VacationSelector

Belfast or Istanbul?

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

Your match

Belfast
48
match

Wins on nature & day trips and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Istanbul
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on museums & heritage and 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.

Scoreboard

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

BelfastIstanbul
Beaches & swimming. Belfast leads by 5 points.5
BelfastIstanbul
Score4843
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km102
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 14 points.14
BelfastIstanbul
Score5670
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4322,086
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3120
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 37 points.37
BelfastIstanbul
Score2966
Museums within 10 km18145
Museums within 2 km of centre671
Share of museums within 2 km %3349
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 31 points.31
BelfastIstanbul
Score4879
Drinking venues within 4 km5502,266
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre3481,176
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6352
Nightclubs within 4 km29221
Nature & day trips. Belfast leads by 28 points.28
BelfastIstanbul
Score5325
Protected land share 50 km %191
Landscape blanket share 50 km %130
Land share of disc %6548
Park area within 2 km68 hectares60 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 19 points.19
BelfastIstanbul
Score4867
Tourist attractions within 2 km1668
Park area within 2 km68 hectares60 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 33 points.33
BelfastIstanbul
Score4275
Notable places within 2 km43285
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 35 points.35
BelfastIstanbul
Score5489
Price level global84.935.2
Daily budget€100
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 18 points.18
BelfastIstanbul
Score5169
Monthly daytime high6.9 °C to 19 °C9.2 °C to 29.7 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 89 mm23 mm to 101 mm
Dry months04
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
Belfast
7
8
10
12
15
18
19
19
17
13
10
7
Istanbul
9
10
12
17
22
27
30
30
26
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Belfast
9
8
8
8
9
11
12
13
14
14
12
11
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Rainfall, mm
Belfast
74
62
60
56
55
65
74
86
67
89
87
85
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Daylight, hours per day
Belfast
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
7
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Belfast
2
2
3
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
2
2
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. Belfast: 1991-2020 normals, Belfast / Aldergrove Airport (19.4 km from centre). Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBelfastIstanbul
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 15 m
€72-142
BHD · 4 km
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
AntalyaAYT
4 h 40 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
1 h 15 m
€54-87
SAW · 30 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
IzmirADB
4 h 15 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
1 h 5 m
€49-61
IST · 36 km
DalamanDLM
4 h 35 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
1 h 15 m
€53-54
SAW · 30 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 0 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
4 h 15 m
€177-220
IST · 36 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 25 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
CancunCUN
9 h 30 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
12 h 55 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

MeasureBelfastIstanbul
Official languageEnglishTurkish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Turkish Lira (TRY)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+3
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation3 m100 m
Main airportGeorge Best Belfast City Airport (BHD)4 km from centre24 non-stop destinationsİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBelfastIstanbul
City population345,00615,655,924
People per km²3,0002,930
Museums within 10 km872
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre4462
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Belfast 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). 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.