Hourly rates are actually higher elsewhere
Everyone who has ever left a car in the city center knows that parking prices can rise significantly in Dutch cities. However, it is now becoming clear exactly how expensive this can be, and it is quite shocking.
Actually, what about that headline? We promise we won’t use these kinds of teasers daily, but in this case, you don’t even need to click the story to know which municipality it’s about. Of course, Amsterdam is the leader in parking rates, and thus also the place where you’ll spend almost 140 euros to leave your car on the street for 24 hours. Research by Weflycheap.nl shows that in the center of our capital, you pay exactly €139.64 for 24 hours of parking, which here truly means paying for 24 hours. This perhaps explains the large difference with number 2 – Haarlem – where you park on the street for ‘only’ €87.50 per day. Rotterdam follows with €86.52, Hilversum with €82, and Utrecht rounds out the top 5 daily rates with €70.58.
By the way, Weflycheap has carefully taken into account the existence of daily passes when calculating the amounts. In Amsterdam, you can park for ‘only’ €69.50 from 9 am to midnight. This creates the remarkable situation that you actually pay more for the following night, because there are no daily passes for that period. The total for 24 hours is the combination of a daily pass and the remaining 9 hours at the hourly rate of €7.76. This applies in Amsterdam all days of the week, but on Sundays, a daily pass is slightly cheaper.
Hourly rates
Although Utrecht lags significantly behind Amsterdam when it comes to daily rates, you actually pay the most here when parking for shorter periods. Parking for one hour on the street in the center of the Domstad costs €7.84, just slightly more than the mentioned €7.76 for Amsterdam. The top 5 here further consists of The Hague (€7.00), Haarlem (€6.25), and Rotterdam (€6.18).
When comparing hourly and daily rates, it’s also smart to include third-party parking garages and lots in your consideration. These are often deceptively expensive per hour in busy city centers, because they frequently charge per 15 minutes or another short period. However, per day you can get much better deals here. As an example, we’ll mention Q-Park at the Amsterdam Bijenkorf. There you can pay up to 13 euros per hour (!), but the maximum daily rate is a (relatively) manageable €60 in this context.