Amsterdam windmill tour: ten trips to the mills compared

$47 — three hours at Zaanse Schans. The short version: clog making, a cheese tasting and a step into a working windmill, in a small group. Rated 4.8 on 2,554 reviews. The title says 3.5 hours while the listing’s duration says 3, so plan around the longer figure if you have something booked after it.

$39 — Zaanse Schans, Edam, Volendam and Marken, eight hours. The most reviewed Amsterdam windmill tour by a wide margin: 16,862 reviews at 4.6. The description promises 17th-century houses and windmills across four places. It costs less than the three-hour trip and lasts more than twice as long; the trade-off is the rating, 4.6 against 4.8.

Which one is the windmill village tour? Both: Zaanse Schans is the windmill village in each. The three-hour trip spends its time there; the eight-hour day shares it with Volendam, Edam and Marken.

$100 — e-bike, 5.5 hours. You ride an e-bike out of Amsterdam through the ’t Twiske nature reserve to Zaanse Schans, visit working windmills, stop in Zaandam for photos and ride back to the city. Rated 4.9 on 246 reviews, the highest score of any windmill trip with more than a hundred reviews.

Who it suits. Anyone who wants an Amsterdam windmill tour on a bike and is happy riding for most of a day. The e-bike does part of the work. For rides that stay inside the city, see the bike guide.

Six private versions of the Amsterdam windmill tour, and the reviews are thin. Four are below, two go to Kinderdijk, and the six carry 89 reviews between them, so read their ratings with the count beside them. What they add is a day planned around you.

$260 — Zaanse Schans and Volendam, 5 hours. Windmills, a cheese factory, a clogs factory and Volendam; the listing calls it a half-day trip. 4.9 on 36 reviews.

$346 — mills and Volendam, 6 hours. Zaanse houses, mills and shops, a cheese tasting, a clog-making demonstration and the fishing village of Volendam. 4.9 on 21 reviews.

$614 — from your hotel, 6 hours. Zaanse Schans and Volendam’s streets, clogs being made and 30 kinds of cheese. The only listing that names hotel pickup. 5.0 on 2 reviews.

$775 — full private day, 8 hours. Traditional villages around Amsterdam, a cheese farm and a clog factory. 5.0 on 9 reviews.

$357 — countryside and windmills, 8 hours. Not labelled private, but priced like the private days: farmland, lakes, dikes and dams, fishing villages and a working windmill. 5.0 on 19 reviews.

No group Amsterdam windmill tour on this site goes to Kinderdijk. Both options are private, both run eight hours, and both have fewer than 20 reviews.

$357 — Kinderdijk and Delft. The Kinderdijk windmills, the city of Delft and a visit to the Delft Blue factory in one private day. 5.0 on 14 reviews.

$725 — Kinderdijk and a South Holland city. UNESCO-listed Kinderdijk and its 19 windmills with a private guide, who explains how they helped protect the region from flooding; you can add one South Holland city afterwards. 4.5 on 7 reviews.

Windmills with tulips or Giethoorn. Trips that add Keukenhof are on the Keukenhof page, and the three that pair Zaanse Schans with Giethoorn are on the Giethoorn page.

The group trips are where the value is. The eight-hour day at $39 works out at about $4.88 an hour; the three-hour trip at $47 at about $15.67. The e-bike ride at $100 is about $18.18 an hour with the bike included.

Private days cost five to twenty times more per hour. The cheapest, $260 for five hours, is about $52.00 an hour; the full day at $775 is about $96.88. For a family or a group sharing one booking, check whether the listing prices per person before you compare.

Our read of the numbers. 19,416 of the 19,770 reviews on this page sit on the two group trips. That is the strongest evidence here; the private ratings are high but rest on 2 to 36 reviews each. More trips out of the city are on the day trips page, and every tour on the site is in the price bands on the homepage.