VacationSelector

Helsinki or Los Angeles?

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

Your match

Helsinki
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and good for families with your weighting.

Los Angeles
53
match

Wins on year-round weather 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.

HelsinkiLos Angeles
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 31 points.31
HelsinkiLos Angeles
Score6029
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1570
Coast distance0 km—
Water distance0 km—
Beaches 25 km—11
Warmest sea temp—20.2 °C
Scoring variant—beachScoreWideRing
Declared—2026-08-25
Register—seed/editorial-overrides.json
Places to eat. Helsinki leads by 5 points.5
HelsinkiLos Angeles
Score7166
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0051,337
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3822
Museums & heritage. Helsinki and Los Angeles are level on 49.
HelsinkiLos Angeles
Score4949
Museums within 10 km5769
Museums within 2 km of centre2323
Share of museums within 2 km %4033
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Helsinki leads by 2 points.2
HelsinkiLos Angeles
Score5654
Drinking venues within 4 km807660
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre607432
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7565
Nightclubs within 4 km4064
Nature & day trips. Los Angeles leads by 20 points.20
HelsinkiLos Angeles
Score4262
Protected land share 50 km %326
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5380
Park area within 2 km185 hectares20 hectares
Good for families. Helsinki leads by 25 points.25
HelsinkiLos Angeles
Score5833
Tourist attractions within 2 km2011
Park area within 2 km185 hectares20 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 19 points.19
HelsinkiLos Angeles
Score7354
Notable places within 2 km25788
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Helsinki leads by 13 points.13
HelsinkiLos Angeles
Score5643
Price level global81.6100
Daily budget€184—
Year-round weather. Los Angeles leads by 39 points.39
HelsinkiLos Angeles
Score4887
Monthly daytime high-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C18.6 °C to 24.7 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 84 mm0 mm to 76 mm
Dry months38
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
Los Angeles
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
24
22
19
Sea temperature, °C
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Los Angeles
15
15
15
15
17
18
20
20
20
19
17
16
Rainfall, mm
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Los Angeles
73
76
44
16
7
2
1
0
3
13
21
57
Daylight, hours per day
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Los Angeles
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Helsinki
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
5
3
1
1
Los Angeles
No sunshine record

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). Los Angeles: 1991-2020 normals, Los Angeles Airport (18.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHelsinkiLos Angeles
TokyoHND, NRT
9 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
11 h 0 m
€785-892
1 stop
LAX · 19 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
11 h 25 m
€600-640
1 stop
LAX · 19 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
5 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 45 m
€111-131
HEL · 16 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
MunichMUC
2 h 30 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
12 h 0 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 30 m
€203-241
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
9 h 40 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
DohaDOH
5 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
16 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 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

MeasureHelsinkiLos Angeles
Official languageFinnish, Swedish–
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation17 m106 m
Main airportHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsLos Angeles International Airport (LAX)19 km from centre180 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureHelsinkiLos Angeles
City population694,3923,898,747
People per km²3,2392,994
Museums within 10 km7438
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre7846
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

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