VacationSelector

Boston or Helsinki?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Boston
55
match

Wins on nature & day trips and year-round weather with your weighting.

Helsinki
57
match

Wins on sights concentration and value for money 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.

BostonHelsinki
Beaches & swimming. Boston and Helsinki are level on 60.
BostonHelsinki
Score6060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km68157
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Boston leads by 2 points.2
BostonHelsinki
Score7371
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4521,005
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3238
Museums & heritage. Helsinki leads by 6 points.6
BostonHelsinki
Score4349
Museums within 10 km7957
Museums within 2 km of centre2723
Share of museums within 2 km %3440
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Boston leads by 2 points.2
BostonHelsinki
Score5856
Drinking venues within 4 km886807
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre513607
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5875
Nightclubs within 4 km4340
Nature & day trips. Boston leads by 11 points.11
BostonHelsinki
Score5342
Protected land share 50 km %123
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7753
Park area within 2 km116 hectares185 hectares
Good for families. Helsinki leads by 5 points.5
BostonHelsinki
Score5358
Tourist attractions within 2 km2820
Park area within 2 km116 hectares185 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 15 points.15
BostonHelsinki
Score5873
Notable places within 2 km111257
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Helsinki leads by 13 points.13
BostonHelsinki
Score4356
Price level global10081.6
Daily budget€184
Year-round weather. Boston leads by 8 points.8
BostonHelsinki
Score5648
Monthly daytime high2.9 °C to 28 °C-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C
Monthly rainfall79 mm to 107 mm32 mm to 84 mm
Dry months03
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
Boston
3
4
8
14
19
25
28
27
23
17
11
6
Helsinki
-1
-1
2
8
15
19
22
21
15
9
4
1
Sea temperature, °C
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Rainfall, mm
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Daylight, hours per day
Boston
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Sunshine, hours per day
Boston
5
5
6
7
8
8
9
9
7
5
5
4
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. Boston: 1991-2020 normals, Boston Logan International (3.5 km from centre). Helsinki: 1991-2020 normals, Helsinki Kaisaniemi / Harju (1.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBostonHelsinki
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 0 m
€192-203
BOS · 4 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
AmsterdamAMS
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 20 m
€176-196
BOS · 4 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
CopenhagenCPH
7 h 35 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 45 m
€111-131
HEL · 16 km
MunichMUC
7 h 55 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
7 h 35 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 30 m
€203-241
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
TokyoHND, NRT
13 h 25 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
9 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
DohaDOH
13 h 0 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
5 h 50 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 2026-09 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

MeasureBostonHelsinki
Official languageFinnish, Swedish
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation43 m17 m
Main airportBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureBostonHelsinki
City population675,647694,392
People per km²2,9103,239
Museums within 10 km5174
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre7478
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Boston 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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. 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.