VacationSelector

Edinburgh 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, 1 point apart

Edinburgh
58
match

Wins on good for families and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Helsinki
57
match

Wins on sights concentration and nature & day trips 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.

EdinburghHelsinki
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 5 points.5
EdinburghHelsinki
Score5560
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km20157
Coast distance3 km0 km
Water distance3 km0 km
Places to eat. Helsinki leads by 1 points.1
EdinburghHelsinki
Score7071
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0231,005
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3538
Museums & heritage. Edinburgh leads by 8 points.8
EdinburghHelsinki
Score5749
Museums within 10 km3057
Museums within 2 km of centre2223
Share of museums within 2 km %7340
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Edinburgh leads by 8 points.8
EdinburghHelsinki
Score6456
Drinking venues within 4 km1,193807
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre884607
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7475
Nightclubs within 4 km6540
Nature & day trips. Helsinki leads by 7 points.7
EdinburghHelsinki
Score3542
Protected land share 50 km %23
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %8553
Park area within 2 km166 hectares185 hectares
Good for families. Edinburgh leads by 14 points.14
EdinburghHelsinki
Score7258
Tourist attractions within 2 km8720
Park area within 2 km166 hectares185 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 13 points.13
EdinburghHelsinki
Score6073
Notable places within 2 km126257
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Helsinki leads by 2 points.2
EdinburghHelsinki
Score5456
Price level global84.981.6
Daily budget€184
Year-round weather. Edinburgh leads by 3 points.3
EdinburghHelsinki
Score5148
Monthly daytime high6.6 °C to 18.8 °C-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 80 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
Edinburgh
7
7
9
12
14
17
19
19
17
13
9
7
Helsinki
-1
-1
2
8
15
19
22
21
15
9
4
1
Sea temperature, °C
Edinburgh
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Rainfall, mm
Edinburgh
62
47
47
43
49
63
65
69
55
80
68
63
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Daylight, hours per day
Edinburgh
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Sunshine, hours per day
Edinburgh
2
3
4
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
3
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. Edinburgh: 1991-2020 normals, Edinburgh Airport (10 km from centre). Helsinki: 1991-2020 normals, Helsinki Kaisaniemi / Harju (1.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromEdinburghHelsinki
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
€41-45
EDI · 11 km
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 15 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
1 h 10 m
€62-63
HEL · 16 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 50 m
€55-94
EDI · 11 km
1 h 45 m
€111-131
HEL · 16 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€78-108
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 25 m
€117-158
EDI · 11 km
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 20 m
€75-101
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
3 h 0 m
€144-161
HEL · 16 km
MunichMUC
2 h 15 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
MalagaAGP
3 h 10 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
4 h 35 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 50 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
DohaDOH
7 h 10 m
no fares
EDI · 11 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

MeasureEdinburghHelsinki
Official languageEnglishFinnish, Swedish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation47 m17 m
Main airportEdinburgh Airport (EDI)11 km from centre158 non-stop destinationsHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureEdinburghHelsinki
City population488,050694,392
People per km²1,8843,239
Museums within 10 km3274
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre7878
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Edinburgh 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.