VacationSelector

Helsinki or Kyoto?

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

Helsinki
57
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration with your weighting.

Kyoto
58
match

Wins on nightlife and museums & heritage 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.

HelsinkiKyoto
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 43 points.43
HelsinkiKyoto
Score6017
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km1570
Coast distance0 km47 km
Water distance0 km47 km
Places to eat. Kyoto leads by 13 points.13
HelsinkiKyoto
Score7184
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0055,023
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3822
Museums & heritage. Kyoto leads by 23 points.23
HelsinkiKyoto
Score4972
Museums within 10 km57132
Museums within 2 km of centre2351
Share of museums within 2 km %4039
Unesco sites within 50 km14
Nightlife. Kyoto leads by 24 points.24
HelsinkiKyoto
Score5680
Drinking venues within 4 km8073,215
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre6072,363
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7573
Nightclubs within 4 km4026
Nature & day trips. Helsinki leads by 20 points.20
HelsinkiKyoto
Score4222
Protected land share 50 km %32
Landscape blanket share 50 km %02
Land share of disc %53100
Park area within 2 km185 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. Kyoto leads by 8 points.8
HelsinkiKyoto
Score5866
Tourist attractions within 2 km2062
Park area within 2 km185 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km14
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 21 points.21
HelsinkiKyoto
Score7352
Notable places within 2 km25779
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Kyoto leads by 14 points.14
HelsinkiKyoto
Score5670
Price level global81.662.4
Daily budget€184—
Year-round weather. Kyoto leads by 14 points.14
HelsinkiKyoto
Score4862
Monthly daytime high-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C8.6 °C to 32.4 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 84 mm40 mm to 232 mm
Dry months30
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
Helsinki
-1
-1
2
8
15
19
22
21
15
9
4
1
Kyoto
9
9
13
20
24
27
31
32
28
22
17
11
Sea temperature, °C
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Kyoto
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Kyoto
47
67
112
150
147
232
225
149
215
108
68
40
Daylight, hours per day
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Kyoto
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Helsinki
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
5
3
1
1
Kyoto
5
5
6
6
7
5
6
7
5
5
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Helsinki: 1991-2020 normals, Helsinki Kaisaniemi / Harju (1.6 km from centre). Kyoto: 1971-2000 (sunshine 1991-2020) normals, Kyoto (3.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHelsinkiKyoto
SeoulICN, GMP
8 h 55 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
1 h 40 m
€107-142
KIX · 81 km
TokyoHND, NRT
9 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
1 h 10 m
€118-135
ITM · 39 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
12 h 0 m
€859-891
3 stops
KIX · 81 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
10 h 0 m
€603-634
HEL · 16 km
5 h 35 m
€288-317
KIX · 81 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
9 h 20 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
2 h 10 m
€237-303
KIX · 81 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 30 m
€203-241
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
11 h 30 m
€1,507-1966
2 stops
ITM · 39 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
11 h 30 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
DohaDOH
5 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
KIX · 81 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

MeasureHelsinkiKyoto
Official languageFinnish, SwedishJapanese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Yen (JPY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number112Police 110, fire 119
Elevation17 m51 m
Main airportHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsKansai International Airport (KIX)81 km from centre62 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureHelsinkiKyoto
City population694,3921,463,723
People per km²3,2391,768
Museums within 10 km7476
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km14
Distinct cuisines in the centre7889
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Helsinki or Kyoto 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.