VacationSelector

Helsinki or Sydney?

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 sights concentration and value for money with your weighting.

Sydney
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on year-round weather 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.

HelsinkiSydney
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki and Sydney are level on 60.
HelsinkiSydney
Score6060
Swim season months06
Beaches 10 km157160
Coast distance0 km7 km
Water distance0 km7 km
Places to eat. Sydney leads by 7 points.7
HelsinkiSydney
Score7178
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0052,205
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3831
Museums & heritage. Sydney leads by 2 points.2
HelsinkiSydney
Score4951
Museums within 10 km5744
Museums within 2 km of centre2320
Share of museums within 2 km %4045
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Sydney leads by 19 points.19
HelsinkiSydney
Score5675
Drinking venues within 4 km8072,050
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre6071,405
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7569
Nightclubs within 4 km40120
Nature & day trips. Sydney leads by 16 points.16
HelsinkiSydney
Score4258
Protected land share 50 km %310
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5352
Park area within 2 km185 hectares115 hectares
Good for families. Sydney leads by 6 points.6
HelsinkiSydney
Score5864
Tourist attractions within 2 km2037
Park area within 2 km185 hectares115 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 13 points.13
HelsinkiSydney
Score7360
Notable places within 2 km257123
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Helsinki leads by 6 points.6
HelsinkiSydney
Score5650
Price level global81.690.2
Daily budget€184
Year-round weather. Sydney leads by 33 points.33
HelsinkiSydney
Score4881
Monthly daytime high-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C17.7 °C to 27.7 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 84 mm55 mm to 121 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
Sydney
28
27
26
23
21
18
18
19
22
24
25
26
Sea temperature, °C
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Sydney
23
23
23
22
21
20
19
18
18
19
20
21
Rainfall, mm
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Sydney
80
116
90
95
89
121
70
63
57
55
71
68
Daylight, hours per day
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Sydney
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Sunshine, hours per day
Helsinki
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
5
3
1
1
Sydney
8
6
7
7
7
6
7
8
8
8
7
8

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). Sydney: 1991-2020 normals, Sydney Airport (3.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHelsinkiSydney
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
20 h 40 m
€931-1073
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
TokyoHND, NRT
9 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
9 h 50 m
€671
SYD · 9 km
SeoulICN, GMP
8 h 55 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
10 h 30 m
€548-574
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
11 h 35 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
8 h 5 m
€498-549
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
Hong KongHKG
9 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
9 h 20 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
20 h 35 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
11 h 15 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
14 h 50 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
DohaDOH
5 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
15 h 15 m
€997-1100
SYD · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€206-225
HEL · 16 km
18 h 15 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
10 h 0 m
€603-634
HEL · 16 km
9 h 30 m
no fares
SYD · 9 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

MeasureHelsinkiSydney
Official languageFinnish, SwedishEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Australian Dollar (AUD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzI230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+10, UTC+11 in summer
Emergency number112000
Elevation17 m6 m
Main airportHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsSydney Kingsford Smith International Airport (SYD)9 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureHelsinkiSydney
City population694,3925,450,496
People per km²3,239449
Museums within 10 km7438
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre7879
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone6 months

Where else could you go?

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