VacationSelector

Beijing or Helsinki?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Beijing
53
match

Wins on value for money and good for families with your weighting.

Helsinki
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

BeijingHelsinki
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 60 points.60
BeijingHelsinki
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km0157
Coast distance145 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Museums & heritage. Beijing leads by 14 points.14
BeijingHelsinki
Score6349
Museums within 10 km9557
Museums within 2 km of centre1523
Share of museums within 2 km %1640
Unesco sites within 50 km61
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Nature & day trips. Helsinki leads by 7 points.7
BeijingHelsinki
Score3542
Protected land share 50 km %33
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10053
Park area within 2 km143 hectares185 hectares
Good for families. Beijing leads by 19 points.19
BeijingHelsinki
Score7758
Tourist attractions within 2 km4120
Park area within 2 km143 hectares185 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km121
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 23 points.23
BeijingHelsinki
Score5073
Notable places within 2 km69257
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Beijing leads by 23 points.23
BeijingHelsinki
Score7956
Price level global4981.6
Daily budget€184
Year-round weather. Beijing leads by 18 points.18
BeijingHelsinki
Score6648
Monthly daytime high2.2 °C to 31.8 °C-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 163 mm32 mm to 84 mm
Dry months83
0255075100

When should you go?

The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Beijing
2
6
13
21
27
31
32
31
27
19
10
4
Helsinki
-1
-1
2
8
15
19
22
21
15
9
4
1
Sea temperature, °C
Beijing
No coastline within reach
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Rainfall, mm
Beijing
3
6
9
23
38
74
163
112
56
27
14
3
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Daylight, hours per day
Beijing
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Sunshine, hours per day
Beijing
6
6
7
8
9
7
6
7
7
7
6
6
Helsinki
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
5
3
1
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Beijing: 1991-2020 normals, Beijing (11.1 km from centre). Helsinki: 1991-2020 normals, Helsinki Kaisaniemi / Harju (1.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBeijingHelsinki
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
8 h 30 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 10 m
€62-63
HEL · 16 km
SeoulICN, GMP
1 h 45 m
€180-197
PKX · 45 km
8 h 55 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 15 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
TokyoHND, NRT
3 h 10 m
€312-367
PEK · 25 km
9 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
1 h 55 m
€144-160
PKX · 45 km
9 h 20 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
Hong KongHKG
2 h 55 m
€151-190
PKX · 45 km
9 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
AmsterdamAMS
9 h 55 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
CopenhagenCPH
9 h 10 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 45 m
€111-131
HEL · 16 km
DohaDOH
7 h 55 m
€595-787
3 stops
PKX · 45 km
5 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
13 h 5 m
€1,020-1172
2 stops
PEK · 25 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-08 to 2026-10, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasureBeijingHelsinki
Official languagePutonghuaFinnish, Swedish
CurrencyYuan Renminbi (CNY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsACI220 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, ambulance 120, fire 119112
Elevation43 m17 m
Main airportBeijing Capital International Airport (PEK)25 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year6 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureBeijingHelsinki
City population21,893,095694,392
People per km²1,3343,239
Museums within 10 km8374
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km61
Distinct cuisines in the centre2978
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Beijing or Helsinki somewhere new.

Browse every destination we have measured

Sources

© OpenStreetMap contributors, data available under the Open Database Licence. Place counts include data from Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA Permissive 2.0), assembled from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and other providers. Notable-place counts from Wikidata (CC0), weighted by Wikipedia language editions. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.