VacationSelector

Hamburg or Helsinki?

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

Your match

Hamburg
53
match

Wins on nightlife and museums & heritage 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.

HamburgHelsinki
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 60 points.60
HamburgHelsinki
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km16157
Coast distance22 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Hamburg leads by 2 points.2
HamburgHelsinki
Score7371
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1501,005
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3838
Museums & heritage. Hamburg leads by 11 points.11
HamburgHelsinki
Score6049
Museums within 10 km9457
Museums within 2 km of centre5023
Share of museums within 2 km %5340
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Hamburg leads by 12 points.12
HamburgHelsinki
Score6856
Drinking venues within 4 km1,339807
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre834607
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6275
Nightclubs within 4 km11940
Nature & day trips. Helsinki leads by 2 points.2
HamburgHelsinki
Score4042
Protected land share 50 km %143
Landscape blanket share 50 km %100
Land share of disc %9953
Park area within 2 km89 hectares185 hectares
Good for families. Hamburg leads by 2 points.2
HamburgHelsinki
Score6058
Tourist attractions within 2 km4020
Park area within 2 km89 hectares185 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 14 points.14
HamburgHelsinki
Score5973
Notable places within 2 km118257
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Hamburg leads by 4 points.4
HamburgHelsinki
Score6056
Price level global75.981.6
Daily budget€163€184
Year-round weather. Hamburg leads by 7 points.7
HamburgHelsinki
Score5548
Monthly daytime high4.3 °C to 23.2 °C-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C
Monthly rainfall39 mm to 82 mm32 mm to 84 mm
Dry months13
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
Hamburg
4
5
9
14
18
21
23
23
19
14
8
5
Helsinki
-1
-1
2
8
15
19
22
21
15
9
4
1
Sea temperature, °C
Hamburg
No coastline within reach
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Rainfall, mm
Hamburg
67
55
57
39
58
74
82
77
65
63
61
72
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Daylight, hours per day
Hamburg
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
Hamburg
1
2
4
6
7
7
7
7
5
4
2
1
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. Hamburg: 1991-2020 normals, Hamburg Airport (9.3 km from centre). Helsinki: 1991-2020 normals, Helsinki Kaisaniemi / Harju (1.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHamburgHelsinki
MunichMUC
1 h 20 m
€195-270
HAM · 9 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 10 m
no fares
HAM · 9 km
2 h 30 m
€203-241
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€89-225
HAM · 9 km
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 40 m
€114-154
HAM · 9 km
1 h 10 m
€62-63
HEL · 16 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€178-237
HAM · 9 km
3 h 10 m
€206-225
HEL · 16 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 35 m
no fares
HAM · 9 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 5 m
€337-378
1 stop
HAM · 9 km
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€155-168
1 stop
HAM · 9 km
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€167-214
1 stop
HAM · 9 km
2 h 25 m
€136-220
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 25 m
€357-416
HAM · 9 km
6 h 0 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

MeasureHamburgHelsinki
Official languageGermanFinnish, Swedish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation6 m17 m
Main airportHamburg Helmut Schmidt Airport (HAM)9 km from centre119 non-stop destinationsHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureHamburgHelsinki
City population1,910,160694,392
People per km²2,5303,239
Museums within 10 km7774
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre8378
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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