Search for the best place to live in the Netherlands and many rankings crown a single city. Our data does not produce one winner, because the city that leads on one thing trails on another. Across the 17 cities we cover, Almere has the highest share of households with children, The Hague the highest share of residents born abroad, Delft the fewest registered safety crimes per resident, and Groningen and Maastricht share the lowest average home value. The best place depends on what you are moving for.
The 17 cities side by side
Five figures per city, all from official open data. Home value is the average WOZ value, the official valuation used for local property tax. Rented is the share of homes rented rather than owned. Born abroad is the share of residents born outside the Netherlands. Families is the share of households with children. Safety crimes counts registered burglary, violence, threats, vandalism and drug nuisance per 1,000 residents in 2024.
| City | Home value | Rented | Born abroad | Families | Safety crimes per 1,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Almere | €397k | 38% | 28% | 42% | 8.9 |
| Amstelveen | €568k | 52% | 37% | 33% | 9.5 |
| Amsterdam | €518k | 69% | 38% | 23% | 16.1 |
| Arnhem | €350k | 57% | 22% | 28% | 14.1 |
| Breda | €419k | 45% | 16% | 29% | 12.3 |
| Delft | €352k | 62% | 29% | 20% | 8.8 |
| Eindhoven | €391k | 56% | 31% | 26% | 13.0 |
| Groningen | €313k | 59% | 20% | 18% | 12.4 |
| Haarlem | €505k | 47% | 22% | 31% | 11.1 |
| 's-Hertogenbosch | €417k | 47% | 14% | 30% | 11.9 |
| Leiden | €409k | 59% | 24% | 20% | 9.9 |
| Maastricht | €313k | 61% | 28% | 18% | 12.4 |
| Nijmegen | €387k | 56% | 17% | 22% | 10.2 |
| Rotterdam | €342k | 65% | 34% | 28% | 16.7 |
| The Hague | €383k | 57% | 39% | 29% | 14.3 |
| Tilburg | €339k | 50% | 20% | 28% | 12.8 |
| Utrecht | €490k | 55% | 24% | 26% | 10.2 |
Read the table across a row and the trade-offs show. The two largest cities, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, have the highest shares of rented homes and also the highest safety-crime rates. Almere, with the most families, has the lowest share of rented homes of all 17, at about 38 percent.
The same comparison works one level down, and that is where most of the difference sits. Our explorer ranks every district and neighbourhood in these 17 cities on the figures you pick, so you can see which neighbourhoods fit before you choose a city.
Almere has the most families, Groningen the fewest
In Almere, 42 percent of households include children, well ahead of Amstelveen at 33 percent and Haarlem at 31 percent. It is a planned city built largely around family houses: 70 percent of its homes are single-family houses, the highest share of the 17.
At the other end are Groningen and Maastricht, where fewer than one household in five has children. Both are university cities: students make up about 15 percent of Groningen's residents and 13 percent of Maastricht's. For a family the daily routine matters too. In Haarlem the nearest supermarket, primary school, GP and daycare add up to about 2.0 km from the average home, the shortest total of the 17.
Groningen and Maastricht are the cheapest places to buy
The average home is valued at about €313k in both Groningen and Maastricht, against about €568k in Amstelveen, the most expensive of the 17. Tilburg follows at about €339k. Both cheapest cities sit far from the Randstad, and in both most homes are rented, 59 and 61 percent.
Among the four largest cities the order is less obvious. Rotterdam is the cheapest of the four at about €342k, well below Amsterdam at €518k and Utrecht at €490k. The Hague sits in between, at €383k.
The Hague and Amsterdam have the largest international populations
In The Hague, 39 percent of residents were born outside the Netherlands, just ahead of Amsterdam at 38 percent and Amstelveen at 37 percent. The lowest shares are in 's-Hertogenbosch at 14 percent and Breda at 16 percent.
The figure counts every resident born abroad, whether they came for work, study or family, so it says nothing about where people came from. It does tell you how many neighbours have made the same move. The working-age crowd follows a similar pattern: Amsterdam and Utrecht have the highest shares of residents aged 25 to 45, both around 37 percent.
Delft and Almere register the fewest safety crimes
Delft and Almere both record around 9 safety crimes per 1,000 residents a year. In Rotterdam and Amsterdam the rate is about twice as high, at 16.7 and 16.1.
A rate per resident flatters quiet towns and penalises busy centres, where visitors add to the count but not to the population. The spread inside one city is far wider than between cities. In Amsterdam the rate runs from under 4 per 1,000 in Houthavens to about 142 in Burgwallen-Nieuwe Zijde, the medieval centre around the Dam. The city average hides both.
What a city comparison can and cannot tell you
These are city averages, and the neighbourhood you pick moves every one of these figures more than the city does. Use the table to build a shortlist of two or three cities, not to make the final call. The figures also leave things out that matter to many people, such as the commute to a specific job or the distance to a particular school.
You can sort every city and neighbourhood on the figures that matter to you in the explorer, open a city to see its neighbourhoods, or read how each figure is 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.