VacationSelector

Rotterdam or Strasbourg?

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 beaches & swimming and good for families with your weighting.

Strasbourg
47
match

Wins on nature & day trips and sights concentration with your weighting.

What matters to you?

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

The verdict

Choose Rotterdam if you are travelling with children or want depth indoors: more museums, far more attractions near the centre and 8 theme parks within reach, plus a wider spread of places to drink in the evening.

Choose Strasbourg if you want a warmer, drier summer, up to 26°C, a tightly walkable centre and protected countryside close by for day trips out of town.

Scoreboard

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

RotterdamStrasbourg
Beaches & swimming. Rotterdam leads by 37 points.37
RotterdamStrasbourg
Score370
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km229
Coast distance24 km398 km
Water distance24 km—
Places to eat. Rotterdam leads by 5 points.5
RotterdamStrasbourg
Score7267
Restaurants within 2 km of centre862780
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4636
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 19 points.19
RotterdamStrasbourg
Score6041
Museums within 10 km4123
Museums within 2 km of centre2014
Share of museums within 2 km %4961
Unesco sites within 50 km51
Nightlife. Rotterdam leads by 13 points.13
RotterdamStrasbourg
Score4936
Drinking venues within 4 km542305
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre378264
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7087
Nightclubs within 4 km4017
Nature & day trips. Strasbourg leads by 12 points.12
RotterdamStrasbourg
Score4254
Protected land share 50 km %1037
Landscape blanket share 50 km %035
Land share of disc %79100
Park area within 2 km61 hectares71 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 24 points.24
RotterdamStrasbourg
Score6238
Tourist attractions within 2 km279
Park area within 2 km61 hectares71 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km81
Sights concentration. Strasbourg leads by 7 points.7
RotterdamStrasbourg
Score5158
Notable places within 2 km74109
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Strasbourg leads by 4 points.4
RotterdamStrasbourg
Score5862
Price level global79.273.7
Daily budget€181€160
Year-round weather. Strasbourg leads by 7 points.7
RotterdamStrasbourg
Score5663
Monthly daytime high6.2 °C to 22.1 °C5.2 °C to 26.4 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm34 mm to 77 mm
Dry months03
0255075100

Where they differ

Rotterdam is the stronger choice indoors and towards the coast: about twice as many museums as Strasbourg, and 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against 1. It also has 22 beaches nearby against 9, and roughly three times as many tourist attractions near the centre.

Strasbourg leads outdoors. 37% of the land around it is protected against 10% around Rotterdam, so countryside for day trips starts closer, and there is more park space near the centre. Its notable places also sit within a shorter walk of each other.

Where they are alike

On price the two sit close: the national estimates behind them, €181 for Rotterdam's country and €160 for Strasbourg's, are near enough that the difference is unlikely to decide anything.

Eating out is comparable, with a similar number of restaurants near the centre in both and a somewhat wider range of kitchens in Rotterdam. Both keep their notable places clustered around a walkable centre, and both have cold winters, with January highs of 5-6°C.

Which traveller are you?

Travelling with children: Rotterdam. Tourist attractions are far more numerous near the centre than in Strasbourg, and several theme parks lie within reach, so wet afternoons and short attention spans are easier to fill.

A walker who wants countryside within reach: Strasbourg. Notable places sit closer together on foot, there is more park space near the centre, and 37% of the surrounding land is protected, which puts day trips out of town close at hand.

A museum-goer who likes an evening out: Rotterdam. It has about twice as many museums as Strasbourg, and about twice as many bars and clubs, most of them near the centre, so days and nights need little travel.

What the numbers don't tell you

The beach figure flatters Rotterdam. 22 beaches nearby says how many places there are, not what swimming is like: the sea peaks at 19°C in August, and neither city has a month of sea at 21°C or more. That month is also among Rotterdam's wettest.

The daily budget is a national estimate, one price level for restaurants and hotels per country, not a measurement of either city. Heavily visited cities can sit well above their own national average, by more than the gap between these two figures, so read it as a country signal only.

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
Strasbourg
5
7
12
17
21
24
26
26
22
16
9
6
Sea temperature, °C
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Strasbourg
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Strasbourg
35
34
39
42
77
68
72
61
55
59
47
45
Daylight, hours per day
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Strasbourg
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Rotterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Strasbourg
2
3
5
6
7
7
8
7
6
3
2
1

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). Strasbourg: 1991-2020 normals, Strasbourg (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Rotterdam is at its best in July and August, when highs reach 22°C and the sea is at its warmest, 19°C. Those are also its wettest months, near 85mm, so plan for rain; April is the driest at 42mm but stays cool.

Strasbourg has the longer warm window, June to September, with highs of 22-26°C and drier summers, near 61-72mm. May is its wettest month at 77mm, while January and February are its driest, though cold enough to keep you indoors.

Getting there

Flying fromRotterdamStrasbourg
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 30 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
11 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 137 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 20 m
no fares
RTM · 5 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
FKB · 33 km
DublinDUB
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BSL · 110 km
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
BSL · 110 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
STR · 109 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
STR · 109 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 47 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
BSL · 110 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 137 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 137 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
12 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 137 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 2026-09 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

MeasureRotterdamStrasbourg
Official languageDutchFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 911112
Elevation10 m132 m
Main airportRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinationsStrasbourg Airport (SXB)10 km from centre42 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureRotterdamStrasbourg
City population664,311293,771
People per km²2,0803,752
Museums within 10 km4021
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km51
Distinct cuisines in the centre7787
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 Strasbourg 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. 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.