VacationSelector

Dublin 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

Dublin
55
match

Wins on nightlife and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Helsinki
57
match

Wins on nature & day trips and beaches & swimming 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.

DublinHelsinki
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 11 points.11
DublinHelsinki
Score4960
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km11157
Coast distance3 km0 km
Water distance3 km0 km
Places to eat. Helsinki leads by 1 points.1
DublinHelsinki
Score7071
Restaurants within 2 km of centre9201,005
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3738
Museums & heritage. Dublin leads by 6 points.6
DublinHelsinki
Score5549
Museums within 10 km4757
Museums within 2 km of centre3723
Share of museums within 2 km %7940
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Dublin leads by 8 points.8
DublinHelsinki
Score6456
Drinking venues within 4 km1,239807
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre934607
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7575
Nightclubs within 4 km4040
Nature & day trips. Helsinki leads by 16 points.16
DublinHelsinki
Score2642
Protected land share 50 km %33
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %6253
Park area within 2 km43 hectares185 hectares
Good for families. Helsinki leads by 4 points.4
DublinHelsinki
Score5458
Tourist attractions within 2 km4120
Park area within 2 km43 hectares185 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 11 points.11
DublinHelsinki
Score6273
Notable places within 2 km141257
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dublin leads by 1 points.1
DublinHelsinki
Score5756
Price level global80.281.6
Daily budget€187€184
Year-round weather. Dublin leads by 6 points.6
DublinHelsinki
Score5448
Monthly daytime high8.2 °C to 19.5 °C-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C
Monthly rainfall52 mm to 83 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
Dublin
8
9
10
12
15
18
20
19
17
14
10
8
Helsinki
-1
-1
2
8
15
19
22
21
15
9
4
1
Sea temperature, °C
Dublin
9
8
8
9
11
13
15
15
15
13
12
11
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Rainfall, mm
Dublin
62
52
52
55
58
65
62
74
61
78
83
72
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Daylight, hours per day
Dublin
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Sunshine, hours per day
Dublin
2
3
4
5
6
6
5
5
4
3
2
2
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. Dublin: 1991-2020 normals, Dublin Airport (9.3 km from centre). Helsinki: 1991-2020 normals, Helsinki Kaisaniemi / Harju (1.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDublinHelsinki
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 10 m
€33-43
DUB · 9 km
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 35 m
€80-139
DUB · 9 km
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€43-47
DUB · 9 km
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 35 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
1 h 10 m
€62-63
HEL · 16 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 50 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
4 h 35 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 55 m
€113-161
1 stop
DUB · 9 km
2 h 30 m
€203-241
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
CopenhagenCPH
2 h 10 m
€86-108
1 stop
DUB · 9 km
1 h 45 m
€111-131
HEL · 16 km
MunichMUC
2 h 15 m
€200-272
1 stop
DUB · 9 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
DohaDOH
7 h 20 m
no fares
DUB · 9 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 2026-08 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

MeasureDublinHelsinki
Official languageEnglish, IrishFinnish, Swedish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation20 m17 m
Main airportDublin Airport (DUB)9 km from centre201 non-stop destinationsHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureDublinHelsinki
City population592,713694,392
People per km²5,1543,239
Museums within 10 km4074
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
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 Dublin 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.