VacationSelector

Helsinki or Lima?

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

Helsinki
57
match

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

Lima
55
match

Wins on year-round weather 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.

HelsinkiLima
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 23 points.23
HelsinkiLima
Score6037
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km15712
Coast distance0 km6 km
Water distance0 km6 km
Places to eat. Helsinki leads by 19 points.19
HelsinkiLima
Score7152
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,005796
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3814
Museums & heritage. Lima leads by 15 points.15
HelsinkiLima
Score4964
Museums within 10 km5789
Museums within 2 km of centre2347
Share of museums within 2 km %4053
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Helsinki leads by 11 points.11
HelsinkiLima
Score5645
Drinking venues within 4 km807409
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre607177
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7543
Nightclubs within 4 km4063
Nature & day trips. Helsinki leads by 15 points.15
HelsinkiLima
Score4227
Protected land share 50 km %32
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5351
Park area within 2 km185 hectares54 hectares
Good for families. Helsinki leads by 2 points.2
HelsinkiLima
Score5856
Tourist attractions within 2 km2025
Park area within 2 km185 hectares54 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km14
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 27 points.27
HelsinkiLima
Score7346
Notable places within 2 km25754
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lima leads by 24 points.24
HelsinkiLima
Score5680
Price level global81.647.7
Daily budget€184
Year-round weather. Lima leads by 44 points.44
HelsinkiLima
Score4892
Monthly daytime high-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C18.6 °C to 27.4 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 84 mm0 mm to 1 mm
Dry months312
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
Lima
26
27
27
25
22
20
19
19
19
20
22
24
Sea temperature, °C
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Lima
21
22
21
20
19
18
18
17
17
17
18
19
Rainfall, mm
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Lima
1
1
0
0
1
1
1
1
1
1
0
1
Daylight, hours per day
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Lima
13
13
12
12
12
11
12
12
12
12
13
13
Sunshine, hours per day
Helsinki
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
5
3
1
1
Lima
5
5
6
6
3
1
1
1
1
2
3
4

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). Lima: 1991-2020 normals, Lima-Callao / Aerop. Internacional Jorgechavez (10.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHelsinkiLima
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
13 h 5 m
€876-946
1 stop
LIM · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
12 h 45 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
MadridMAD
4 h 10 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
11 h 50 m
€895-903
LIM · 9 km
MiamiMIA, OPF
10 h 30 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
5 h 40 m
€403-426
1 stop
LIM · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
3 h 45 m
€212-264
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
12 h 25 m
€898-998
1 stop
LIM · 9 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
11 h 15 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
8 h 35 m
no fares
LIM · 9 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

MeasureHelsinkiLima
Official languageFinnish, SwedishSpanish, Aymara, Quechua
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Sol (PEN)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzABC220 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC-5
Emergency number112111 or 911
Elevation17 m154 m
Main airportHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsJorge Chávez International Airport (LIM)9 km from centre63 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureHelsinkiLima
City population694,3929,943,800
People per km²3,2393,721
Museums within 10 km7446
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre7833
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Helsinki or Lima 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.