VacationSelector

Helsinki or Vienna?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Helsinki
57
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Vienna
59
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.

HelsinkiVienna
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 60 points.60
HelsinkiVienna
Score600
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km15722
Coast distance0 km10,000 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Vienna leads by 6 points.6
HelsinkiVienna
Score7177
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0051,617
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3837
Museums & heritage. Vienna leads by 32 points.32
HelsinkiVienna
Score4981
Museums within 10 km57192
Museums within 2 km of centre23110
Share of museums within 2 km %4057
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Vienna leads by 18 points.18
HelsinkiVienna
Score5674
Drinking venues within 4 km8071,948
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre6071,089
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7556
Nightclubs within 4 km40108
Nature & day trips. Helsinki leads by 10 points.10
HelsinkiVienna
Score4232
Protected land share 50 km %34
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %53100
Park area within 2 km185 hectares93 hectares
Good for families. Vienna leads by 11 points.11
HelsinkiVienna
Score5869
Tourist attractions within 2 km2046
Park area within 2 km185 hectares93 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km14
Sights concentration. Vienna leads by 2 points.2
HelsinkiVienna
Score7375
Notable places within 2 km257287
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Vienna leads by 3 points.3
HelsinkiVienna
Score5659
Price level global81.676.9
Daily budget€184€160
Year-round weather. Vienna leads by 13 points.13
HelsinkiVienna
Score4861
Monthly daytime high-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C3.3 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 84 mm38 mm to 80 mm
Dry months31
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
Vienna
3
6
11
17
21
25
27
27
21
15
9
4
Sea temperature, °C
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Vienna
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Vienna
42
38
52
42
80
70
78
71
64
47
46
46
Daylight, hours per day
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Vienna
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Helsinki
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
5
3
1
1
Vienna
2
4
5
7
8
8
9
9
6
4
2
2

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). Vienna: 1991-2020 normals, Wien / Hohe Warte (4.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHelsinkiVienna
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
2 h 10 m
€105-189
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 10 m
€62-63
HEL · 16 km
2 h 10 m
€111-165
VIE · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 30 m
€203-241
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
1 h 25 m
€143-152
VIE · 18 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
1 h 50 m
€180-245
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
1 h 55 m
€112-162
VIE · 18 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€206-225
HEL · 16 km
2 h 5 m
€121-285
VIE · 18 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 45 m
€111-131
HEL · 16 km
1 h 40 m
€109-136
VIE · 18 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
10 h 0 m
€603-634
HEL · 16 km
10 h 35 m
no fares
VIE · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
8 h 40 m
€736-786
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
DohaDOH
5 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
5 h 20 m
no fares
VIE · 18 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

MeasureHelsinkiVienna
Official languageFinnish, SwedishGerman, Austrian Sign Language
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation17 m151 m
Main airportHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsVienna International Airport (VIE)18 km from centre204 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureHelsinkiVienna
City population694,3922,028,289
People per km²3,2394,890
Museums within 10 km74152
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre78113
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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