VacationSelector

Stockholm or Tallinn?

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

Your match

Stockholm
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on nightlife and sights concentration with your weighting.

Tallinn
54
match

Wins on value for money with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Stockholm if you want the denser city: far more notable places within walking distance of the centre, about three times as many restaurants, and a wider choice of bars and clubs.

Choose Tallinn if you prefer a smaller capital you can cover on foot, and if a summer peak of 22°C rather than 24°C makes little difference to your plans.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

StockholmTallinn
Beaches & swimming. Stockholm leads by 6 points.6
StockholmTallinn
Score6054
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km7318
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Stockholm leads by 14 points.14
StockholmTallinn
Score7662
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,558481
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3639
Museums & heritage. Stockholm leads by 7 points.7
StockholmTallinn
Score6962
Museums within 10 km7471
Museums within 2 km of centre4757
Share of museums within 2 km %6480
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Stockholm leads by 18 points.18
StockholmTallinn
Score6446
Drinking venues within 4 km1,090462
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre689370
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6380
Nightclubs within 4 km10643
Nature & day trips. Stockholm leads by 10 points.10
StockholmTallinn
Score4131
Protected land share 50 km %72
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7753
Park area within 2 km104 hectares89 hectares
Good for families. Stockholm leads by 6 points.6
StockholmTallinn
Score5751
Tourist attractions within 2 km2320
Park area within 2 km104 hectares89 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Stockholm leads by 17 points.17
StockholmTallinn
Score7962
Notable places within 2 km357135
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Tallinn leads by 13 points.13
StockholmTallinn
Score5770
Price level global80.362.4
Daily budget€169€143
Year-round weather. Stockholm leads by 5 points.5
StockholmTallinn
Score5348
Monthly daytime high1 °C to 23.6 °C-1.2 °C to 22.3 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 66 mm34 mm to 83 mm
Dry months54
0255075100

Where they differ

Stockholm packs about three times as many notable places into walking distance of the centre, so a day on foot covers more. It also has around three times as many restaurants near the centre, though the range of kitchens is similar in both, and roughly twice as many bars and nightclubs, most of them central.

Tallinn's advantage is on the value axis, where Estonia's estimated daily budget of €143 sits below Sweden's €169. These are national price levels, not measurements of either capital.

Where they are alike

Neither city has an easy winter, and the year has the same shape in both: highs around 1°C in Stockholm and -1°C in Tallinn at the coldest, a July peak, and near-identical annual sunshine.

The sea lies 0km from both centres and tops out at 17°C in each, so swimming is brief in both. Both hold a similar number of museums, and both have theme parks and central park space for children, Stockholm with slightly more of each.

Which traveller are you?

A traveller with a short stay and no plan to use transport will get more out of Stockholm: about three times as many notable places sit within walking distance of the centre, and 3 UNESCO-listed sites lie within day-trip reach against Tallinn's 1.

Anyone travelling for food and late nights should also lean to Stockholm, with roughly twice the choice of bars and clubs, most of it central, and far more restaurants, though the range of kitchens is much the same in both.

A traveller watching costs will note the lower national daily estimate for Estonia against Sweden's, though these are country price levels; Tallinn's smaller centre also means less ground to cover on foot.

What the numbers don't tell you

Stockholm's 73 nearby beaches sound like a swimming holiday, and they are not one. In neither city does the sea pass 17°C at its late-summer peak, so bathing is brief and cold in both, whatever the beach count suggests.

The daily budget figures, for Estonia and Sweden, are national price levels for restaurants and hotels rather than measurements of Tallinn or Stockholm. A capital can sit well above its own country average, by more than the gap between the two figures, so the difference between €143 and €169 tells you about the two countries, not about what a week in either city will cost.

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
Stockholm
1
1
5
11
17
21
24
22
17
10
5
3
Tallinn
-1
-1
3
10
15
19
22
21
16
10
4
1
Sea temperature, °C
Stockholm
3
2
2
3
7
12
16
17
14
10
7
5
Tallinn
2
1
1
2
6
12
16
17
15
11
7
5
Rainfall, mm
Stockholm
37
29
27
29
34
61
60
66
53
51
47
47
Tallinn
56
40
38
34
38
66
82
80
57
83
64
57
Daylight, hours per day
Stockholm
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Tallinn
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Sunshine, hours per day
Stockholm
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
6
3
1
1
Tallinn
1
2
5
7
10
10
10
8
5
3
1
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Stockholm: 1991-2020 normals, Stockholm Observatoriet (26.4 km from centre). Tallinn: 1991-2020 normals, Tallin / Harku (10.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Stockholm is the better summer pick: June to August brings highs of 21-24°C with rain of 60-66mm, and its driest stretch comes earlier in spring, at 27-29mm.

Tallinn runs a degree or two cooler across the same summer months, 19-22°C, and wetter, at 80-82mm. Its steadiest window is April and May, 34-38mm with highs of 10-15°C. Autumn is the weak point, with October the wettest month of its year at 83mm.

Getting there

Flying fromStockholmTallinn
HelsinkiHEL
1 h 10 m
€66-74
ARN · 36 km
45 m
no fares
TLL · 6 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€89-139
ARN · 36 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
TLL · 6 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 20 m
€84-99
ARN · 36 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
TLL · 6 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 5 m
€152-213
1 stop
ARN · 36 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
TLL · 6 km
OsloOSL, TRF
1 h 5 m
€77-102
1 stop
ARN · 36 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
TLL · 6 km
RigaRIX
1 h 15 m
€37-38
ARN · 36 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
TLL · 6 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€153-185
ARN · 36 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
TLL · 6 km
TokyoHND, NRT
10 h 15 m
no fares
ARN · 36 km
9 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 99 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 5 m
no fares
ARN · 36 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 99 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 20 m
€330-429
1 stop
ARN · 36 km
6 h 0 m
no fares
HEL · 99 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 2026-10, 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

MeasureStockholmTallinn
Official languageSwedishEstonian
CurrencySwedish Krona (SEK)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation22 m28 m
Main airportStockholm-Arlanda Airport (ARN)36 km from centre172 non-stop destinationsLennart Meri Tallinn Airport (TLL)6 km from centre64 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureStockholmTallinn
City population984,748457,572
People per km²5,2602,871
Museums within 10 km26615
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre8163
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Stockholm or Tallinn 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.

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.