VacationSelector

Rotterdam or Zurich?

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.

Zurich
44
match

Wins on sights concentration 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.

RotterdamZurich
Beaches & swimming. Rotterdam leads by 37 points.37
RotterdamZurich
Score370
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km2223
Coast distance24 km632 km
Water distance24 km
Places to eat. Rotterdam leads by 5 points.5
RotterdamZurich
Score7267
Restaurants within 2 km of centre862974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4630
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 4 points.4
RotterdamZurich
Score6056
Museums within 10 km4176
Museums within 2 km of centre2037
Share of museums within 2 km %4949
Unesco sites within 50 km51
Nightlife. Zurich leads by 5 points.5
RotterdamZurich
Score4954
Drinking venues within 4 km542676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre378553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7082
Nightclubs within 4 km4074
Nature & day trips. Rotterdam leads by 5 points.5
RotterdamZurich
Score4237
Protected land share 50 km %1016
Landscape blanket share 50 km %09
Land share of disc %79100
Park area within 2 km61 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 26 points.26
RotterdamZurich
Score6236
Tourist attractions within 2 km278
Park area within 2 km61 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km82
Sights concentration. Zurich leads by 8 points.8
RotterdamZurich
Score5159
Notable places within 2 km74119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rotterdam leads by 23 points.23
RotterdamZurich
Score5835
Price level global79.2110.5
Daily budget€181€248
Year-round weather. Rotterdam leads by 3 points.3
RotterdamZurich
Score5653
Monthly daytime high6.2 °C to 22.1 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm60 mm to 128 mm
Dry months00
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
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Zurich
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Zurich
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
Zurich
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
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). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromRotterdamZurich
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
DublinDUB
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 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 · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 9 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
1 h 45 m
€204-248
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 0 m
€156-208
AMS · 47 km
2 h 25 m
€207-228
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€159-284
RTM · 5 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
11 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
12 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 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

MeasureRotterdamZurich
Official languageDutchFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 911112
Elevation10 m408 m
Main airportRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureRotterdamZurich
City population664,311452,421
People per km²2,0805,147
Museums within 10 km4063
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km51
Distinct cuisines in the centre7778
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 Zurich 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.