VacationSelector

Helsinki or Sarajevo?

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 places to eat with your weighting.

Sarajevo
44
match

Wins on value for money 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.

HelsinkiSarajevo
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 60 points.60
HelsinkiSarajevo
Score600
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1570
Coast distance0 km120 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Helsinki leads by 33 points.33
HelsinkiSarajevo
Score7138
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,005227
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3817
Museums & heritage. Sarajevo leads by 3 points.3
HelsinkiSarajevo
Score4952
Museums within 10 km5738
Museums within 2 km of centre2333
Share of museums within 2 km %4087
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Helsinki leads by 15 points.15
HelsinkiSarajevo
Score5641
Drinking venues within 4 km807416
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre607292
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7570
Nightclubs within 4 km4011
Nature & day trips. Helsinki leads by 22 points.22
HelsinkiSarajevo
Score4220
Protected land share 50 km %32
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %53100
Park area within 2 km185 hectares37 hectares
Good for families. Helsinki leads by 22 points.22
HelsinkiSarajevo
Score5836
Tourist attractions within 2 km2016
Park area within 2 km185 hectares37 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 12 points.12
HelsinkiSarajevo
Score7361
Notable places within 2 km257131
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sarajevo leads by 32 points.32
HelsinkiSarajevo
Score5688
Price level global81.637.4
Daily budget€184
Year-round weather. Sarajevo leads by 12 points.12
HelsinkiSarajevo
Score4860
Monthly daytime high-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C4.2 °C to 28.3 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 84 mm66 mm to 91 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
Sarajevo
4
7
12
17
21
25
28
28
22
17
11
4
Sea temperature, °C
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Sarajevo
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Sarajevo
68
67
67
78
88
88
75
66
88
91
85
89
Daylight, hours per day
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Sarajevo
9
10
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Helsinki
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
5
3
1
1
Sarajevo
3
3
5
5
6
8
8
8
6
5
3
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). Sarajevo: 1991-2020 normals, Sarajevo-Bejelave (2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHelsinkiSarajevo
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 10 m
€62-63
HEL · 16 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SJJ · 7 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
2 h 35 m
€139-181
1 stop
SJJ · 7 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 45 m
€111-131
HEL · 16 km
2 h 15 m
€163-216
1 stop
SJJ · 7 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
DBV · 144 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
2 h 15 m
€152-322
1 stop
SJJ · 7 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€206-225
HEL · 16 km
1 h 45 m
€105-169
SJJ · 7 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 30 m
€203-241
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
1 h 50 m
€203-243
1 stop
SJJ · 7 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
2 h 25 m
€182-228
1 stop
DBV · 144 km
BerlinBER
2 h 0 m
€150-181
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
1 h 50 m
€222-251
1 stop
SJJ · 7 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
9 h 10 m
no fares
DBV · 144 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

MeasureHelsinkiSarajevo
Official languageFinnish, SwedishCroatian, Serbian, Bosnian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Convertible Mark (BAM)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation17 m518 m
Main airportHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsSarajevo International Airport (SJJ)7 km from centre37 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureHelsinkiSarajevo
City population694,392275,524
People per km²3,2391,947
Museums within 10 km7424
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre7835
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 Sarajevo 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.