VacationSelector

Helsinki or Paris?

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 beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Paris
✓ Best match
67
match

Wins on nightlife and museums & heritage 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.

HelsinkiParis
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 60 points.60
HelsinkiParis
Score600
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1572
Coast distance0 km149 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Paris leads by 19 points.19
HelsinkiParis
Score7190
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0054,732
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3833
Museums & heritage. Paris leads by 27 points.27
HelsinkiParis
Score4976
Museums within 10 km57185
Museums within 2 km of centre2365
Share of museums within 2 km %4035
Unesco sites within 50 km14
Nightlife. Paris leads by 32 points.32
HelsinkiParis
Score5688
Drinking venues within 4 km8073,796
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre6071,694
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7545
Nightclubs within 4 km40201
Nature & day trips. Paris leads by 6 points.6
HelsinkiParis
Score4248
Protected land share 50 km %328
Landscape blanket share 50 km %026
Land share of disc %53100
Park area within 2 km185 hectares82 hectares
Good for families. Paris leads by 17 points.17
HelsinkiParis
Score5875
Tourist attractions within 2 km2089
Park area within 2 km185 hectares82 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km13
Sights concentration. Paris leads by 21 points.21
HelsinkiParis
Score7394
Notable places within 2 km257865
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Paris leads by 6 points.6
HelsinkiParis
Score5662
Price level global81.673.7
Daily budget€184€160
Year-round weather. Paris leads by 18 points.18
HelsinkiParis
Score4866
Monthly daytime high-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C7.8 °C to 26 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 84 mm38 mm to 75 mm
Dry months31
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
Paris
8
9
13
17
20
24
26
26
22
17
11
8
Sea temperature, °C
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Paris
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Paris
45
38
41
45
75
51
58
54
51
55
54
62
Daylight, hours per day
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Paris
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Helsinki
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
5
3
1
1
Paris
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). Paris: 1991-2020 normals, Paris-Montsouris (4.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHelsinkiParis
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
1 h 5 m
€63-103
CDG · 22 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 10 m
€62-63
HEL · 16 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
CDG · 22 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
1 h 10 m
€188-212
CDG · 22 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
7 h 30 m
€579-648
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 45 m
€111-131
HEL · 16 km
1 h 50 m
€150-199
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
3 h 0 m
€144-161
HEL · 16 km
1 h 20 m
€61-89
CDG · 22 km
MunichMUC
2 h 30 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
1 h 30 m
€160-210
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€206-225
HEL · 16 km
3 h 15 m
€152-378
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
TokyoHND, NRT
9 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
12 h 5 m
€705-999
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
DohaDOH
5 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
6 h 30 m
€425-436
1 stop
CDG · 22 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

MeasureHelsinkiParis
Official languageFinnish, SwedishFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation17 m27 m
Main airportHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsCharles de Gaulle International Airport (CDG)22 km from centre277 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureHelsinkiParis
City population694,3922,103,778
People per km²3,23919,960
Museums within 10 km74251
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km14
Distinct cuisines in the centre78169
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 Paris 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.