VacationSelector

Helsinki or Tirana?

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 museums & heritage with your weighting.

Tirana
51
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.

HelsinkiTirana
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 43 points.43
HelsinkiTirana
Score6017
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km1570
Coast distance0 km26 km
Water distance0 km26 km
Places to eat. Helsinki leads by 16 points.16
HelsinkiTirana
Score7155
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,005572
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3822
Museums & heritage. Helsinki leads by 24 points.24
HelsinkiTirana
Score4925
Museums within 10 km5712
Museums within 2 km of centre238
Share of museums within 2 km %4067
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Tirana leads by 2 points.2
HelsinkiTirana
Score5658
Drinking venues within 4 km807945
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre607683
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7572
Nightclubs within 4 km4029
Nature & day trips. Tirana leads by 7 points.7
HelsinkiTirana
Score4249
Protected land share 50 km %311
Landscape blanket share 50 km %03
Land share of disc %5383
Park area within 2 km185 hectares147 hectares
Good for families. Helsinki leads by 6 points.6
HelsinkiTirana
Score5852
Tourist attractions within 2 km2021
Park area within 2 km185 hectares147 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 20 points.20
HelsinkiTirana
Score7353
Notable places within 2 km25783
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Tirana leads by 28 points.28
HelsinkiTirana
Score5684
Price level global81.642.6
Daily budget€184€76
Year-round weather. Tirana leads by 19 points.19
HelsinkiTirana
Score4867
Monthly daytime high-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C11.6 °C to 30.7 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 84 mm43 mm to 172 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
Tirana
12
13
16
19
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Sea temperature, °C
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Tirana
15
14
14
16
19
23
24
25
24
21
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Tirana
143
117
116
103
84
66
43
55
78
114
172
148
Daylight, hours per day
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Tirana
10
11
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
Tirana
4
4
5
6
9
10
12
11
9
7
4
3

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). Tirana: 1961-1990 normals, Tirana (3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHelsinkiTirana
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 10 m
€62-63
HEL · 16 km
3 h 5 m
€66-111
TIA · 13 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
2 h 30 m
€73-102
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
2 h 55 m
€62-138
TIA · 13 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 45 m
€111-131
HEL · 16 km
2 h 35 m
€109-148
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
1 h 45 m
€86-113
HEL · 16 km
2 h 5 m
€68-80
TIA · 13 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
2 h 35 m
€169-220
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
3 h 0 m
€144-161
HEL · 16 km
1 h 50 m
€33-74
TIA · 13 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 30 m
€203-241
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
2 h 10 m
€94-143
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€206-225
HEL · 16 km
1 h 35 m
€100-109
TIA · 13 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
TIA · 13 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

MeasureHelsinkiTirana
Official languageFinnish, SwedishAlbanian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Lek (ALL)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation17 m110 m
Main airportHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsTirana International Airport Mother Teresa (TIA)13 km from centre129 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureHelsinkiTirana
City population694,392389,323
People per km²3,2399,314
Museums within 10 km7411
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre7846
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone5 months

Where else could you go?

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