VacationSelector

Helsinki or New Orleans?

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 sights concentration and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

New Orleans
47
match

Wins on year-round weather 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.

HelsinkiNew Orleans
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 21 points.21
HelsinkiNew Orleans
Score6039
Swim season months07
Beaches 10 km1573
Coast distance0 km21 km
Water distance0 km17 km
Places to eat. Helsinki leads by 10 points.10
HelsinkiNew Orleans
Score7161
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,005803
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3825
Museums & heritage. Helsinki leads by 4 points.4
HelsinkiNew Orleans
Score4945
Museums within 10 km5742
Museums within 2 km of centre2330
Share of museums within 2 km %4071
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Helsinki leads by 2 points.2
HelsinkiNew Orleans
Score5654
Drinking venues within 4 km807704
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre607495
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7570
Nightclubs within 4 km4041
Nature & day trips. Helsinki leads by 17 points.17
HelsinkiNew Orleans
Score4225
Protected land share 50 km %34
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5389
Park area within 2 km185 hectares43 hectares
Good for families. Helsinki leads by 12 points.12
HelsinkiNew Orleans
Score5846
Tourist attractions within 2 km2022
Park area within 2 km185 hectares43 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 33 points.33
HelsinkiNew Orleans
Score7340
Notable places within 2 km25740
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Helsinki leads by 13 points.13
HelsinkiNew Orleans
Score5643
Price level global81.6100
Daily budget€184
Year-round weather. New Orleans leads by 20 points.20
HelsinkiNew Orleans
Score4868
Monthly daytime high-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C17.1 °C to 33 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 84 mm94 mm to 194 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
New Orleans
17
19
23
26
30
32
33
33
31
27
22
18
Sea temperature, °C
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
New Orleans
14
15
18
22
25
29
30
30
28
24
20
16
Rainfall, mm
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
New Orleans
132
104
111
132
143
194
169
180
128
94
98
123
Daylight, hours per day
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
New Orleans
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
12
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Helsinki
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
5
3
1
1
New Orleans
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). New Orleans: 1991-2020 normals, New Orleans Airport (2.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHelsinkiNew Orleans
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
2 h 55 m
€254-325
1 stop
MSY · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
9 h 25 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
9 h 5 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
2 h 15 m
€208-268
1 stop
MSY · 18 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
10 h 30 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
11 h 15 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
MiamiMIA, OPF
10 h 30 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
1 h 55 m
€178-367
1 stop
MSY · 18 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
9 h 40 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
4 h 35 m
no fares
MSY · 18 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

MeasureHelsinkiNew Orleans
Official languageFinnish, Swedish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC-6, UTC-5 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation17 m-2 m
Main airportHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsLouis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY)18 km from centre50 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureHelsinkiNew Orleans
City population694,392383,997
People per km²3,239423
Museums within 10 km7416
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre7839
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone7 months

Where else could you go?

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