VacationSelector

Bangkok or Istanbul?

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

Your match

Bangkok
62
match

Wins on nature & day trips and places to eat with your weighting.

Istanbul
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage 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.

BangkokIstanbul
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul leads by 3 points.3
BangkokIstanbul
Score4043
Swim season months123
Beaches 10 km02
Coast distance23 km0 km
Water distance23 km0 km
Places to eat. Bangkok leads by 13 points.13
BangkokIstanbul
Score8370
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,9572,086
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2620
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 20 points.20
BangkokIstanbul
Score4666
Museums within 10 km103145
Museums within 2 km of centre3071
Share of museums within 2 km %2949
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Bangkok leads by 4 points.4
BangkokIstanbul
Score8379
Drinking venues within 4 km3,3832,266
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,3961,176
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4152
Nightclubs within 4 km72221
Nature & day trips. Bangkok leads by 26 points.26
BangkokIstanbul
Score5125
Protected land share 50 km %1
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8348
Park area within 2 km42 hectares60 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 10 points.10
BangkokIstanbul
Score5767
Tourist attractions within 2 km3168
Park area within 2 km42 hectares60 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km42
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 27 points.27
BangkokIstanbul
Score4875
Notable places within 2 km62285
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bangkok leads by 4 points.4
BangkokIstanbul
Score9389
Price level global29.735.2
Daily budget€100
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 13 points.13
BangkokIstanbul
Score5669
Monthly daytime high32.4 °C to 35.8 °C9.2 °C to 29.7 °C
Monthly rainfall7 mm to 331 mm23 mm to 101 mm
Dry months34
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
Bangkok
33
34
35
36
35
34
34
33
33
33
33
32
Istanbul
9
10
12
17
22
27
30
30
26
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Bangkok
27
28
29
30
31
30
30
30
29
29
29
28
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Rainfall, mm
Bangkok
18
22
43
92
221
187
184
227
331
276
42
7
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Daylight, hours per day
Bangkok
11
12
12
12
13
13
13
13
12
12
12
11
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Bangkok
8
8
8
8
7
5
5
4
4
5
7
8
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bangkok: 1991-2020 normals, Bangkok (5.7 km from centre). Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBangkokIstanbul
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 55 m
€438-523
BKK · 26 km
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
MoscowVKO, SVO, DME, ZIA
9 h 0 m
no fares
BKK · 26 km
2 h 40 m
€215-235
IST · 36 km
SeoulICN, GMP
5 h 0 m
€175-251
BKK · 26 km
10 h 0 m
€533-647
IST · 36 km
TehranIKA, THR
7 h 10 m
no fares
BKK · 26 km
3 h 5 m
€261-292
IST · 36 km
TokyoHND, NRT
6 h 5 m
€318-365
BKK · 26 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 25 m
€409-425
DMK · 21 km
4 h 15 m
€177-220
IST · 36 km
Hong KongHKG
2 h 40 m
€175-181
BKK · 26 km
10 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
4 h 5 m
€176-184
BKK · 26 km
10 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
Phnom PenhKTI
1 h 15 m
€143-186
BKK · 26 km
10 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
16 h 20 m
€646-679
1 stop
BKK · 26 km
13 h 35 m
no fares
IST · 36 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

MeasureBangkokIstanbul
Official languageThaiTurkish
CurrencyBaht (THB)Turkish Lira (TRY)
SocketsABCF220 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+7UTC+3
Emergency numberPolice 191, ambulance 1669, fire 199112
Elevation2 m100 m
Main airportSuvarnabhumi Airport (BKK)26 km from centre142 non-stop destinationsİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBangkokIstanbul
City population5,676,64815,655,924
People per km²3,6192,930
Museums within 10 km5972
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre9162
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bangkok or Istanbul 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). 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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.