VacationSelector

Helsinki or Maastricht?

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 sights concentration with your weighting.

Maastricht
41
match

Wins on year-round weather 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.

HelsinkiMaastricht
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 60 points.60
HelsinkiMaastricht
Score600
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1576
Coast distance0 km118 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Helsinki leads by 23 points.23
HelsinkiMaastricht
Score7148
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,005338
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3822
Museums & heritage. Maastricht leads by 4 points.4
HelsinkiMaastricht
Score4953
Museums within 10 km5723
Museums within 2 km of centre2313
Share of museums within 2 km %4057
Unesco sites within 50 km15
Nightlife. Helsinki leads by 26 points.26
HelsinkiMaastricht
Score5630
Drinking venues within 4 km807223
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre607182
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7582
Nightclubs within 4 km4013
Nature & day trips. Helsinki leads by 5 points.5
HelsinkiMaastricht
Score4237
Protected land share 50 km %319
Landscape blanket share 50 km %011
Land share of disc %53100
Park area within 2 km185 hectares33 hectares
Good for families. Helsinki leads by 12 points.12
HelsinkiMaastricht
Score5846
Tourist attractions within 2 km2015
Park area within 2 km185 hectares33 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km15
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 37 points.37
HelsinkiMaastricht
Score7336
Notable places within 2 km25732
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Maastricht leads by 2 points.2
HelsinkiMaastricht
Score5658
Price level global81.679.2
Daily budget€184€181
Year-round weather. Maastricht leads by 11 points.11
HelsinkiMaastricht
Score4859
Monthly daytime high-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C5.7 °C to 23.8 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 84 mm41 mm to 84 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
Maastricht
6
7
11
15
19
22
24
24
20
15
10
6
Sea temperature, °C
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Maastricht
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Maastricht
64
58
55
41
58
69
73
84
58
65
62
74
Daylight, hours per day
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Maastricht
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Helsinki
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
5
3
1
1
Maastricht
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2

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). Maastricht: 1991-2020 normals, Maastricht Airport Zuid Limburg (10 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHelsinkiMaastricht
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EIN · 70 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 85 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 10 m
€62-63
HEL · 16 km
2 h 10 m
€63-138
BRU · 85 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
3 h 0 m
€144-161
HEL · 16 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
EIN · 70 km
RomeFCO, CIA
3 h 20 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
EIN · 70 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
1 h 45 m
€86-113
HEL · 16 km
1 h 55 m
€123-157
1 stop
EIN · 70 km
BudapestBUD
2 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
1 h 55 m
€106-231
EIN · 70 km
FaroFAO
4 h 45 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
2 h 55 m
€223
EIN · 70 km
TokyoHND, NRT
9 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
11 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 85 km
DohaDOH
5 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
6 h 25 m
no fares
BRU · 85 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

MeasureHelsinkiMaastricht
Official languageFinnish, SwedishDutch
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 911
Elevation17 m49 m
Main airportHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsMaastricht Aachen Airport (MST)9 km from centre5 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureHelsinkiMaastricht
City population694,392120,227
People per km²3,2392,000
Museums within 10 km7421
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km15
Distinct cuisines in the centre7833
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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