55 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
21 h 20 m
€1,139-1567
2 stops
GRU · 21 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

MeasureRotterdamSao Paulo
Official languageDutchPortuguese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Brazilian Real (BRL)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCN60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-3
Emergency number112 or 911Police 190, ambulance 192, fire 193
Elevation10 m760 m
Main airportRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinationsSão Paulo/Guarulhos–Governor André Franco Montoro International Airport (GRU)21 km from centre102 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureRotterdamSao Paulo
City population664,31111,451,999
People per km²2,0807,519
Museums within 10 km4090
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km50
Distinct cuisines in the centre7759
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Rotterdam or Sao Paulo 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.