VacationSelector

Helsinki or Montreal?

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.

Montreal
47
match

Wins on nightlife and places to eat 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.

HelsinkiMontreal
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 60 points.60
HelsinkiMontreal
Score600
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1577
Coast distance0 km276 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Montreal leads by 3 points.3
HelsinkiMontreal
Score7174
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0051,016
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3849
Museums & heritage. Helsinki leads by 12 points.12
HelsinkiMontreal
Score4937
Museums within 10 km5739
Museums within 2 km of centre2319
Share of museums within 2 km %4049
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Montreal leads by 6 points.6
HelsinkiMontreal
Score5662
Drinking venues within 4 km8071,012
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre607493
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7549
Nightclubs within 4 km4074
Nature & day trips. Helsinki leads by 6 points.6
HelsinkiMontreal
Score4236
Protected land share 50 km %32
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %53100
Park area within 2 km185 hectares189 hectares
Good for families. Helsinki leads by 8 points.8
HelsinkiMontreal
Score5850
Tourist attractions within 2 km2011
Park area within 2 km185 hectares189 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 17 points.17
HelsinkiMontreal
Score7356
Notable places within 2 km25798
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Helsinki leads by 2 points.2
HelsinkiMontreal
Score5654
Price level global81.684
Daily budget€184
Year-round weather. Montreal leads by 2 points.2
HelsinkiMontreal
Score4850
Monthly daytime high-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C-3.5 °C to 26.5 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 84 mm69 mm to 121 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
Montreal
-3
-3
3
11
19
24
27
26
22
13
6
-1
Sea temperature, °C
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Montreal
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Montreal
84
69
89
121
89
107
98
109
88
100
85
94
Daylight, hours per day
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Montreal
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Helsinki
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
5
3
1
1
Montreal
3
4
6
6
8
8
9
8
7
4
3
3

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). Montreal: 1991-2020 normals, Montreal McTavish (3.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHelsinkiMontreal
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
6 h 50 m
€447-599
1 stop
YUL · 16 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
7 h 10 m
€308-372
YUL · 16 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
1 h 20 m
€231-372
1 stop
YUL · 16 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
YUL · 16 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 30 m
€203-241
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
7 h 35 m
€591-764
2 stops
YUL · 16 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 45 m
€111-131
HEL · 16 km
7 h 30 m
no fares
YUL · 16 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
1 h 15 m
€133-276
YUL · 16 km
MunichMUC
2 h 30 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
7 h 55 m
no fares
YUL · 16 km
TokyoHND, NRT
9 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
12 h 55 m
no fares
YUL · 16 km
DohaDOH
5 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
12 h 55 m
no fares
YUL · 16 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

MeasureHelsinkiMontreal
Official languageFinnish, SwedishFrench, English
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Canadian Dollar (CAD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation17 m31 m
Main airportHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsMontreal / Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport (YUL)16 km from centre164 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureHelsinkiMontreal
City population694,3921,895,211
People per km²3,2393,806
Museums within 10 km7437
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre7897
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 Montreal 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.