VacationSelector

Geneva or Helsinki?

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

Your match

Geneva
50
match

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

Helsinki
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

GenevaHelsinki
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 60 points.60
GenevaHelsinki
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km43157
Coast distance279 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Helsinki leads by 1 points.1
GenevaHelsinki
Score7071
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0281,005
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3538
Museums & heritage. Geneva leads by 3 points.3
GenevaHelsinki
Score5249
Museums within 10 km3557
Museums within 2 km of centre2023
Share of museums within 2 km %5740
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Helsinki leads by 6 points.6
GenevaHelsinki
Score5056
Drinking venues within 4 km549807
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre427607
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7875
Nightclubs within 4 km6040
Nature & day trips. Geneva leads by 17 points.17
GenevaHelsinki
Score5942
Protected land share 50 km %273
Landscape blanket share 50 km %210
Land share of disc %10053
Park area within 2 km182 hectares185 hectares
Good for families. Geneva leads by 7 points.7
GenevaHelsinki
Score6558
Tourist attractions within 2 km2820
Park area within 2 km182 hectares185 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 17 points.17
GenevaHelsinki
Score5673
Notable places within 2 km99257
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Helsinki leads by 21 points.21
GenevaHelsinki
Score3556
Price level global110.581.6
Daily budget€248€184
Year-round weather. Geneva leads by 11 points.11
GenevaHelsinki
Score5948
Monthly daytime high5.1 °C to 26.8 °C-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 94 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
Geneva
5
7
12
16
20
24
27
26
21
16
9
6
Helsinki
-1
-1
2
8
15
19
22
21
15
9
4
1
Sea temperature, °C
Geneva
No coastline within reach
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Rainfall, mm
Geneva
71
55
61
66
77
81
77
80
87
94
87
88
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Daylight, hours per day
Geneva
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Sunshine, hours per day
Geneva
2
3
6
6
7
8
9
8
6
4
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. Geneva: 1991-2020 normals, Geneve-Cointrin (5.7 km from centre). Helsinki: 1991-2020 normals, Helsinki Kaisaniemi / Harju (1.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGenevaHelsinki
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€91-200
GVA · 5 km
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 40 m
€184-250
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
1 h 10 m
€62-63
HEL · 16 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 30 m
€160-186
GVA · 5 km
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€104-203
GVA · 5 km
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
CopenhagenCPH
2 h 0 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
1 h 45 m
€111-131
HEL · 16 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 10 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
2 h 30 m
€203-241
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 55 m
€147-338
GVA · 5 km
3 h 10 m
€206-225
HEL · 16 km
MunichMUC
1 h 15 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 0 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
DohaDOH
6 h 5 m
no fares
GVA · 5 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

MeasureGenevaHelsinki
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, RomanshFinnish, Swedish
CurrencySwiss Franc (CHF)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCJ230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation403 m17 m
Main airportGeneva International Airport (GVA)5 km from centre140 non-stop destinationsHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureGenevaHelsinki
City population209,061694,392
People per km²13,1483,239
Museums within 10 km3574
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre8078
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Geneva 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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. 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.