Living in Helsinki

Helsinki, Finland, about 658,864 people. What you would earn and keep, the climate month by month, and every open figure we hold, each with its source, period and licence.

Weigh Helsinki against other cities, with your own numbers

Key facts

• Helsinki has about 658,864 residents (GeoNames).
• On a gross salary of €60,000 a year, an employee in Helsinki takes home about €42,379 a year (€3,532 a month) after income tax and employee contributions, an effective rate of 29.4% (Finland 2026 rules).
• A one-bedroom home in Helsinki rents for about €950 a month (city figure; Rents of dwellings (Statistics Finland table 15fc), Statistics Finland, 2026Q3).
• In Helsinki the average daily high (air temperature in the shade) peaks at 21.7 °C in July and the average daily low falls to −6.1 °C in February (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• Helsinki has about 23 nice days a year, days that are dry, mostly clear and feel 18 to 30 °C on average from 8 am to 8 pm, most of them in July (9) (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• Between 2021 and 2025 the air in Helsinki reached 30.0 °C at its hottest and −25.8 °C at its coldest (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo).
• It rains or snows (at least 1 mm) on about 143 days a year in Helsinki (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• The shortest day in Helsinki lasts 5 h 49 min and the longest 18 h 56 min (computed from latitude).
• Fine dust (PM2.5) in Helsinki averages 5.4 µg/m³ a year, 1.1 times the WHO guideline of 5 µg/m³ (WHO Ambient Air Quality Database v8.0 (2026), World Health Organization, 2024).
• Everyday prices in Finland sit at 90.6 on an index where the United States is 100 (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2025).
• Life expectancy at birth in Finland is 82.3 years (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2024).
• Finland records 0.98 intentional homicides per 100,000 people a year (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2023).
• Besides citizens of Finland, citizens of 29 other countries under EU and EEA free movement and of Switzerland (Swiss-EU free movement) can live and work in Helsinki without a visa.

What you would take home

Employee aged 18-64, no church membership: state income tax, municipal tax (Helsinki's rate), health insurance contributions, earned income credit, employee pension and unemployment contributions, Yle tax. Rules for 2026. Sources: Finlex: Laki vuoden 2026 tuloveroasteikosta (1140/2025), Finlex: Laki tuloverolain muuttamisesta (1141/2025), §§ 106 and 125, Finlex: Valtioneuvoston asetus sairausvakuutusmaksujen maksuprosenteista vuonna 2026 (1026/2025), Verohallinto: ennakonpidätyksen laskentaperusteet 2026 (pension 7.30%, unemployment 0.89%, deductions), Verohallinto: kuntien tuloveroprosentit 2026 (Helsinki 5.30%).

• The basic deduction is applied to the one earned-income base that the Tax Administration's 2026 rules use for both state and municipal tax.
• Church tax (about 1-2% for members) is not included. Cities other than Helsinki use the 2026 average municipal rate (7.60%).
• No commuting, union fee or household credits.
• Newcomers: key employees can pay a final 25% source tax on pay (fi-key-employee) instead of state, municipal and church tax, the employee's health insurance contributions and the Yle tax; pension and unemployment contributions are still due.

A month in Helsinki

Assumed: one person, €60,000 gross a year, renting a one-bedroom home, and everyday spending of €1,200 a month in Lisbon scaled by each country's price level. These are the app's defaults; change any of them there.

Who can live and work here freely

• Citizens of Finland.
• Citizens of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, under EU and EEA free movement (Directive 2004/38/EC and the EEA Agreement). Directive 2004/38/EC, extended to Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway by the EEA Agreement. Beyond three months a registration is usually required, but no visa or permit to work.
• Citizens of Switzerland, under Swiss-EU free movement (Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons (EU-Switzerland)).

Climate

Daylight is computed from latitude: the shortest day lasts 5 h 49 min, the longest 18 h 56 min.

Every figure

No open figure yet for: rent, three bedrooms, your childcare cost, health insurance premium, green urban areas (official). A country-wide figure is marked as such where it stands in for the city.

Compare Helsinki with

• Helsinki vs Amsterdam
• Helsinki vs Athens
• Helsinki vs Berlin
• Helsinki vs Budapest
• Helsinki vs Copenhagen
• Helsinki vs Hamburg
• Helsinki vs Manchester
• Helsinki vs Oslo
• Helsinki vs Stockholm
• Helsinki vs Tallinn
• Helsinki vs Tokyo
• Helsinki vs Warsaw

Elsewhere

Sources we link to but do not copy, because their licences forbid it.

• Numbeo: cost of living in Helsinki
• WeatherSpark: year-round weather in Helsinki
• Wikipedia: Helsinki

Credits

• Borgo contributors, from the statutes cited in each figure's note (CC BY 4.0)
• Borgo's summary of the EU-Swiss Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons (State Secretariat for Migration) (Borgo's own summary of the law cited (CC BY 4.0); the official text is cited, not copied)
• Unicode CLDR territory information. Copyright © 1991-2026 Unicode, Inc. Used under the Unicode License v3 (https://www.unicode.org/license.txt) (Unicode License v3)
• Borgo contributors, from the statutes cited in each figure's note (CC BY 4.0)
• Borgo's summary of Directive 2004/38/EC (© European Union, EUR-Lex) (Borgo's own summary of the law cited (CC BY 4.0); the official text is cited, not copied)
• Source: Eurostat, Urban Audit (© European Union). Borgo keeps each city's latest value and converts units where its note says so Eurostat is not responsible for Borgo's use of its data. (European Commission reuse policy (Decision 2011/833/EU): reuse with the source acknowledged and changes stated)
• Founders Running Club communities list (facts of presence and links only) (No licence from the publisher: only facts of presence are stored)
• Places, coordinates, populations and time zones from GeoNames (geonames.org), CC BY 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)
• GHS-UCDB R2024A, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, CC BY 4.0, doi:10.2905/1a338be6-7eaf-480c-9664-3a8ade88cbcd; Borgo derives the distance from the centre to the urban centre's edge Shores and lakes from Natural Earth (public domain) decide which directions lead on to land. (CC BY 4.0)
• Counts of GitHub profiles by stated location, from GitHub's public user search (counts only, no profile data) (No data licence from the publisher: only total counts are stored, no record about anyone, as its terms allow public, non-personal information in openly published research)
• Borgo contributors, from the labour codes cited in each figure's note (CC BY 4.0)
• The M-Lab NDT Data Set, 2023-01-01–2023-12-31. https://measurementlab.net/tests/ndt (CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication))
• Public holidays from Nager.Date (date.nager.at), MIT License, Copyright (c) Nager (MIT License)
• Made with Natural Earth (public domain) (Public domain (dedicated by the publisher))
• OECD (2026), Net childcare costs, OECD Tax-Benefit Models, https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/net-childcare-costs.html Reusers must cite the OECD as above and pass this acknowledgement requirement on to anyone they share the data with. (OECD terms for data: any use, with the OECD citation passed on)
• OECD (2026), OECD Family Database, PF2.1 Parental leave systems, https://www.oecd.org/en/data/datasets/oecd-family-database.html Reusers must cite the OECD as above and pass this acknowledgement requirement on to anyone they share the data with. (OECD terms for data: any use, with the OECD citation passed on)
• OECD (2026), OECD Well-being Database (How's Life?), https://www.oecd.org/en/data/datasets/well-being-database.html Reusers must cite the OECD as above and pass this acknowledgement requirement on to anyone they share the data with. (OECD terms for data: any use, with the OECD citation passed on)
• Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (https://open-meteo.com/), CC BY 4.0 Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2021-2025. Neither the European Commission nor ECMWF is responsible for any use that may be made of the Copernicus information or data it contains. (CC BY 4.0)
• OpenAlex (openalex.org), CC0 (CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication))
• © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0 (https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright) (Open Database License 1.0)
• © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0 (https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright) (Open Database License 1.0)
• Airports from OurAirports (ourairports.com), public domain (Public domain (dedicated by the publisher))
• Borgo contributors, from official election results and ParlGov party positions (Döring, Huber and Manow, ParlGov 2024 release, CC0) (CC BY 4.0)
• Research Organization Registry (ror.org), CC0 (CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication))
• Source: Statistics Finland, rents of dwellings (table 15fc), CC BY 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)
• Terrain Tiles on AWS Open Data (Mapzen, a Linux Foundation project): SRTM and GMTED2010 terrain data courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey; ETOPO1, U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Canada terrain data contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada (Terrain Tiles source terms: public domain (USGS, NOAA) and Open Government Licence – Canada, with attribution)
• World Health Organization, WHO Ambient Air Quality Database (Version 8.0), 2026, accessed 2026-10-27; data provided by the national and regional agencies named in each value's note WHO does not endorse Borgo, its use of these data, or any city ranking built from them. Values are as published by WHO; WHO advises against using the database to rank cities or compare countries directly, because monitoring differs between places. (WHO terms and conditions for data compilations)
• WMO Member Nations (2023). WMO Climatological Standard Normals for 1991-2020 (NCEI Accession 0253808), sunshine duration. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. https://doi.org/10.25921/800j-vn07 (No licence attached: NCEI public access with a requested citation, under the WMO Unified Data Policy)
• World Bank, World Development Indicators, CC BY 4.0 (underlying sources named in each figure's note: ICP, IMF, UNODC, UN Population Division, WHO, ILO, UNESCO Institute for Statistics) (CC BY 4.0)
• World Bank, Worldwide Governance Indicators, Control of Corruption estimate, CC BY 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)

Cite this page

Borgo, “Living in Helsinki”, https://borgo.abcastor.com/city/helsinki-fi/, figures as of 2026-11-05. Please also name the original source of any figure you use; each is listed above with its licence. Data: helsinki-fi.json.