Search for whether Amsterdam is safe and most answers are travel advice for visitors. This is the other question, for people who want to live there. In 2025 Amsterdam registered 16.0 safety crimes per 1,000 residents, against 9.5 nationally. But the city average is misleading: about a third of Amsterdammers live in a neighbourhood with a lower rate than the country as a whole.
Amsterdam's rate since 2023
We count the offences that shape how safe a street feels: burglary, violence and threats, vandalism and drug nuisance, as registered by the police, per 1,000 residents. Bicycle theft, pickpocketing and shoplifting are left out. The figures come from official open data.
| Year | Amsterdam | Netherlands |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 15.4 | 9.2 |
| 2024 | 16.1 | 9.4 |
| 2025 | 16.0 | 9.5 |
The series starts in 2023 because Weesp became part of Amsterdam in March 2022, and earlier years cover a different area. Since then both Amsterdam and the country have edged up slightly. In 2024 Amsterdam had the second-highest rate of the 17 cities we cover, after Rotterdam, as our city comparison shows.
District by district
Amsterdam's eight residential districts differ far more than the city average suggests. The table shows each district's rate and the range of the neighbourhoods inside it, counting only neighbourhoods with at least 1,000 residents. Westpoort, the port area with about 2,100 residents, is left out.
| District | Residents | Per 1,000, 2025 | Neighbourhoods range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Centrum | 90,400 | 37.4 | 10.4 to 191.7 |
| Zuidoost | 95,400 | 17.4 | 4.4 to 79.5 |
| West | 148,700 | 14.4 | 3.7 to 24.0 |
| Zuid | 146,400 | 13.8 | 5.2 to 28.9 |
| Nieuw-West | 168,600 | 13.6 | 3.3 to 38.9 |
| Oost | 150,100 | 12.5 | 1.9 to 42.5 |
| Noord | 112,500 | 12.4 | 4.5 to 53.7 |
| Weesp | 27,800 | 7.8 | 0.6 to 20.5 |
Centrum stands apart at 37.4. Leave it out and the rest of the city comes to about 13.7. Weesp registers 7.8, below the national rate, and every other district sits between 12 and 17.
A third of Amsterdammers live below the national rate
Of the 334 neighbourhoods we compare, 113 register less than the national rate, home to about 307,000 people. The lowest three are all in Weesp: Aetsveld-Zuid (0.6), Waterrijk (0.7) and Lanenrijk (1.3).
Within the city itself, the quietest are in Oost: Sporenburg and KNSM-eiland on the Eastern Docklands, at 1.9 and 2.6, and Middenmeer-Noord at 2.2.
The highest rates are where people go out and shop
The two highest rates are in the centre: Leidsebuurt-Noordoost, around the Leidseplein, at 192 per 1,000, and Burgwallen-Oost, part of the medieval centre, at 108. Outside the centre the peaks are at shopping centres: Amsterdamse Poort in Zuidoost (79) and Buikslotermeerplein in Noord (54). All four have fewer than 3,000 residents, so every incident counts heavily in a rate per resident.
Take only neighbourhoods with at least 4,000 residents and leave out the centre, and the highest are Van der Pekbuurt in Noord (25.4), Osdorpplein in Nieuw-West (22.7), which includes a shopping centre, and Sarphatiparkbuurt in Zuid (17.8). Those are the figures to look at if you are weighing a home there.
What the police figures do and do not tell you
These are crimes reported to and registered by the police, not all crime that happens, and people report some offences more readily than others. They cover single years, and they say nothing about the time of day, so they cannot tell you how a street feels at night.
Use the neighbourhood figure, not the city average, to decide. You can compare every Amsterdam neighbourhood on safety and the other figures that matter to you in the explorer, open the Amsterdam page or another city, read the same analysis for Rotterdam, or check how the figures are built on our data sources page.
A note on these figures. This article uses the police figures for 2025, divided by the number of residents on 1 January 2026. The safety scores elsewhere on PlanetExpat use the 2024 figures and count only residential areas, so a number on a city or neighbourhood page can differ from the one here. Both are explained on our data sources page.