VacationSelector

Helsinki or Warsaw?

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 beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Warsaw
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on value for money and museums & heritage 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.

HelsinkiWarsaw
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 60 points.60
HelsinkiWarsaw
Score600
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km15726
Coast distance0 km238 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Warsaw leads by 1 points.1
HelsinkiWarsaw
Score7172
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0051,222
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3834
Museums & heritage. Warsaw leads by 14 points.14
HelsinkiWarsaw
Score4963
Museums within 10 km57107
Museums within 2 km of centre2360
Share of museums within 2 km %4056
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Warsaw leads by 6 points.6
HelsinkiWarsaw
Score5662
Drinking venues within 4 km8071,005
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre607648
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7564
Nightclubs within 4 km40104
Nature & day trips. Warsaw leads by 13 points.13
HelsinkiWarsaw
Score4255
Protected land share 50 km %327
Landscape blanket share 50 km %019
Land share of disc %53100
Park area within 2 km185 hectares107 hectares
Good for families. Warsaw leads by 12 points.12
HelsinkiWarsaw
Score5870
Tourist attractions within 2 km2042
Park area within 2 km185 hectares107 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km15
Sights concentration. Warsaw leads by 3 points.3
HelsinkiWarsaw
Score7376
Notable places within 2 km257299
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Warsaw leads by 23 points.23
HelsinkiWarsaw
Score5679
Price level global81.649
Daily budget€184€133
Year-round weather. Warsaw leads by 11 points.11
HelsinkiWarsaw
Score4859
Monthly daytime high-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C0.9 °C to 25.2 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 84 mm29 mm to 83 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
Warsaw
1
3
7
15
20
23
25
25
19
13
7
2
Sea temperature, °C
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Warsaw
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Warsaw
31
29
29
36
56
63
83
63
50
40
36
37
Daylight, hours per day
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Warsaw
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Helsinki
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
5
3
1
1
Warsaw
1
2
5
8
9
11
11
10
8
5
2
1

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). Warsaw: 1991-2020 normals, Warszawa-Okecie (7.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHelsinkiWarsaw
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 10 m
€62-63
HEL · 16 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 45 m
€111-131
HEL · 16 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 30 m
€203-241
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
MunichMUC
2 h 30 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
8 h 45 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
DohaDOH
5 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
5 h 20 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
TokyoHND, NRT
9 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
10 h 45 m
no fares
WAW · 8 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

MeasureHelsinkiWarsaw
Official languageFinnish, SwedishPolish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Zloty (PLN)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCE50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation17 m118 m
Main airportHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsWarsaw Chopin Airport (WAW)8 km from centre170 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureHelsinkiWarsaw
City population694,3921,862,402
People per km²3,2393,601
Museums within 10 km74117
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre7876
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 Warsaw 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.