VacationSelector

The Hague or York?

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

Your match

The Hague
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

York
41
match

Wins on year-round weather 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 The Hague if you want the coast in the mix: 34 beaches nearby, sea warm enough for a late-summer swim, the wider choice of restaurants and the larger museum offering, with park space near the centre for children.

Choose York if you want a compact trip where museums, attractions and bars sit mostly within a short walk, with more protected countryside close by and a drier spring.

Scoreboard

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

The HagueYork
Beaches & swimming. The Hague leads by 60 points.60
The HagueYork
Score600
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km342
Coast distance3 km50 km
Water distance3 km—
Places to eat. The Hague leads by 16 points.16
The HagueYork
Score7054
Restaurants within 2 km of centre798361
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4331
Museums & heritage. The Hague leads by 16 points.16
The HagueYork
Score6246
Museums within 10 km4618
Museums within 2 km of centre2616
Share of museums within 2 km %5789
Unesco sites within 50 km42
Nightlife. The Hague leads by 3 points.3
The HagueYork
Score4643
Drinking venues within 4 km511450
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre288353
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5678
Nightclubs within 4 km1914
Nature & day trips. The Hague leads by 21 points.21
The HagueYork
Score5433
Protected land share 50 km %817
Landscape blanket share 50 km %016
Land share of disc %5695
Park area within 2 km159 hectares42 hectares
Good for families. The Hague leads by 13 points.13
The HagueYork
Score5643
Tourist attractions within 2 km1013
Park area within 2 km159 hectares42 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km73
Sights concentration. The Hague leads by 15 points.15
The HagueYork
Score5439
Notable places within 2 km8637
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. The Hague leads by 4 points.4
The HagueYork
Score5854
Price level global79.284.9
Daily budget€181—
Year-round weather. York leads by 2 points.2
The HagueYork
Score5456
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 21.3 °C6.7 °C to 20.9 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm39 mm to 66 mm
Dry months01
0255075100

Where they differ

The Hague has 34 beaches nearby against York's 2, and about twice as many restaurants near the centre, with a somewhat wider range of kitchens. It also has roughly three times as many museums and 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against York's 2.

York keeps things tight: its museums sit closely around the centre, and it has somewhat more tourist attractions there. Protected land covers 17% of its surroundings against 8% around The Hague, so open country starts sooner.

Where they are alike

Weather is where they sit closest. Both run daytime highs of about 6-21°C across the year, both are coolest in January and both top out at 21°C in high summer, so packing for one works for the other.

Nights out are close too: much the same number of places to drink in each, with somewhat more nightclubs in The Hague. On value for money the two land near one another, so that axis will not decide it.

Which traveller are you?

Families with young children are better served in The Hague: about three times as much park space near the centre as York, 7 theme parks within reach against York's 3, and beaches for a change of scene.

Museum-minded travellers with a weekend get more out of York, where the collections sit tightly around the centre. For a longer stay The Hague has far more of them, plus 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach.

Walkers heading out of town should take York: 17% of the land around it is protected, against 8% around The Hague, so day trips lead into open country rather than parks.

What the numbers don't tell you

No cost comparison is possible here. The dataset gives a daily budget for The Hague, about €181, and none at all for York, so nothing in these figures says which trip costs more; the value ratings rest on a different measure that both cities have.

The Hague's 34 beaches sound better than they swim: the sea never reaches 21°C, and the two months the water is warmest are also the wettest, near 85mm. York's driest months, by contrast, are its coldest, so the low rainfall there arrives when little of it is spent outdoors.

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
The Hague
6
7
9
13
16
19
21
21
18
14
10
7
York
7
8
10
13
16
19
21
20
18
14
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
The Hague
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
York
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
The Hague
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
York
53
44
39
48
43
61
56
65
58
66
62
60
Daylight, hours per day
The Hague
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
York
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
The Hague
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
York
2
3
4
5
6
5
6
5
4
3
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. The Hague: 1991-2020 normals, Valkenburg (13.6 km from centre). York: 1991-2020 normals, Leeming (47.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

The Hague is at its best in July and August, when highs reach 21°C and the sea reaches 19°C, warm enough for a swim. Those are also its wettest months, at around 85mm, so summer plans need a fallback.

York's driest stretch runs February to May, 39-48mm with highs climbing to 16°C, which suits walking more than sitting outside. It is warmest in July at 21°C, and summer there stays drier than in The Hague.

Getting there

Flying fromThe HagueYork
DublinDUB
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 40 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 40 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 40 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 40 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 40 km
7 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 40 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 0 m
€156-208
AMS · 40 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 50 m
€274-294
1 stop
RTM · 16 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
BridgetownBGI
9 h 5 m
no fares
AMS · 40 km
8 h 35 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 40 km
11 h 30 m
no fares
MAN · 104 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

MeasureThe HagueYork
Official languageDutchEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112 or 911112 or 999
Elevation1 m25 m
Main airportRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)16 km from centre45 non-stop destinationsLeeds Bradford Airport (LBA)39 km from centre73 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureThe HagueYork
City population548,320208,400
People per km²5,589766
Museums within 10 km5424
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km42
Distinct cuisines in the centre7754
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone–

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow The Hague or York 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.