That big cities register more crime than the countryside will surprise nobody. How far apart the cities are is less obvious. Of the 17 we cover, Rotterdam registers the most safety crimes per resident, 16.7 per 1,000 in 2024, just ahead of Amsterdam at 16.1. Delft and Almere register the fewest, and they are the only two below the national rate of 9.4.
The full ranking, most to least registered crime
The figures count crimes registered by the police in 2024 per 1,000 residents, from official open data. We include the offences that shape how safe a street feels: burglary, violence and threats (assault, threats, robbery, sexual offences, homicide), vandalism and drug nuisance. Bicycle theft, pickpocketing and shoplifting are left out, because they follow crowds and shops more than where people live.
| City | Safety crimes per 1,000 | Burglary | Violence and threats | Vandalism |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rotterdam | 16.7 | 1.4 | 8.7 | 6.5 |
| Amsterdam | 16.1 | 1.8 | 8.5 | 5.7 |
| The Hague | 14.3 | 1.3 | 7.0 | 6.0 |
| Arnhem | 14.1 | 1.3 | 6.8 | 6.0 |
| Eindhoven | 13.0 | 1.5 | 6.2 | 5.3 |
| Tilburg | 12.8 | 1.9 | 5.7 | 5.2 |
| Maastricht | 12.4 | 1.4 | 5.9 | 5.2 |
| Groningen | 12.4 | 1.3 | 5.4 | 5.6 |
| Breda | 12.3 | 1.6 | 5.4 | 5.2 |
| 's-Hertogenbosch | 11.9 | 1.6 | 5.6 | 4.6 |
| Haarlem | 11.1 | 1.4 | 4.5 | 5.3 |
| Nijmegen | 10.2 | 1.1 | 4.8 | 4.3 |
| Utrecht | 10.2 | 1.1 | 4.7 | 4.4 |
| Leiden | 9.9 | 1.0 | 4.6 | 4.3 |
| Amstelveen | 9.5 | 2.7 | 3.6 | 3.2 |
| Almere | 8.9 | 1.6 | 4.1 | 3.2 |
| Delft | 8.8 | 1.2 | 3.7 | 3.9 |
The three columns do not add up exactly to the total, because drug nuisance is counted in the total but is too rare to show. The gap between the top and the bottom is almost twofold, and 15 of the 17 cities sit above the national rate, as you would expect from cities compared with a country that includes its villages.
Rotterdam and Amsterdam lead, and violence is half of it
In both cities violence and threats make up about half of the total, 8.7 and 8.5 per 1,000 residents. That is about 2.3 times the rate in Delft. The Hague follows in third place at 14.3.
So is Rotterdam safe to live in? It has the highest rate of the 17, and not only because of its centre. Rotterdam Centrum registers 40.9 per 1,000, but leave it out and the rest of the city still comes to about 15.1, well above the national rate. The higher rates sit in Delfshaven and Charlois, west and south of the centre, at about 20; the lowest are on the city's edges, in Hoek van Holland and Rozenburg, at about 9.
Rotterdam's districts are also very large, several with more than 50,000 residents against a typical 8,000 in Amsterdam, so quieter neighbourhoods inside them are averaged in with busier ones and do not show up on their own. Look at the neighbourhood, not only the district, before you draw a conclusion about a Rotterdam address.
Amstelveen has the least violence and the most burglary
Amstelveen registers 3.6 cases of violence and threats per 1,000 residents, the lowest of the 17. It also registers 2.7 burglaries per 1,000, the highest, ahead of Tilburg at 1.9 and Amsterdam at 1.8.
One likely reason is what there is to take. Amstelveen has the highest average home value of the 17, about €568k, and about half of its homes are houses rather than flats. A low rate of violence and a high rate of burglary are two different risks, and the city average alone does not tell you which one it is.
In every one of the 17 cities, the centre has the highest rate
Take the district with the highest rate in each city and it is the centre every time. The highest of all is Burgwallen-Nieuwe Zijde in Amsterdam, around the Dam, at 142 per 1,000, followed by the centres of Eindhoven and Arnhem, both at about 65.
A rate per resident explains most of this. Centres draw shoppers, visitors and nightlife, but few people live there, so every incident is divided over a small population. The gap is smallest in Delft, where the centre registers 12.2 per 1,000 against 8.8 for the city as a whole.
The quietest districts are neighbourhoods of houses
The lowest rates in our data are in Meerstad in Groningen at 1.5 per 1,000, Oosterwold in Almere at 2.3 and Noorderplassen, also in Almere, at 2.4. Seven of the eight quietest districts consist of at least 86 percent single-family houses, against 63 percent nationally. In three of them at least four in five homes were built in the last ten years.
The exception is Uilenstede and Kronenburg in Amstelveen, a student campus next to an office park. The others have little besides homes, and that fits the pattern in the centres the other way round: where few people come in from outside, there is less to register.
What registered crime does and does not tell you
These figures count crimes reported to and registered by the police, not all crime that happens. People report some offences more readily than others: a burglary is reported far more often than threats or minor violence, partly because insurers ask for a police report. The figures also cover a single year, and small districts can swing from one year to the next, which is why we leave out districts with fewer than 2,500 residents.
Use the city figure as a first filter and the district figure to decide. You can compare every neighbourhood on safety and the other figures that matter to you in the explorer, open a city to see its districts, read which city fits which kind of move, 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.