Amsterdam is the capital and biggest city of The Netherlands. It has over 900,000 inhabitants within the municipality. If you look at the urban area, the number of people would be around 1.5 million, while the metropolitan area has about 2.5 million. It’s also part of the Randstad (Edge City), a crescent-shaped conurbation in the central-western Netherlands. With a population of approximately 8.4 million people, The Randstad is one of the largest metropolitan regions in Europe. All 4 of the biggest cities in The Netherlands are part of The Randstad.
So if you take the urban area of the city, the population is about 1.5 million. For Dutch standards that’s very large. But compared to some other urban areas worldwide, it’s rather small. The largest urban area in the world is Tokyo with a population of over 37 million people. Amsterdam’s urban area won’t even make the world’s top 100.
When you look at the area, the municipality has an area of 219.32 km2 (84.68 sq mi) of which about 1/4 is made up of water. While the municipality of Amsterdam is the largest in the country by population, it’s by far not the largest municipality by area. The municipality of Súdwest-Fryslân (Zuidwest-Friesland) has an area of 907.87 km2 (350.53 sq mi), almost 4 times as big as Amsterdam’s.
So how big is Amsterdam? Big for Dutch standards, but on a world scale, not so big.