VacationSelector

Helsinki or Osaka?

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 sights concentration and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Osaka
✓ Best match
65
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.

HelsinkiOsaka
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 5 points.5
HelsinkiOsaka
Score6055
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km15725
Coast distance0 km7 km
Water distance0 km7 km
Places to eat. Osaka leads by 19 points.19
HelsinkiOsaka
Score7190
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0059,134
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3825
Museums & heritage. Osaka leads by 15 points.15
HelsinkiOsaka
Score4964
Museums within 10 km5778
Museums within 2 km of centre2322
Share of museums within 2 km %4028
Unesco sites within 50 km16
Nightlife. Osaka leads by 41 points.41
HelsinkiOsaka
Score5697
Drinking venues within 4 km8078,473
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre6074,492
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7553
Nightclubs within 4 km4097
Nature & day trips. Helsinki leads by 14 points.14
HelsinkiOsaka
Score4228
Protected land share 50 km %31
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %5384
Park area within 2 km185 hectares88 hectares
Good for families. Osaka leads by 14 points.14
HelsinkiOsaka
Score5872
Tourist attractions within 2 km2047
Park area within 2 km185 hectares88 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km17
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 25 points.25
HelsinkiOsaka
Score7348
Notable places within 2 km25763
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Osaka leads by 14 points.14
HelsinkiOsaka
Score5670
Price level global81.662.4
Daily budget€184
Year-round weather. Osaka leads by 15 points.15
HelsinkiOsaka
Score4863
Monthly daytime high-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C9.7 °C to 33.6 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 84 mm47 mm to 185 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
Osaka
10
11
14
20
25
28
32
34
30
24
18
12
Sea temperature, °C
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Osaka
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Osaka
47
61
103
103
136
185
175
113
146
140
73
56
Daylight, hours per day
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Osaka
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Helsinki
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
5
3
1
1
Osaka
5
5
6
6
7
5
6
7
5
5
5
5

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). Osaka: 1991-2020 normals, Osaka (1.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHelsinkiOsaka
SeoulICN, GMP
8 h 55 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
1 h 40 m
€107-142
KIX · 38 km
TokyoHND, NRT
9 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
1 h 10 m
€118-135
ITM · 11 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
12 h 0 m
€859-891
3 stops
KIX · 38 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
10 h 0 m
€603-634
HEL · 16 km
5 h 35 m
€288-317
KIX · 38 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
9 h 20 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
2 h 10 m
€237-303
KIX · 38 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 30 m
€203-241
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
11 h 30 m
€1,507-1966
2 stops
ITM · 11 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
11 h 30 m
no fares
KIX · 38 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
DohaDOH
5 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
KIX · 38 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

MeasureHelsinkiOsaka
Official languageFinnish, SwedishJapanese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Yen (JPY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number112Police 110, fire 119
Elevation17 m20 m
Main airportHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsKansai International Airport (KIX)38 km from centre62 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureHelsinkiOsaka
City population694,3922,751,862
People per km²3,23912,340
Museums within 10 km7443
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km16
Distinct cuisines in the centre7897
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone5 months

Where else could you go?

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