Tarred timber mills with green trim still grind pigment and mustard on a bend of the Zaan, seventeen minutes north of Centraal. Pick the Amsterdam windmill tours that pay your admissions and book with free cancellation.
Updated 2026-08-01
Quick answer
Amsterdam itself keeps only a handful of windmills, and just one of them, Molen van Sloten, opens its door to visitors. Almost every Amsterdam windmill tour therefore goes to Zaanse Schans, a village of working mills on the Zaan river 17 minutes north of Amsterdam Centraal by train. The village is free to walk into, and the tours buy you a guide, the coach, and in some cases the admission fees to the mills and the cheese farm. Prices run from $34 for a five-and-a-half-hour half day to $109 for the spring tour that adds Keukenhof.
Key takeaways
highest rated full day The Day Trip That Covers the Most Ground
The most complete version of the Dutch countryside day trip: the windmills at Zaanse Schans, a cheese-making demonstration at Simonehoeve, the medieval weighing house at Edam, the harbour at Volendam and the wooden village of Marken, with a live guide in English and Spanish for the whole day.
Live availability for the Zaanse Schans, Edam, Volendam and Marken day. Morning departures reach the mills before the middle of the day, which is when the paths in front of the green houses fill up.
Six trips leave central Amsterdam for the same village. What separates them is the length of the day, how many fishing villages get added, and whether anyone pays your way into the mills.
from $40 The most complete version of the Dutch countryside day trip: the windmills at Zaanse Schans, a cheese-making demonstration at Simonehoeve, the medieval weighing house at Edam, the harbour…
from $34 The highest-volume windmill trip out of Amsterdam, with more than twenty thousand reviews behind it. A live guide plus an audio guide in sixteen languages, wooden shoes to…
from $47 A full eight hours covering the same four stops at a slower pace, with a live guide in English and Spanish. The longest day on this page and…
from $34 A bilingual small-group alternative that adds the stacked green facades of the Inntel hotel in Zaandam, the so-called Lego houses, to the windmills and Volendam. The highest-rated GetYourGuide…
from $50.12 Zaan Tours caps the group at sixteen and includes every admission fee: the Kooijman clog workshop, the platform climb inside Molen De Kat, and the Catharina Hoeve cheese…
from $44.22 The cheapest guided Zaanse Schans half-day on Viator, with a multilingual guide, the clog museum, the cheese farm and an optional Amsterdam canal cruise. The rating is the…
Prices are the lowest each operator published in August 2026, per person. The admissions column is the one that changes the real cost: a mill is €7.50 at the gate and the cheese farm is free to walk into.
| Tour | Time out | From | Book | Admissions included | Villages |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full day, Edam and Marken | 6.5 to 8 h | $40 | Check | Cheese farm demo, mills at your own cost | Zaanse Schans, Edam, Volendam, Marken |
| Guided half day | 5.5 h | $34 | Check | Cheese farm demo, mills at your own cost | Zaanse Schans, Volendam, Marken |
| Long bus day | 8 h | $47 | Check | Cheese farm demo, mills at your own cost | Zaanse Schans, Edam, Volendam, Marken |
| Small group, bilingual | 5.5 h | $34 | Check | Cheese farm demo, mills at your own cost | Zaanse Schans, Zaandam, Volendam |
| Small group, max 16 | 3.5 h | $50.12 | Check | Clog workshop, Molen De Kat, cheese farm, all paid | Zaanse Schans only |
| Budget half day | 3.5 h | $44.22 | Check | Windmill entry, clog museum, cheese farm | Zaanse Schans only |
Viator figures for the last two rows come from the operators' own listings, checked in June 2026. GetYourGuide figures were pulled from the live listings on 1 August 2026.
One runs only while the tulips are open. The other never goes near Zaanse Schans and covers the mills of Waterland from a bicycle saddle.
from $109.08 The only tour here that reaches both Dutch icons in a day: skip-the-line entry to Keukenhof, roughly three and a half hours among seven million bulbs, then two…
from $52.01 The one trip on this page that does not go to Zaanse Schans. It crosses the IJ by ferry into Amsterdam North and rides about thirteen miles through…
The village looks older than it is. Most of the houses and several of the mills were moved here between 1961 and 1974 from elsewhere in the Zaan, where a thousand industrial windmills once stood.
Three different places get called the Amsterdam windmills, and only one of them is what the coaches mean.
Counts of the windmills in Amsterdam run between six and eight, depending on whether you draw the line at the city boundary or the old municipal one, and whether a mill has to still turn to qualify. What matters for a visit is smaller than either number: one of them lets you inside.
Ask a Dutch person what the famous windmill in Amsterdam is and you get De Gooyer, on Funenkade in the east of the city. It is the tallest wooden mill in the country, and the old municipal bathhouse at its foot has held the Brouwerij 't IJ taproom since 1985. The mill no longer grinds anything and there is no interior visit. You can sit under it with a beer, and most people find that a fair trade.
Molen van Sloten, out at Akersloot 10 in the south-west, is the one you can walk into, and I amsterdam calls it the only mill open to the public in the city. Guided tours run every hour from 10:00, the last at 16:00, and the miller takes you up past the grinding floor to the cap. It is a working polder mill that still pumps water, and no coach tour stops there.
The third one people photograph is the Riekermolen, standing alone on the Amstel south of the Amstelpark, which turns on weekend afternoons when the wind suits. Krijtmolen d'Admiraal, a chalk mill from 1792 in Amsterdam-Noord, is the fourth and the only one on this list a tour reaches, on the countryside bike ride.
Seeing any of them costs nothing. All four stand on public streets or paths, which makes the windmills in Amsterdam the cheapest sightseeing in the city if you have a bicycle and an afternoon.
Ten historic mills stand on a bend of the Zaan at Zaandijk, and six of them open their doors. De Kat grinds chalk and stone into paint pigment, which makes it the last working paint mill on earth; the miller will show you lapis lazuli going under the runner stones. Het Jonge Schaap saws logs the way a 1680 mill did, rebuilt from the original drawings and turning since 2007. De Huisman has been milling mustard seed since 1786 and sells the result in a jar at the door.
The two oil mills tell you what season it is. De Zoeker, built around 1610, and De Bonte Hen both shut from November through March, so a winter visit means fewer open doors and shorter queues. Het Klaverblad, a sawmill replica whose sails first turned in 2005, fills the gap.
Walking into the village costs nothing. The Zaanse Schans council approved a €17.50 entry fee for visitors from outside the region, planned for spring 2026, and as of August 2026 the official site still describes the village as freely accessible. Watch that one before you travel.
| Mill | What it makes | Open |
|---|---|---|
| De Kat | Paint pigment from chalk and stone | Daily 9:00 to 16:30 |
| Het Jonge Schaap | Sawn timber, 1680 design rebuilt in 2007 | Daily 9:30 to 16:30 |
| De Huisman | Mustard and spices, milling since 1786 | Daily 10:00 to 17:00 |
| De Zoeker | Oil pressed from seed, built around 1610 | Closed November to March |
| De Bonte Hen | Oil, the second of the pair | March to November, Tue, Fri, Sat, Sun 10:00 to 17:00 |
| Het Klaverblad | Sawn timber, replica turning since 2005 | Seasonal, ask at the gate |
The nineteen mills at Kinderdijk, built around 1740 to pump the polder dry and listed by UNESCO in 1997, are the picture most people have in their heads. They sit about 100 kilometres south near Rotterdam, an hour and a half by road each way. None of the tours on this page go there.
If Kinderdijk is what you came for, treat it as its own day and take the train to Rotterdam. Trying to bolt it onto a Zaanse Schans trip gives you five hours in a coach and two short stops.
Six of the ten mills at Zaanse Schans open to visitors. Each one still makes something, and the millers do the explaining themselves.
Entry is €7.50 for adults and €3.75 for ages 4 to 17 at each mill, or €15 for the Zaansche Molen ticket covering every open mill plus the mill museum.
Schansend 7, Zaandam, on the east bank of the Zaan opposite Zaandijk station. The Julianabrug footbridge links the two.
The train is cheap and simple, which is the honest starting point for this comparison.
Take the train from Amsterdam Centraal to Zaandijk Zaanse Schans and you are there in 17 minutes, with a 10-minute walk over the Julianabrug at the far end. The return fare runs about €9.40. Bus 391 from the back of Centraal takes 45 minutes, goes every 15 minutes and drops you at the entrance, which suits anyone with a pushchair or a bad knee. Driving means the Schansend car park at €15 for the day, card only, no cash.
Add one mill at €7.50 and a coffee and you have spent roughly €20 to €25. That is the number every tour on this page is being measured against.
Two different tickets are sold at Zaanse Schans and they cover different things. De Zaansche Molen, the mill society, sells the one aimed at people who came for the machinery: every open mill plus the mill museum for €15, or €7.50 for ages 4 to 17. The village's own Ticket Zaanse Schans costs around €29.50 and works the other way round, opening the Zaans Museum, the Verkade Experience, the Zaan Time Museum, the weavers' house and the cooperage, but only two mills of your choice.
Most coach tours include neither. They pay for the cheese demonstration at Catharina Hoeve and the clog carving at Kooijman, both of which are free to walk into anyway, and leave the mills to you. Zaan Tours is the exception on this page: their small group covers the clog workshop, the climb inside De Kat and the cheese farm in the ticket price.
| Ticket | Price | What it opens |
|---|---|---|
| Single mill at the door | €7.50 adult, €3.75 youth | One mill, pay again at the next |
| De Zaansche Molen combination | €15 adult, €7.50 youth | Every mill open that day plus the mill museum |
| Ticket Zaanse Schans | About €29.50 adult, €20 child | Four museums, the crafts houses, audio tour, two mills |
| Village entry | Free | The paths, the houses, the cheese farm, the clog workshop |
Book the coach if you want Volendam and Marken in the same day. Getting to the fishing villages on your own means a bus from Amsterdam Noord and a fair amount of waiting, and the full-day trip covers all four stops for $40.
Book the small group if the mills are the point. Sixteen people, every admission paid, a guide who lives in the village, and you are back in Amsterdam by lunch. It costs more than the coach and saves you the €15 ticket, so the gap is smaller than it looks.
Skip the tour if you like a station and a map. Two people going by train pay under €35 between them including a mill each, and nobody hurries you back to the coach at three.
The gates open at 9:00 and the coaches start arriving around 10:30. That first hour and a half is the whole difference between the postcard and the crush. Come in November and half the mills are shut, but you get the dike path to yourself.
Keukenhof runs from 18 March to 9 May 2027, 8:00 to 19:00. That window is the only time the tulips and windmills day operates, and it is also when Zaanse Schans is busiest, because everyone else has read the same advice.
Every bar is one day out of Amsterdam, eight hours end to end. The dark part is travel in both directions, the light part is time you get on the ground.
Travel times are door to door from Amsterdam Centraal, checked August 2026.
Richard, our tour guide, was incredibly knowledgeable, engaging, and made every stop meaningful. Henry, our driver, was friendly and reliable.
The tour started on time. The bus was comfortable enough. Rafael, our guide, was very clear and shared a lot of knowledge. All the advertised information was provided in real life.
Volendam is a small beautiful village and Zaanse Schans an outdoor windmill museum. Lego Houses is just a five minute stop for photos of a hotel with a strange facade.
The GetYourGuide figures on this page came off the operators' own pages on 1 August 2026, in dollars, including the review counts. Viator blocks that, so those four carry the date they were last checked.
A $34 tour that leaves you paying €7.50 at the mill is not cheaper than a $50 tour that pays it. The comparison table splits the two so you can see the real number.
Going alone costs about €20 to €25 for the day. Any tour worth booking has to beat that with a guide, a coach seat, or villages you would struggle to reach yourself.
The cheapest half day here rates 4.1 out of 5, and the reviews say why: departures where no guide turned up. It stays on the page with the reason attached.
Every quote on this page names the traveller and the day they wrote it. Nothing older than a few weeks goes into the panel above.
This is an independent guide. Booking, payment and cancellation all happen on GetYourGuide or Viator, and the terms you see at their checkout are the ones that count.
Worth it if you go inside one. Standing on the path photographing six mills takes twenty minutes and can feel thin, but the €7.50 climb into De Kat puts you next to runner stones grinding lapis into blue pigment, with the Zaan through the door. Go before 10:30 and the village is quiet enough to hear the sails. The longer answer, with the crowd timings, is in is Zaanse Schans worth visiting.
De Gooyer on Funenkade, the tallest wooden mill in the Netherlands. Its sails turn, but there is no interior visit, and the Brouwerij 't IJ taproom in the old bathhouse next door is why most people walk over. The mill you can actually enter inside the city is Molen van Sloten, with guided tours every hour from 10:00.
Between six and eight, depending on where you draw the city boundary and whether a mill has to still turn to count. The four worth going to see are De Gooyer on Funenkade, Molen van Sloten in the south-west, the Riekermolen on the Amstel and Krijtmolen d'Admiraal in Noord. Only Molen van Sloten opens its door to visitors.
All four surviving city mills stand on public streets or paths, so looking at them costs nothing. Zaanse Schans is free to walk into as well, and the train there is about €9.40 return, so a windmill day without a single admission ticket is entirely possible. You pay only to go inside: €7.50 at a mill on the Zaan, or the guided tour at Molen van Sloten.
Zaanse Schans is 18 kilometres north, which is 17 minutes on the train to Zaandijk Zaanse Schans plus a 10-minute walk, or 45 minutes on bus 391. Kinderdijk, the nineteen-mill UNESCO site, is about 100 kilometres south near Rotterdam and takes an hour and a half each way.
Most do not. The coach tours pay for the cheese demonstration and the clog carving, both free to enter anyway, and leave the mills at €7.50 a head to you. Zaan Tours' small group includes the climb inside Molen De Kat along with the workshop and the cheese farm, and the budget half day lists a windmill entry as well.
Zaanse Schans. Every tour on this page goes north to the Zaan, not south to Kinderdijk. Kinderdijk has more mills in one frame and far fewer shops, but it needs its own day from Amsterdam and is easier reached via Rotterdam. We compare them properly in Zaanse Schans or Kinderdijk.
Yes. Trains run from Amsterdam Centraal to Zaandijk Zaanse Schans about four times an hour, take 17 minutes, and cost roughly €9.40 return. From the platform it is a 10-minute walk over the Julianabrug into the village. No booking, no fixed departure time. Every route and fare is broken down separately.
Not for the village. Walking the paths, the houses, the cheese farm and the clog workshop costs nothing, and you pay only to go inside a mill or a museum. A €17.50 entry fee for visitors from outside the region was approved for spring 2026, and as of August 2026 the site's own ticket shop still calls the village freely accessible. The full ticket breakdown covers both combination tickets.
Two hours covers the path, one mill and the cheese farm, which is what the coach tours give you. Four hours lets you go inside three mills, take the audio tour and eat, and that is what the train allows. The 3.5-hour small group sits in between and moves at a walking pace.
From 18 March to 9 May 2027, daily from 8:00 to 19:00, with the entrance closing at 18:15. The Keukenhof and Zaanse Schans tour only runs inside that window, gives about three and a half hours in the gardens and two and a half at the mills, and includes a skip-the-line ticket.
Guides
Everything we know about visiting the Zaan, in the order you need it.
Amsterdam Windmill Tours