After you’ve fought your way through the Dutch housing market and somehow sweet-talked a viewing out of a landlord with 200 other applicants, the last thing you need is to spend €500 getting your stuff from one apartment to another.
Yet that’s exactly where most people end up — paying a fortune, or begging every friend they have for help and owing them all dinner forever.
Moving as an expat is wildly overcomplicated for no reason
If you’re an expat or recent arrival, the traditional moving company model just doesn’t make sense for you.
You’re not moving a four-bedroom house full of heirlooms. You’ve got a mattress, a few boxes, and a lamp that probably won’t survive anyway. Yet most moving companies charge as if everyone’s relocating an entire household!
That means €350 to €800-plus for full-service moves with large crews and a price tag that assumes you’ve got a proper Dutch salary to match.
This is the awkward moving gap so many students and expats fall into: too much stuff to carry yourself, not enough to justify a full moving company.
That’s why founder Mihai Tulbure created MoverMate, a moving service built specifically for this middle ground.
MoverMate was born out of personal experience
MoverMate has humble beginnings. Unlike many big moving companies, it didn’t start in a boardroom. It began with a smart student at the University of Twente who owned a van.
After a few dozen rounds of helping friends stuck in that same transport gap move between rooms and apartments, he thought: Why isn’t there a proper service for this?
That insight grew into a reliable van-and-driver operation built for student and city life. And now, you can use it too!
What you actually get — and what you save
MoverMate keeps it simple: a van, a professional driver, and an hourly rate of €49. Fuel is calculated separately, but most local moves come in between €110 and €140 total.
Compare that to traditional movers charging €80 to €120 per hour with a minimum of three or four hours, and you’re looking at savings of up to a whopping 40%.
The service covers 24+ cities across the Netherlands — Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht, Eindhoven, Leiden, Delft, and more — with intercity moves typically wrapping up within half a day.
A few things to keep in mind:
- MoverMate is transport-focused. The driver loads and unloads; packing and disassembly are on you. For most studio moves, that’s a non-issue.
- Preparation saves you money. The clock starts when the driver arrives — boxes by the door mean fast loading, which means a lower bill.
- There’s same-day availability. Last-minute move? MoverMate often has slots the same day or next.
- The process is entirely English-friendly. Booking, communication, and the move itself — no Dutch-language websites required.
For students, expats, and anyone who’s done the maths on a studio move and quietly wept, MoverMate is the option that should have existed all along.
Just message +31648852148 with your pickup address, destination, date, and a brief description of what needs to be moved. You can also book via the MoverMate contact page.
Have you ever paid way too much to move to the Netherlands? Tell us your moving horror stories in the comments.