VacationSelector

Helsinki or Valletta?

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 places to eat and good for families with your weighting.

Valletta
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on year-round weather and beaches & swimming 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.

HelsinkiValletta
Beaches & swimming. Valletta leads by 17 points.17
HelsinkiValletta
Score6077
Swim season months06
Beaches 10 km15722
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Helsinki leads by 13 points.13
HelsinkiValletta
Score7158
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,005416
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3835
Museums & heritage. Valletta leads by 12 points.12
HelsinkiValletta
Score4961
Museums within 10 km5746
Museums within 2 km of centre2329
Share of museums within 2 km %4063
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Helsinki leads by 9 points.9
HelsinkiValletta
Score5647
Drinking venues within 4 km807522
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre607250
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7548
Nightclubs within 4 km4027
Nature & day trips. Valletta leads by 4 points.4
HelsinkiValletta
Score4246
Protected land share 50 km %3
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %536
Park area within 2 km185 hectares24 hectares
Good for families. Helsinki leads by 12 points.12
HelsinkiValletta
Score5846
Tourist attractions within 2 km2032
Park area within 2 km185 hectares24 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 12 points.12
HelsinkiValletta
Score7361
Notable places within 2 km257133
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Valletta leads by 13 points.13
HelsinkiValletta
Score5669
Price level global81.662.8
Daily budget€184€129
Year-round weather. Valletta leads by 31 points.31
HelsinkiValletta
Score4879
Monthly daytime high-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C15.7 °C to 31.9 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 84 mm0 mm to 90 mm
Dry months36
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
Valletta
16
16
17
20
24
29
32
32
29
25
21
17
Sea temperature, °C
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Valletta
16
15
15
16
19
22
25
27
26
24
21
18
Rainfall, mm
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Valletta
80
72
39
19
10
5
0
10
63
74
90
85
Daylight, hours per day
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Valletta
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Helsinki
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
5
3
1
1
Valletta
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
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). Valletta: 1991-2020 normals, Luqa (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHelsinkiValletta
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
3 h 10 m
€91-131
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
2 h 45 m
€99-132
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
RomeFCO, CIA
3 h 20 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
1 h 30 m
€37-71
MLA · 6 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 10 m
€62-63
HEL · 16 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
MunichMUC
2 h 30 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
2 h 20 m
€165-259
MLA · 6 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 30 m
€203-241
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
3 h 0 m
€144-161
HEL · 16 km
2 h 5 m
€62-92
MLA · 6 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
3 h 0 m
€205-271
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 0 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
5 h 25 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
9 h 20 m
no fares
MLA · 6 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

MeasureHelsinkiValletta
Official languageFinnish, SwedishEnglish, Maltese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation17 m56 m
Main airportHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsMalta International Airport (MLA)6 km from centre109 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureHelsinkiValletta
City population694,3926,444
People per km²3,2398,055
Museums within 10 km7415
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre7855
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 Valletta 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.