VacationSelector

Rotterdam or Seattle?

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 museums & heritage and good for families with your weighting.

Seattle
52
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

RotterdamSeattle
Beaches & swimming. Seattle leads by 23 points.23
RotterdamSeattle
Score3760
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km22100
Coast distance24 km1 km
Water distance24 km1 km
Places to eat. Seattle leads by 3 points.3
RotterdamSeattle
Score7275
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8621,460
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4635
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 24 points.24
RotterdamSeattle
Score6036
Museums within 10 km4128
Museums within 2 km of centre2017
Share of museums within 2 km %4961
Unesco sites within 50 km50
Nightlife. Seattle leads by 8 points.8
RotterdamSeattle
Score4957
Drinking venues within 4 km542873
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre378696
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7080
Nightclubs within 4 km4034
Nature & day trips. Rotterdam leads by 2 points.2
RotterdamSeattle
Score4240
Protected land share 50 km %109
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7980
Park area within 2 km61 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 16 points.16
RotterdamSeattle
Score6246
Tourist attractions within 2 km2717
Park area within 2 km61 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km81
Sights concentration. Seattle leads by 1 points.1
RotterdamSeattle
Score5152
Notable places within 2 km7476
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rotterdam leads by 15 points.15
RotterdamSeattle
Score5843
Price level global79.2100
Daily budget€181
Year-round weather. Seattle leads by 5 points.5
RotterdamSeattle
Score5661
Monthly daytime high6.2 °C to 22.1 °C7.8 °C to 24.9 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm15 mm to 160 mm
Dry months03
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
Seattle
8
10
12
15
19
21
25
25
22
15
11
8
Sea temperature, °C
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Seattle
8
8
8
9
10
11
12
12
11
10
9
9
Rainfall, mm
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Seattle
147
96
106
81
48
37
15
25
41
99
160
147
Daylight, hours per day
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Seattle
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Rotterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Seattle
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). Seattle: 1991-2020 normals, Seattle-Tacoma Airport (17.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromRotterdamSeattle
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
5 h 15 m
€300-424
SEA · 18 km
DublinDUB
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
9 h 15 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
10 h 10 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
14 h 40 m
€1,006-1077
2 stops
SEA · 18 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
2 h 30 m
€111-203
SEA · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€159-284
RTM · 5 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
8 h 0 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
5 h 0 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
8 h 25 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
3 h 55 m
€257-317
1 stop
SEA · 18 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
10 h 0 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
3 h 50 m
€204-286
1 stop
SEA · 18 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
11 h 30 m
no fares
SEA · 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

MeasureRotterdamSeattle
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 m40 m
Main airportRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinationsSeattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)18 km from centre135 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureRotterdamSeattle
City population664,311737,015
People per km²2,0801,996
Museums within 10 km4027
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km50
Distinct cuisines in the centre7778
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 Seattle 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.