VacationSelector

Helsinki or Madrid?

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

Your match

Helsinki
57
match

Wins on beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Madrid
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on museums & heritage and nightlife 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.

HelsinkiMadrid
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 60 points.60
HelsinkiMadrid
Score600
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1574
Coast distance0 km305 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 12 points.12
HelsinkiMadrid
Score7183
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0053,508
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3828
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 26 points.26
HelsinkiMadrid
Score4975
Museums within 10 km5797
Museums within 2 km of centre2359
Share of museums within 2 km %4061
Unesco sites within 50 km14
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 25 points.25
HelsinkiMadrid
Score5681
Drinking venues within 4 km8072,414
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre6071,498
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7562
Nightclubs within 4 km40341
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 21 points.21
HelsinkiMadrid
Score4263
Protected land share 50 km %319
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %53100
Park area within 2 km185 hectares187 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 19 points.19
HelsinkiMadrid
Score5877
Tourist attractions within 2 km2061
Park area within 2 km185 hectares187 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km13
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 2 points.2
HelsinkiMadrid
Score7375
Notable places within 2 km257288
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 15 points.15
HelsinkiMadrid
Score5671
Price level global81.660.8
Daily budget€184€122
Year-round weather. Madrid leads by 24 points.24
HelsinkiMadrid
Score4872
Monthly daytime high-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C10 °C to 32.7 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 84 mm9 mm to 64 mm
Dry months37
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
Madrid
10
12
16
19
23
29
33
32
27
20
14
10
Sea temperature, °C
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Madrid
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Daylight, hours per day
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Helsinki
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
5
3
1
1
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
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). Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHelsinkiMadrid
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 10 m
€62-63
HEL · 16 km
3 h 45 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
2 h 25 m
€175-213
MAD · 14 km
BarcelonaBCN
3 h 45 m
€212-264
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
RomeFCO, CIA
3 h 20 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
3 h 0 m
€144-161
HEL · 16 km
2 h 0 m
€53-86
MAD · 14 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
TokyoHND, NRT
9 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
13 h 20 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
DohaDOH
5 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
MAD · 14 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

MeasureHelsinkiMadrid
Official languageFinnish, SwedishSpanish
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
Elevation17 m663 m
Main airportHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureHelsinkiMadrid
City population694,3923,506,730
People per km²3,2395,801
Museums within 10 km7488
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km14
Distinct cuisines in the centre78106
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 Madrid 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.