VacationSelector

Helsinki or Ottawa?

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.

Ottawa
43
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.

HelsinkiOttawa
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 60 points.60
HelsinkiOttawa
Score600
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1579
Coast distance0 km423 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Helsinki leads by 7 points.7
HelsinkiOttawa
Score7164
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,005684
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3834
Museums & heritage. Helsinki leads by 17 points.17
HelsinkiOttawa
Score4932
Museums within 10 km5715
Museums within 2 km of centre238
Share of museums within 2 km %4053
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Helsinki leads by 12 points.12
HelsinkiOttawa
Score5644
Drinking venues within 4 km807432
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre607303
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7570
Nightclubs within 4 km4035
Nature & day trips. Helsinki leads by 1 points.1
HelsinkiOttawa
Score4241
Protected land share 50 km %38
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %53100
Park area within 2 km185 hectares122 hectares
Good for families. Helsinki leads by 12 points.12
HelsinkiOttawa
Score5846
Tourist attractions within 2 km2011
Park area within 2 km185 hectares122 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 23 points.23
HelsinkiOttawa
Score7350
Notable places within 2 km25771
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Helsinki leads by 2 points.2
HelsinkiOttawa
Score5654
Price level global81.684
Daily budget€184
Year-round weather. Ottawa leads by 5 points.5
HelsinkiOttawa
Score4853
Monthly daytime high-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C-4.9 °C to 27 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 84 mm53 mm to 94 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
Ottawa
-5
-3
3
11
19
24
27
26
22
14
6
-2
Sea temperature, °C
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Ottawa
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Ottawa
60
53
56
74
66
87
82
89
78
94
59
80
Daylight, hours per day
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Ottawa
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
Ottawa
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). Ottawa: 1991-2020 normals, Ottawa CDA RCS (5.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHelsinkiOttawa
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
9 h 5 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
MiamiMIA, OPF
10 h 30 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
YOW · 12 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

MeasureHelsinkiOttawa
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 m70 m
Main airportHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsOttawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport (YOW)12 km from centre46 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureHelsinkiOttawa
City population694,3921,017,449
People per km²3,239366
Museums within 10 km7420
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre7862
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 Ottawa 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.