Antalya or Limassol?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on good for families and nightlife with your weighting.
Wins on museums & heritage 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.
The verdict
Choose Antalya if you are travelling with children, want theme parks and green space near the centre, and want busy evenings; it also gets hotter, up to 35°C in August, and has the longer swimming season.
Choose Limassol if museums and UNESCO-listed day trips matter more, if you want more beaches to pick between, and if you prefer a steadier, drier year with highs of 17-31°C.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Limassol leads by 7 points.7
| Antalya | Limassol | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 72 | 79 |
| Swim season months | 7 | 6 |
| Beaches 10 km | 11 | 27 |
| Coast distance | 1 km | 1 km |
| Water distance | 1 km | 1 km |
Places to eat. Antalya leads by 2 points.2
| Antalya | Limassol | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 45 | 43 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 638 | 298 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 11 | 19 |
Museums & heritage. Limassol leads by 19 points.19
| Antalya | Limassol | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 25 | 44 |
| Museums within 10 km | 11 | 17 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 8 | 10 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 73 | 59 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 0 | 3 |
Nightlife. Antalya leads by 20 points.20
| Antalya | Limassol | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 59 | 39 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 917 | 340 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 516 | 256 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 56 | 75 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 55 | 20 |
Nature & day trips. Antalya leads by 19 points.19
| Antalya | Limassol | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 41 | 22 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 8 | 2 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 0 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 69 | 49 |
| Park area within 2 km | 69 hectares | 32 hectares |
Good for families. Antalya leads by 24 points.24
| Antalya | Limassol | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 40 | 16 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 6 | 3 |
| Park area within 2 km | 69 hectares | 32 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 5 | 0 |
Sights concentration. Antalya leads by 13 points.13
| Antalya | Limassol | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 27 | 14 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 19 | 9 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Antalya leads by 19 points.19
| Antalya | Limassol | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 89 | 70 |
| Price level global | 35.2 | 61.4 |
| Daily budget | €100 | €129 |
Year-round weather. Limassol leads by 14 points.14
| Antalya | Limassol | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 71 | 85 |
| Monthly daytime high | 15.3 °C to 34.8 °C | 16.5 °C to 31.2 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 2 mm to 273 mm | 0 mm to 98 mm |
| Dry months | 4 | 8 |
Where they differ
Antalya is the easier trip with children: about twice as many attractions and twice as much park space near the centre, and 5 theme parks within reach where Limassol has none. It also has around three times as many bars and clubs, and more protected land around it, 8% against 2%.
Limassol has about twice as many museums, and 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach where Antalya has none. Its weather is steadier, with highs of 17-31°C against 15-35°C and many more dry months.
Where they are alike
Eating out comes out similar in the end. Antalya has about twice as many restaurants near the centre, Limassol a wider range of kitchens, so neither is the obvious pick for a food-led trip.
Both put the sea 1km from the centre and both swim warm for most of the year, Limassol with more beaches nearby, 27 against 11. Neither centre is packed with notable places either, though Antalya has about twice as many within walking distance.
Which traveller are you?
Families with young children should take Antalya: about twice as many attractions and twice as much park space near the centre, and 5 theme parks within reach where Limassol has none.
If museums and ruins are the point of the trip, Limassol, with about twice as many museums and 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach. Antalya's smaller offering does sit tightly around its centre.
A group after long evenings out is better served in Antalya, with roughly three times as many bars and clubs. Its sea also holds 21°C or more for 7 months, one more than Limassol's.
What the numbers don't tell you
The daily budget figures, €100 for Antalya's country and €129 for Limassol's, are national estimates of restaurant and hotel price levels, not measurements of either city. A heavily visited coastal city can sit well away from its country's average, by more than the gap between the two figures, so they cannot tell you which trip costs more.
Both cities rank best in the same months, May, June and October, so the season that suits you suits everyone else, and Limassol's 27 beaches are shared with them. Antalya's driest months, July and August, are also its hottest, at 35°C.
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.
Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Antalya: 1991-2020 normals, Antalya (23.4 km from centre). Limassol: 1998-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Akrotiri (11.6 km from centre).
Antalya peaks in May, with highs of 26°C and 41mm of rain, and again in September and October, when the sea holds 28°C then 25°C. July and August reach 35°C. December and January are the wettest, at 215-273mm.
Limassol's window is longer: April to June and September to October, highs of 22-30°C with under 20mm of rain in most of those months. Even its wettest month, December, stays near 98mm, and it still swims at 25°C in October.
Getting there
| Flying from | Antalya | Limassol |
|---|---|---|
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 4 h 5 m €125-143 AYT · 9 km | 4 h 25 m €125-167 PFO · 51 km |
| IstanbulIST, SAW | 1 h 15 m €53-68 AYT · 9 km | 1 h 35 m no fares ECN · 68 km |
| ManchesterMAN | 4 h 20 m €173-185 AYT · 9 km | 4 h 40 m no fares PFO · 51 km |
| CologneCGN | 3 h 30 m €164-202 AYT · 9 km | 3 h 50 m €184-195 1 stop PFO · 51 km |
| BirminghamBHX | 4 h 15 m €178-213 AYT · 9 km | 4 h 35 m no fares PFO · 51 km |
| WarsawWAW, WMI | 2 h 50 m €147-160 AYT · 9 km | 3 h 10 m €123-135 PFO · 51 km |
| KatowiceKTW | 2 h 45 m €200-201 AYT · 9 km | 3 h 5 m no fares PFO · 51 km |
| ViennaVIE | 2 h 40 m €144-173 AYT · 9 km | 3 h 0 m €206-323 1 stop PFO · 51 km |
| DusseldorfDUS, NRN | 3 h 35 m €145-183 AYT · 9 km | 4 h 0 m no fares LCA · 58 km |
| AlmatyALA | 5 h 20 m €280-315 1 stop AYT · 9 km | 5 h 10 m €377-465 2 stops LCA · 58 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
| Measure | Antalya | Limassol |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | Turkish | Turkish, Greek, Modern Greek |
| Currency | Turkish Lira (TRY) | Euro (EUR) |
| Sockets | CF230 V, 50 Hz | G240 V, 50 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Left |
| Time zone | UTC+3 | UTC+2, UTC+3 in summer |
| Emergency number | 112 | 112 |
| Elevation | 30 m | 10 m |
| Main airport | Antalya International Airport (AYT)9 km from centre33 non-stop destinations | Larnaca International Airport (LCA)58 km from centre109 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 14 days | 17 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Antalya | Limassol |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 2,426,356 | 107,970 |
| People per km² | 1,712 | 2,405 |
| Museums within 10 km | 5 | 2 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 0 | 3 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 22 | 28 |
| Swim season, months above 21 °C | 7 months | 6 months |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Antalya or Limassol somewhere new.