VacationSelector

Helsinki or Paphos?

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 places to eat with your weighting.

Paphos
46
match

Wins on year-round weather and beaches & swimming 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.

HelsinkiPaphos
Beaches & swimming. Paphos leads by 19 points.19
HelsinkiPaphos
Score6079
Swim season months06
Beaches 10 km15727
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. Helsinki leads by 27 points.27
HelsinkiPaphos
Score7144
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,005251
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3822
Museums & heritage. Helsinki leads by 27 points.27
HelsinkiPaphos
Score4922
Museums within 10 km578
Museums within 2 km of centre233
Share of museums within 2 km %4038
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Helsinki leads by 26 points.26
HelsinkiPaphos
Score5630
Drinking venues within 4 km807224
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre607161
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7572
Nightclubs within 4 km4011
Nature & day trips. Helsinki leads by 19 points.19
HelsinkiPaphos
Score4223
Protected land share 50 km %32
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5333
Park area within 2 km185 hectares27 hectares
Good for families. Helsinki leads by 16 points.16
HelsinkiPaphos
Score5842
Tourist attractions within 2 km2030
Park area within 2 km185 hectares27 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 54 points.54
HelsinkiPaphos
Score7319
Notable places within 2 km25712
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Paphos leads by 14 points.14
HelsinkiPaphos
Score5670
Price level global81.661.4
Daily budget€184€129
Year-round weather. Paphos leads by 38 points.38
HelsinkiPaphos
Score4886
Monthly daytime high-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C17 °C to 30.8 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 84 mm0 mm to 98 mm
Dry months38
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
Paphos
17
17
19
21
25
28
30
31
29
27
23
19
Sea temperature, °C
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Paphos
17
17
17
18
21
24
27
28
27
25
22
19
Rainfall, mm
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Paphos
81
47
29
17
10
2
1
0
5
14
42
98
Daylight, hours per day
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Paphos
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
Paphos
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). Paphos: 1991-2020 normals, Paphos Airport (8.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHelsinkiPaphos
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
4 h 25 m
€125-167
PFO · 8 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 10 m
€62-63
HEL · 16 km
4 h 10 m
no fares
LCA · 110 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
4 h 5 m
€253-340
1 stop
PFO · 8 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
4 h 5 m
€197-331
1 stop
PFO · 8 km
ThessalonikiSKG
3 h 15 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
1 h 55 m
€96-218
PFO · 8 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 45 m
€111-131
HEL · 16 km
4 h 0 m
no fares
LCA · 110 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 25 m
€136-220
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
3 h 0 m
€206-323
1 stop
PFO · 8 km
RigaRIX
1 h 5 m
€119-226
HEL · 16 km
3 h 40 m
€224-279
2 stops
PFO · 8 km
DohaDOH
5 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
3 h 5 m
no fares
LCA · 110 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

MeasureHelsinkiPaphos
Official languageFinnish, SwedishTurkish, Greek, Modern Greek
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG240 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation17 m72 m
Main airportHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsPaphos International Airport (PFO)8 km from centre57 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days17 days

By the numbers

MeasureHelsinkiPaphos
City population694,39235,961
People per km²3,2391,987
Museums within 10 km744
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre7836
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone6 months

Where else could you go?

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