VacationSelector

Helsinki or Seoul?

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 and sights concentration with your weighting.

Seoul
✓ Best match
63
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.

HelsinkiSeoul
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 45 points.45
HelsinkiSeoul
Score6015
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km1571
Coast distance0 km28 km
Water distance0 km28 km
Places to eat. Seoul leads by 14 points.14
HelsinkiSeoul
Score7185
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0053,559
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3832
Museums & heritage. Seoul leads by 34 points.34
HelsinkiSeoul
Score4983
Museums within 10 km57203
Museums within 2 km of centre2390
Share of museums within 2 km %4044
Unesco sites within 50 km15
Nightlife. Seoul leads by 24 points.24
HelsinkiSeoul
Score5680
Drinking venues within 4 km8073,291
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre6071,630
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7550
Nightclubs within 4 km4029
Nature & day trips. Helsinki leads by 10 points.10
HelsinkiSeoul
Score4232
Protected land share 50 km %31
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5395
Park area within 2 km185 hectares126 hectares
Good for families. Seoul leads by 21 points.21
HelsinkiSeoul
Score5879
Tourist attractions within 2 km2062
Park area within 2 km185 hectares126 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km18
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 14 points.14
HelsinkiSeoul
Score7359
Notable places within 2 km257118
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Seoul leads by 16 points.16
HelsinkiSeoul
Score5672
Price level global81.659.4
Daily budget€184
Year-round weather. Seoul leads by 13 points.13
HelsinkiSeoul
Score4861
Monthly daytime high-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C2 °C to 30 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 84 mm18 mm to 422 mm
Dry months34
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
Seoul
2
5
11
18
24
28
29
30
26
20
12
4
Sea temperature, °C
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Seoul
6
4
5
8
12
17
21
24
23
20
15
10
Rainfall, mm
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Seoul
18
28
38
70
104
138
422
390
156
49
50
20
Daylight, hours per day
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Seoul
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Helsinki
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
5
3
1
1
Seoul
5
5
6
7
7
6
4
5
6
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). Seoul: 1991-2020 normals, Seoul (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHelsinkiSeoul
TokyoHND, NRT
9 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
2 h 5 m
€140-229
ICN · 49 km
OsakaKIX, ITM, UKB
9 h 45 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
1 h 40 m
€139-234
ICN · 49 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
11 h 5 m
€603-659
1 stop
ICN · 49 km
Hong KongHKG
9 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
3 h 5 m
€172-189
ICN · 49 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 30 m
€203-241
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
10 h 45 m
€646-685
ICN · 49 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
11 h 10 m
€687-728
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
10 h 0 m
€603-634
HEL · 16 km
5 h 0 m
€176-202
ICN · 49 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
10 h 45 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
13 h 45 m
€770-823
ICN · 49 km
DohaDOH
5 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
ICN · 49 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

MeasureHelsinkiSeoul
Official languageFinnish, SwedishKorean, Korean Sign Language
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Won (KRW)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF220 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number112Police 112, ambulance 119, fire 119
Elevation17 m38 m
Main airportHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsIncheon International Airport (ICN)49 km from centre161 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days18 days

By the numbers

MeasureHelsinkiSeoul
City population694,3929,668,465
People per km²3,23915,973
Museums within 10 km7480
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km15
Distinct cuisines in the centre78156
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone2 months

Where else could you go?

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