VacationSelector

Berlin or Istanbul?

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

Your match

Berlin
62
match

Wins on nature & day trips and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Istanbul
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

BerlinIstanbul
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul leads by 43 points.43
BerlinIstanbul
Score043
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km172
Coast distance142 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Berlin and Istanbul are level on 70.
BerlinIstanbul
Score7070
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1172,086
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3320
Museums & heritage. Berlin leads by 13 points.13
BerlinIstanbul
Score7966
Museums within 10 km200145
Museums within 2 km of centre8171
Share of museums within 2 km %4149
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 3 points.3
BerlinIstanbul
Score7679
Drinking venues within 4 km2,1142,266
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre7191,176
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %3452
Nightclubs within 4 km135221
Nature & day trips. Berlin leads by 24 points.24
BerlinIstanbul
Score4925
Protected land share 50 km %201
Landscape blanket share 50 km %160
Land share of disc %10048
Park area within 2 km141 hectares60 hectares
Good for families. Berlin leads by 9 points.9
BerlinIstanbul
Score7667
Tourist attractions within 2 km5468
Park area within 2 km141 hectares60 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km52
Sights concentration. Berlin leads by 9 points.9
BerlinIstanbul
Score8475
Notable places within 2 km486285
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 29 points.29
BerlinIstanbul
Score6089
Price level global75.935.2
Daily budget€163€100
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 9 points.9
BerlinIstanbul
Score6069
Monthly daytime high3.7 °C to 25 °C9.2 °C to 29.7 °C
Monthly rainfall29 mm to 76 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
Berlin
4
6
9
16
20
23
25
25
20
14
8
4
Istanbul
9
10
12
17
22
27
30
30
26
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Berlin
No coastline within reach
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Rainfall, mm
Berlin
49
44
39
29
52
53
76
53
47
39
42
45
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Daylight, hours per day
Berlin
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Berlin
2
2
4
6
7
8
8
7
5
4
2
1
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. Berlin: 1991-2020 normals, Berlin / Alexanderplatz (0.9 km from centre). Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBerlinIstanbul
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 50 m
€65-126
BER · 19 km
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 15 m
€145-185
BER · 19 km
1 h 15 m
€54-87
SAW · 30 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€102-136
BER · 19 km
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 10 m
€137-154
BER · 19 km
2 h 50 m
€137-196
IST · 36 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 20 m
€159-242
BER · 19 km
3 h 15 m
€161-174
IST · 36 km
IzmirADB
2 h 55 m
no fares
BER · 19 km
1 h 5 m
€49-61
IST · 36 km
MunichMUC
1 h 15 m
€178-321
BER · 19 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 10 m
€737
BER · 19 km
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
HurghadaHRG
4 h 30 m
no fares
BER · 19 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
SAW · 30 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 20 m
€718-820
2 stops
BER · 19 km
9 h 0 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

MeasureBerlinIstanbul
Official languageGermanTurkish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Turkish Lira (TRY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+3
Emergency number112112
Elevation34 m100 m
Main airportBerlin Brandenburg Airport (BER)19 km from centre161 non-stop destinationsİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBerlinIstanbul
City population3,782,20215,655,924
People per km²4,2442,930
Museums within 10 km15872
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre8662
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Berlin 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. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.