VacationSelector

Helsinki or Tromso?

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 nightlife and places to eat with your weighting.

Tromso
27
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

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.

HelsinkiTromso
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 8 points.8
HelsinkiTromso
Score6052
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km15714
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Helsinki leads by 47 points.47
HelsinkiTromso
Score7124
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,00585
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3816
Museums & heritage. Helsinki leads by 26 points.26
HelsinkiTromso
Score4923
Museums within 10 km5710
Museums within 2 km of centre238
Share of museums within 2 km %4080
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Helsinki leads by 49 points.49
HelsinkiTromso
Score567
Drinking venues within 4 km80767
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre60761
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7591
Nightclubs within 4 km405
Nature & day trips. Helsinki leads by 31 points.31
HelsinkiTromso
Score4211
Protected land share 50 km %39
Landscape blanket share 50 km %09
Land share of disc %5365
Park area within 2 km185 hectares7 hectares
Good for families. Helsinki leads by 44 points.44
HelsinkiTromso
Score5814
Tourist attractions within 2 km209
Park area within 2 km185 hectares7 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 45 points.45
HelsinkiTromso
Score7328
Notable places within 2 km25720
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Helsinki leads by 2 points.2
HelsinkiTromso
Score5654
Price level global81.685.1
Daily budget€184€203
Year-round weather. Helsinki leads by 15 points.15
HelsinkiTromso
Score4833
Monthly daytime high-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C-1.1 °C to 16.3 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 84 mm56 mm to 128 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
Tromso
-1
-1
1
4
9
13
16
15
11
5
2
0
Sea temperature, °C
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Tromso
5
5
4
4
6
8
10
11
10
9
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Tromso
108
95
97
71
56
57
73
90
110
128
94
110
Daylight, hours per day
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Tromso
2
7
12
16
22
24
24
18
14
9
4
0
Sunshine, hours per day
Helsinki
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
5
3
1
1
Tromso
0
1
3
6
8
8
8
6
3
2
0
0

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). Tromso: 1991-2020 normals, Tromso (0.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHelsinkiTromso
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 45 m
€111-131
HEL · 16 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 10 m
€62-63
HEL · 16 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
GdanskGDN
1 h 35 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 30 m
€203-241
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
ZurichZRH
2 h 45 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
3 h 40 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
BerlinBER
2 h 0 m
€150-181
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
3 h 5 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
RovaniemiRVN
1 h 30 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
TOS · 4 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 2026-09 to 2026-09, 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

MeasureHelsinkiTromso
Official languageFinnish, SwedishNorwegian, Nynorsk, Bokmål, Sámi
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Norwegian Krone (NOK)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112Police 112, ambulance 113, fire 110
Elevation17 m20 m
Main airportHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsTromsø Airport (TOS)4 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureHelsinkiTromso
City population694,39279,943
People per km²3,23932
Museums within 10 km748
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre7823
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 Tromso 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.