VacationSelector

Helsinki or Philadelphia?

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.

Philadelphia
51
match

Wins on year-round weather 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.

HelsinkiPhiladelphia
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 60 points.60
HelsinkiPhiladelphia
Score600
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1571
Coast distance0 km13 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Philadelphia leads by 6 points.6
HelsinkiPhiladelphia
Score7177
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0051,714
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3835
Museums & heritage. Philadelphia leads by 11 points.11
HelsinkiPhiladelphia
Score4960
Museums within 10 km5789
Museums within 2 km of centre2348
Share of museums within 2 km %4054
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Philadelphia leads by 3 points.3
HelsinkiPhiladelphia
Score5659
Drinking venues within 4 km807930
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre607575
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7562
Nightclubs within 4 km4041
Nature & day trips. Philadelphia leads by 7 points.7
HelsinkiPhiladelphia
Score4249
Protected land share 50 km %314
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5389
Park area within 2 km185 hectares75 hectares
Good for families. Helsinki leads by 5 points.5
HelsinkiPhiladelphia
Score5853
Tourist attractions within 2 km2016
Park area within 2 km185 hectares75 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km14
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 19 points.19
HelsinkiPhiladelphia
Score7354
Notable places within 2 km25788
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Helsinki leads by 13 points.13
HelsinkiPhiladelphia
Score5643
Price level global81.6100
Daily budget€184
Year-round weather. Philadelphia leads by 12 points.12
HelsinkiPhiladelphia
Score4860
Monthly daytime high-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C5.2 °C to 31 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 84 mm69 mm to 112 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
Philadelphia
5
7
12
18
24
28
31
30
26
20
13
8
Sea temperature, °C
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Philadelphia
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Philadelphia
79
69
101
88
86
103
111
109
112
88
74
101
Daylight, hours per day
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Philadelphia
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Helsinki
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
5
3
1
1
Philadelphia
4
5
6
7
9
9
8
9
7
7
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). Philadelphia: 1991-2020 normals, Philadelphia International Airport (11.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHelsinkiPhiladelphia
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 10 m
€62-63
HEL · 16 km
8 h 5 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
TokyoHND, NRT
9 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
13 h 30 m
€989-1136
JFK · 140 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 45 m
€111-131
HEL · 16 km
8 h 5 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
MunichMUC
2 h 30 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 30 m
€203-241
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
8 h 5 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
7 h 40 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
9 h 5 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
DohaDOH
5 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
13 h 30 m
no fares
PHL · 11 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

MeasureHelsinkiPhiladelphia
Official languageFinnish, Swedish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation17 m12 m
Main airportHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsPhiladelphia International Airport (PHL)11 km from centre128 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureHelsinkiPhiladelphia
City population694,3921,603,797
People per km²3,2394,339
Museums within 10 km7454
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre7875
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 Philadelphia 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.