VacationSelector

Helsinki or Rotterdam?

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.

Rotterdam
54
match

Wins on museums & heritage and 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.

HelsinkiRotterdam
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 23 points.23
HelsinkiRotterdam
Score6037
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km15722
Coast distance0 km24 km
Water distance0 km24 km
Places to eat. Rotterdam leads by 1 points.1
HelsinkiRotterdam
Score7172
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,005862
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3846
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 11 points.11
HelsinkiRotterdam
Score4960
Museums within 10 km5741
Museums within 2 km of centre2320
Share of museums within 2 km %4049
Unesco sites within 50 km15
Nightlife. Helsinki leads by 7 points.7
HelsinkiRotterdam
Score5649
Drinking venues within 4 km807542
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre607378
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7570
Nightclubs within 4 km4040
Nature & day trips. Helsinki and Rotterdam are level on 42.
HelsinkiRotterdam
Score4242
Protected land share 50 km %310
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5379
Park area within 2 km185 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 4 points.4
HelsinkiRotterdam
Score5862
Tourist attractions within 2 km2027
Park area within 2 km185 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km18
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 22 points.22
HelsinkiRotterdam
Score7351
Notable places within 2 km25774
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rotterdam leads by 2 points.2
HelsinkiRotterdam
Score5658
Price level global81.679.2
Daily budget€184€181
Year-round weather. Rotterdam leads by 8 points.8
HelsinkiRotterdam
Score4856
Monthly daytime high-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C6.2 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 84 mm42 mm to 85 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
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Helsinki
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
5
3
1
1
Rotterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2

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). Rotterdam: 1993-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Rotterdam Airport Zestienhoven (3.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHelsinkiRotterdam
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 10 m
€62-63
HEL · 16 km
2 h 0 m
€156-208
AMS · 47 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 45 m
€111-131
HEL · 16 km
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
DublinDUB
3 h 5 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
MadridMAD
4 h 10 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 47 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 0 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
1 h 5 m
€159-284
RTM · 5 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
9 h 20 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 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

MeasureHelsinkiRotterdam
Official languageFinnish, SwedishDutch
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 911
Elevation17 m10 m
Main airportHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureHelsinkiRotterdam
City population694,392664,311
People per km²3,2392,080
Museums within 10 km7440
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km15
Distinct cuisines in the centre7877
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

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