Amsterdam and Rotterdam are the two largest cities in the Netherlands, and they are often weighed against each other by people moving here. On the figures they are closer than their reputations: both are international, both register a similar rate of crime, and both are mostly rented. The big difference is price. The average home sold for about €216k less in Rotterdam than in Amsterdam in 2025.
Amsterdam and Rotterdam side by side
All figures are for the whole municipality, from Statistics Netherlands and the police, via official open data. The years of income is our own rough measure: the average sale price divided by the average household income after tax, so it compares a gross price with a net income.
| Figure | Amsterdam | Rotterdam |
|---|---|---|
| Residents | 934,526 | 672,960 |
| Average sale price, 2025 | €631k | €415k |
| Average WOZ value | €518k | €342k |
| Household income after tax, 2024 | €60.8k | €53.3k |
| Years of income for an average home | 10.4 | 7.8 |
| Rented homes | 69% | 65% |
| Single-family houses | 12% | 25% |
| Households with children | 23% | 28% |
| Single-person households | 55% | 49% |
| Residents born abroad | 38% | 34% |
| Safety crimes per 1,000, 2024 | 16.1 | 16.7 |
| Four daily errands, combined distance | 2.2 km | 2.4 km |
Four rows carry most of the difference: price, income, the type of homes and who lives in them. On the other rows the two cities are within a few points of each other.
Rotterdam is about €216k cheaper to buy
An average home sold for about €631k in Amsterdam in 2025 and about €415k in Rotterdam, about 34 percent less. The WOZ value, which covers every home and not only those that sold, shows the same gap: €518k against €342k, also about 34 percent less. So it is not a quirk of which homes happened to change hands.
What you get differs too. 25 percent of Rotterdam's homes are single-family houses, against 12 percent in Amsterdam, and Rotterdam has a larger share of households with children, 28 against 23 percent. For a family that wants a house rather than a flat, Rotterdam offers more of them, for less.
Amsterdam households earn more, but not enough to close the gap
Amsterdam households have more to spend: €60.8k a year after tax, against €53.3k in Rotterdam. The difference holds when you compare like with like: people living alone have €37.8k against €32.5k, couples with children €107.6k against €88.5k.
Set against the price of a home, the higher income does not make Amsterdam cheaper. An average home costs about 10.4 years of average household income in Amsterdam and 7.8 in Rotterdam. Our story on income across Dutch cities explains why Amsterdam's overall average is lower than its individual groups suggest.
Both are international, and both register the most crime of the 17
38 percent of Amsterdam's residents were born abroad and 34 percent of Rotterdam's, among the highest shares of the 17 cities we cover. Either city has a large community of people who have made the same move.
They are also the two cities with the highest rate of registered safety crimes, 16.1 per 1,000 residents in Amsterdam and 16.7 in Rotterdam. In both, the rate varies far more between districts than between the two cities, as our story on where crime is highest shows.
What this comparison does and does not tell you
City averages hide the neighbourhood you would actually live in. A quiet street of family houses in Amsterdam and a busy flat in central Rotterdam can look nothing like these averages. The comparison also leaves out what often decides the move, such as where the job is and how long the commute takes.
Use it to decide which city to look at first, then compare neighbourhoods. You can do that for both cities in the explorer, open a city to see its districts, read how all 17 cities compare, or check how the figures are built on our data sources page.
A note on the city figures. The numbers in this article are the published municipal figures, covering every address in the municipality. The neighbourhood scores elsewhere on PlanetExpat are built differently on purpose. They count only residential areas, leaving out ports, business parks, cemeteries and parks, and they weight each neighbourhood by how many people live there. That is the right basis for deciding where to live, but it does mean a city figure here and a city figure on a city page are not the same measurement. Both are explained on our data sources page.