VacationSelector

Helsinki or Prague?

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.

Prague
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on museums & heritage and nightlife 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.

HelsinkiPrague
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 60 points.60
HelsinkiPrague
Score600
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1577
Coast distance0 km10,000 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Prague leads by 4 points.4
HelsinkiPrague
Score7175
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0051,866
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3829
Museums & heritage. Prague leads by 23 points.23
HelsinkiPrague
Score4972
Museums within 10 km57138
Museums within 2 km of centre23100
Share of museums within 2 km %4072
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Prague leads by 21 points.21
HelsinkiPrague
Score5677
Drinking venues within 4 km8072,248
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre6071,457
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7565
Nightclubs within 4 km40123
Nature & day trips. Prague leads by 3 points.3
HelsinkiPrague
Score4245
Protected land share 50 km %312
Landscape blanket share 50 km %08
Land share of disc %53100
Park area within 2 km185 hectares183 hectares
Good for families. Prague leads by 17 points.17
HelsinkiPrague
Score5875
Tourist attractions within 2 km2054
Park area within 2 km185 hectares183 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km13
Sights concentration. Prague leads by 3 points.3
HelsinkiPrague
Score7376
Notable places within 2 km257310
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Prague leads by 19 points.19
HelsinkiPrague
Score5675
Price level global81.655.2
Daily budget€184€107
Year-round weather. Prague leads by 13 points.13
HelsinkiPrague
Score4861
Monthly daytime high-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C2.2 °C to 25.3 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 84 mm22 mm to 80 mm
Dry months37
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
Prague
2
5
9
16
20
23
25
25
20
14
7
3
Sea temperature, °C
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Prague
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Prague
26
22
31
27
65
80
76
79
44
36
30
30
Daylight, hours per day
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Prague
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Helsinki
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
5
3
1
1
Prague
2
3
4
6
7
8
8
7
5
4
2
1

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). Prague: 1991-2020 normals, Praha-Libus (8.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHelsinkiPrague
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
1 h 55 m
€63-104
1 stop
PRG · 12 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 10 m
€62-63
HEL · 16 km
1 h 55 m
€91-151
PRG · 12 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
1 h 40 m
€86-113
PRG · 12 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 45 m
€111-131
HEL · 16 km
1 h 25 m
€66-91
PRG · 12 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
1 h 30 m
€163-247
PRG · 12 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 30 m
€203-241
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
1 h 10 m
€126-144
PRG · 12 km
MalagaAGP
4 h 35 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
3 h 10 m
€130-142
PRG · 12 km
SeoulICN, GMP
8 h 55 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
PRG · 12 km
DohaDOH
5 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
5 h 40 m
no fares
PRG · 12 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
PRG · 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

MeasureHelsinkiPrague
Official languageFinnish, SwedishCzech
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Czech Koruna (CZK)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation17 m235 m
Main airportHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsVáclav Havel Airport Prague (PRG)12 km from centre175 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureHelsinkiPrague
City population694,3921,397,880
People per km²3,2392,817
Museums within 10 km7488
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre7889
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 Prague 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.