Helsinki, Finland

What Helsinki is made of: the communities whose institutions are here, the sectors its 6,487 businesses sit in, the franchises already on the ground, and the services a newcomer could start.

6,487 businesses on file · 43 trades · 48 sectors · registry population 694,000 · built from geonet.finland on 2026-10-27

Businesses6,487
0% carry coordinates
Specialised in12
trades above the national pattern
Places of worship0
Franchise brands11
already operating here

Visiting rather than moving? The free guidebook for Helsinki → — the free guidebook for this region: why go, what to see, what is open when it rains.

1

The local economy

What the business base is made of, what it is specialised in against the national pattern, and what that mix implies. This is the part a development office would read first.

Composition, not health. geonet records what trades exist and where; it does not record formation, closure, employment or revenue, so none of those appear here. What makes this economics rather than a directory is the NAICS coding: it lets the local mix be read against the BLS survival curves and against the 323 industry groups this research has screened.

The two biggest markets here

Every industry group on this page links through to its NAICS page, and to the screened market report where this research has one — that is what the trait-to-NAICS coding buys.

Business density9.3
businesses per 1,000 residents, against the registry population of 694,000
Breadth of the base788
broad — 40 industry groups, top three 39.6%
Survival the mix implies56%
at five years, against 51.4% for all private establishments
Coded to NAICS10.5%
of which 70.5% unambiguous

What this city is specialised in

Location quotient is this city's share of a trade divided by the same share across 26 metro tables worldwide. Above 1.25 is the conventional threshold for a local specialisation.

Thin against the national pattern

Common trades that are under-represented here. For someone deciding what to open, this is the more useful half of the table — though a gap can mean unmet demand or a market that does not work here, and this does not tell you which.

The base against the entry screen

Businesses by the entry signal of the industry group they sit in, from the /markets screen. A large "structure decides" share means most local trades are ones where being better than the incumbent does not by itself win. A trade is matched to the screened record at whatever level the research wrote it — the same code, a broader one, or a narrower one. Where a group holds several screened sub-markets the count is shown, because no single one of them speaks for the whole group.

Enter
13.6%
93 businesses
Caution
62.6%
428 businesses
Structure decides
23.8%
163 businesses
Not screened
0%
0 businesses

How to read the survival figure

Each sector's five-year establishment survival rate, weighted by how many of this city's businesses sit in that sector. It is a property of the MIX, not of these businesses — it says what survival this composition would imply at US private-sector rates, because no Canadian equivalent series exists.

Weighted over 100% of the coded base — public administration carries no curve. Source: Business Employment Dynamics — Table 7, Survival of private sector establishments by opening year, US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

And what it does not measure

A "mixed" trait is one that genuinely spans codes — "computers" covers systems design, repair and supply. The clear share is how much of this reading rests on unambiguous coding. Business density also reflects how completely the directory covers a place, not only how many businesses are in it — so it compares poorly between a city the register knows well and one it does not.

2

Who lives here, and who the city is for

The census: the only figures on this page that count people rather than businesses, and the three cohort readings they make possible.

No census subdivision is mapped for fi-helsinki in local/census-map.json, so this page carries no census figures. The mapping is kept explicit because Canada has several places called London, Toronto and Kelowna, and attaching the wrong one would put another city's demographics on this page.

P

People and languages

Who lives here and the languages business runs in: population and age from the statistics offices, and the share who can hold a conversation in English and other languages from the EU’s 2024 language survey. Each figure says whether it covers the city, the region or the whole country.

Population674,500
city 2024
Median age40.4
region (NUTS 3 FI1B1 Helsinki-Uusimaa, 1.78M people) 2025
Foreign-born or foreign citizens17.5%
2024
Employment rate77%
region (NUTS 2 FI1B Helsinki-Uusimaa) 2025

Languages spoken

Doing business in English (and other languages)

Share of residents aged 15+ in FI who speak English as mother tongue or well enough to hold a conversation (D48.alllang). As a foreign language only (D48.otherlang): 81%. Fieldwork Sept-Oct 2023, published 2024.

Age: under 15 14.1% · 15–64 68.3% · 65 and over 17.6% (city (Urban Audit FI001C), 2024) Eurostat · 359,689 households, 1.84 people each

Not established: Mother-tongue shares come from Wikipedia (tier B) citing Statistics Finland; pxdata.stat.fi did not respond, so they are not checked against the source.

3

The communities the register shows

A community appears in the business register before it appears in prose — a national church, a society, a credit union, a newspaper. Those are counted as institutions, and they are what suggests residents. A restaurant serving a cuisine is counted separately as trade, because every city has those and they say nothing about who lives nearby. The ranking is by institutions.

CommunityInstitutions WorshipTrade Where it shows
Finnish 2 — 12
Swiss Finnish Business Association · Finnish Russian Chamber of Commerce
Russian 1 — 3
Finnish Russian Chamber of Commerce
German 1 — 3
German Finish Chamber of Commerce
Austrian 1 — —
Austrian Chamber in Finland
Swiss 1 — —
Swiss Finnish Business Association
Italian — — 4
Thai — — 3
Dutch — — 3
South Asian — — 2
Czech — — 2
French — — 2
Chinese — — 1
Slovak — — 1
Danish — — 1
Norwegian — — 1
Jewish — — 1
4

Where the communities are

Streets, not neighbourhood names. The data knows that Greek institutions sit on one street and Greek restaurants on another; it does not know the word "Greektown", so it does not use it.

5

What the city is made of

Every business on file, grouped by the sector it trades in. This is the economic-development view: where the 6,487 businesses actually are, and the specific trades inside each sector.

SectorBusinesses ShareWhat is in it
Living 116 1.8% furniture (111) · cleaning (2) · appliances (2) · fire safety (1)
Media 105 1.6% advertising (104) · signs (1)
Manufacturing 56 0.9% chemical (56)
Retail 51 0.8% gifts (33) · antiques (6) · jeweler (6) · office equipment (5) · photography (1)
Construction 47 0.7% machinery (47)
Fashion 44 0.7% clothing (44)
Tech 43 0.7% telecom (36) · computers (7)
Travel 42 0.6% hotel (31) · travel agent (9) · airline (2)
cafes 36 0.6%
Business 35 0.5% consulting (27) · association (7) · accounting (1)
Entertainment 34 0.5% games (27) · video producer (5) · zoo (2)
Logistics 24 0.4% packaging (14) · truck transportation (7) · garden (3)
Agribusiness 20 0.3% livestock (18) · landscaping (1) · dairy (1)
Sports 19 0.3% golf course (11) · boating marine (8)
Beauty 14 0.2% hair stylist (14)
emergency 13 0.2%
movies 12 0.2%
Dining 8 0.1% pizza (4) · restaurant (3) · pubs (1)
beautysalons 8 0.1%
booksmusic 7 0.1%
6

The franchises already here

Brands from a register of 2,024 franchise systems, matched into this city by name. A high count is a signal in both directions: the territory works, and it may be taken.

8 of these brands are a single common word — Metro, Avenue, Budget — so their counts include businesses that merely share the word. They are marked rather than dropped.

BrandCategory HereWorldwide
Budget Rent A Car car 1 1,900
Cash Store cash 1 —
Hertz Rent A Car car 1 7,000
Radisson name only upscalehotel 3 —
Sokos name only retail 2 21
Stockmann name only retail 2 7
Champion name only supermarket 1 1,000
Diana name only supermarket 1 3
Kesko name only supermarket 1 1,100
Limited name only retail 1 —
MANGO name only retail 1 850
7

Real estate as a local trade

Four unrelated jobs share the name: selling existing homes, owning and letting them, managing them for someone else, and building new ones. For anyone weighing a move or a licence these are the counts — and the ownership question goes to /property, which answers it building by building.

Real estate is a local job market in its own right, and four unrelated trades get the same name. Counts are businesses filed under each trade in the register, which lists a brokerage once however many agents work there — so this measures firms, not licensees.

Selling homes

5312
1 firms · LQ 0.03

Offices of agents and brokers — the resale market, and the biggest single trade in most Canadian cities.

Named in the register

Who actually owns it

The full property record →

From the /property research for this city, which asks a different question: not who trades in property here, but who owns it. An owner is named there only where a document says so. Title public: €16 certificate names owner; sale prices public as statistics.

Landowners

  • City of Helsinki (Helsingin kaupunki) — about 65% of Helsinki's land area (about 138 km²)
  • Helsingin kaupungin asunnot Oy (Heka) — City of Helsinki — about 54,500 rental homes in 500+ sites; plus c. 1,650 flats held as housing-company shares
  • Senate Properties (Senaatti-kiinteistöt) — Finnish State — 8,200 buildings nationally; group balance sheet €6.3 billion (2025)
  • VR Group (VR-Yhtymä Oyj) — Finnish State — 25 passenger-station properties plus 3 border stations nationally (May 2023), including Helsinki Central
  • Lumo Homes plc (formerly Kojamo plc) — 43,615 rental apartments nationally; investment properties €8.5 billion (30 Jun 2026)
  • Ilmarinen Mutual Pension Insurance Company — about 100 commercial properties; real-estate assets c. €5.8 billion (end-2023)

Homebuilders

  • City of Helsinki housing production (Asuntotuotanto, ATT) — 1,444 homes completed in 2025; 838 started
  • YIT Corporation — Finland: 477 consumer apartment starts, 490 sales (2025)
  • Lumo Homes plc (formerly Kojamo) — 43,615 rental apartments (30 Jun 2026); none under construction
  • SATO Oyj — 27,314 rental homes (30 Jun 2026); investment properties €5.4 billion
  • Elo Mutual Pension Insurance Company — about 6,000 rental homes

Commercial landlords

  • Sponda Oy (Blackstone) — 0.7 million m² leasable; owns Forum and Citycenter in Helsinki
  • Citycon Oyj (G City Ltd) — 28 centres, assets c. €3.8 billion; 9 centres in Finland
  • Ilmarinen Mutual Pension Insurance Company — about 100 commercial properties; c. €5.8 billion real estate (end-2023)
  • Varma Mutual Pension Insurance Company — c. €4.3 billion real estate; 70 commercial properties (30 Jun 2026)
  • Antilooppi (Ilmarinen and AMF Tjänstepension) — office properties in Helsinki, Vantaa and Espoo (no total stated)
  • Technopolis (Kildare Partners) — 13 campuses in four countries; 1,200 companies

12 marquee buildings examined, 11 with an owner established.

On "how many doors"

How many doors a landlord holds is not in any of this. The register files an apartment building under the building, not its owner, and carries no unit count; there is no open dataset of Canadian landlords by portfolio. Where this research has established ownership it is in the Helsinki property record for the city, building by building, which is a different and much slower exercise.

8

Work on the go, mobile services

The Ultimate 411 half of local: everything where the customer does not have to come to you. Each service opens a page on Ultimate 411 to request a quote or book a time.

A shop needs the customer to walk in. These 186 services do the opposite — the mobile mechanic, the mobile groomer, the bookkeeper, the junk haul — and they are the ones a person can start without a lease. 0 of them already match a trait filed in this city's register.

The 186 Service=1 rows in search.local: work on the go, mobile services, where the provider travels to the customer. "present" counts businesses already filed under that exact trait name; a blank is a coverage gap, not proof of absence, because the two vocabularies were built separately.

9

Schools and colleges

wander.schools is a post-secondary table — universities and colleges. K-12 public and private schools are not in it, and only 7 of its 1,686 rows carry coordinates, so these are listed and not mapped.

InstitutionTypeStudentsFounded
Helsinki University — —

In the business register

Where schooling shows up as a business rather than an institution — which is where K-12, tutoring and childcare appear.

school 1
10

Health and care

What a person moving a parent here would ask first. The register files clinics and pharmacies; it has no category for a hospital at all, so hospitals are matched by name and the limit is stated rather than hidden.

Medical clinics0
Pharmacies0
Dental practices0

geonet carries no 'hospital' trait, so these are matched on the business name. A distance-to-hospital figure needs a source that states hospital locations.

13

Funded & hiring here

Companies in this city that have raised money, and the careers pages of employers here, from the /employers research and the company database. For someone looking for work here, this is the shortlist.

Funded here — 2 companies have raised money

A fresh round usually means hiring. Largest raise first; the amount links to its source where one is on file, and the currency is as the source wrote it.

CompanyRaisedStaff hereJobs
Hostaway softwareAll other traveller accommodation$550M—Careers →
Aiven softwareSoftware$210M—Careers →

Careers pages — 13 more employers here

Each link goes to the company's own careers page or official job board, not a third-party listing site. Largest local staff first.

CompanyStaff hereJobs
Avanto Ventures—Careers →
Chatbase softwareSoftware—Careers →
KemiraManufacturing—Careers →
MotionVolt Games—Careers →
Nosto softwareSoftware—Careers →
Qt softwareSoftware—Careers →
SaxdorSports—Careers →
Sharetribe softwareSoftware—Careers →
Showell—Careers →
Solita—Careers →
Stackla—Careers →
Surveypal softwareSoftware—Careers →
VaisalaEnergy—Careers →
14

What this record cannot tell you

Named in full, because the gaps are the part most likely to be misread as an answer.

  • No census figures on this page: this region is not mapped to a census subdivision in local/census-map.json, so the community counts here are business-register institutions, which is a different measurement and cannot substitute for a population.
  • wander.schools is now readable, but it holds universities and colleges only and 1,679 of its 1,686 rows have no coordinates. K-12 public and private schools need a separate source — in Ontario the Ministry of Education school finder, in British Columbia the provincial school list. wander.citytowns, hotels and territories remain denied to the ru user.
  • No 'hospital' trait exists in geonet; distance to a hospital needs an external source such as StatCan's Open Database of Healthcare Facilities.
  • 100.0% of businesses here carry no coordinates, so a map or address lookup would miss them. Postal codes reach 0%.

Built from

  • geonet.finland — the local business register
  • wander.regions — city name, population, metro
  • search.local — trait vocabulary and the come-to-you services
  • search.cozfranchises — 2,024 franchise brands