VacationSelector

Helsinki or Zagreb?

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 good for families with your weighting.

Zagreb
47
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.

HelsinkiZagreb
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 60 points.60
HelsinkiZagreb
Score600
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1578
Coast distance0 km117 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Helsinki leads by 19 points.19
HelsinkiZagreb
Score7152
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,005374
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3827
Museums & heritage. Helsinki leads by 4 points.4
HelsinkiZagreb
Score4945
Museums within 10 km5741
Museums within 2 km of centre2340
Share of museums within 2 km %4098
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Zagreb leads by 5 points.5
HelsinkiZagreb
Score5661
Drinking venues within 4 km8071,009
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre607571
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7557
Nightclubs within 4 km4063
Nature & day trips. Helsinki leads by 8 points.8
HelsinkiZagreb
Score4234
Protected land share 50 km %39
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %53100
Park area within 2 km185 hectares52 hectares
Good for families. Helsinki leads by 30 points.30
HelsinkiZagreb
Score5828
Tourist attractions within 2 km207
Park area within 2 km185 hectares52 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 13 points.13
HelsinkiZagreb
Score7360
Notable places within 2 km257122
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Zagreb leads by 24 points.24
HelsinkiZagreb
Score5680
Price level global81.648.5
Daily budget€184€138
Year-round weather. Zagreb leads by 14 points.14
HelsinkiZagreb
Score4862
Monthly daytime high-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C5.4 °C to 28.5 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 84 mm47 mm to 104 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
Zagreb
5
8
13
18
23
27
29
28
22
17
11
6
Sea temperature, °C
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Zagreb
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Zagreb
47
48
49
63
76
90
87
85
104
91
88
63
Daylight, hours per day
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Zagreb
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Helsinki
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
5
3
1
1
Zagreb
2
4
5
6
8
9
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). Zagreb: 1991-2020 normals, Zagreb / Gric (0.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHelsinkiZagreb
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 30 m
€203-241
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
MunichMUC
2 h 30 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€206-225
HEL · 16 km
2 h 0 m
€153-254
ZAG · 11 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 10 m
€62-63
HEL · 16 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 45 m
€111-131
HEL · 16 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
DohaDOH
5 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
5 h 15 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 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

MeasureHelsinkiZagreb
Official languageFinnish, SwedishCroatian
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 m127 m
Main airportHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsZagreb Franjo Tuđman International Airport (ZAG)11 km from centre60 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureHelsinkiZagreb
City population694,392767,131
People per km²3,239
Museums within 10 km7427
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre7842
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 Zagreb 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.