VacationSelector

Bruges or Istanbul?

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

Your match

Bruges
44
match

Wins on nature & day trips with your weighting.

Istanbul
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on nightlife and beaches & swimming 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.

BrugesIstanbul
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul leads by 35 points.35
BrugesIstanbul
Score843
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km12
Coast distance14 km0 km
Water distance14 km0 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 13 points.13
BrugesIstanbul
Score5770
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4432,086
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3220
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 9 points.9
BrugesIstanbul
Score5766
Museums within 10 km30145
Museums within 2 km of centre2471
Share of museums within 2 km %8049
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 45 points.45
BrugesIstanbul
Score3479
Drinking venues within 4 km2922,266
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2331,176
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8052
Nightclubs within 4 km8221
Nature & day trips. Bruges leads by 1 points.1
BrugesIstanbul
Score2625
Protected land share 50 km %21
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %6548
Park area within 2 km59 hectares60 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 7 points.7
BrugesIstanbul
Score6067
Tourist attractions within 2 km5268
Park area within 2 km59 hectares60 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 35 points.35
BrugesIstanbul
Score4075
Notable places within 2 km40285
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 29 points.29
BrugesIstanbul
Score6089
Price level global76.235.2
Daily budget€180€100
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 13 points.13
BrugesIstanbul
Score5669
Monthly daytime high6.4 °C to 22 °C9.2 °C to 29.7 °C
Monthly rainfall35 mm to 79 mm23 mm to 101 mm
Dry months14
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
Bruges
6
7
10
13
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Istanbul
9
10
12
17
22
27
30
30
26
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Bruges
7
6
7
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Rainfall, mm
Bruges
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Daylight, hours per day
Bruges
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
Bruges
3
3
5
7
8
8
8
7
6
4
3
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. Bruges: 1991-2020 normals, Vlissingen (37.4 km from centre). Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBrugesIstanbul
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 94 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 94 km
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
€138-162
2 stops
BRU · 94 km
2 h 50 m
€137-196
IST · 36 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 94 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 25 m
€36-101
BRU · 94 km
2 h 40 m
€142-153
1 stop
IST · 36 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 45 m
€93-156
BRU · 94 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
AlgiersALG
2 h 30 m
no fares
LIL · 72 km
3 h 20 m
€139-247
IST · 36 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
13 h 5 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

MeasureBrugesIstanbul
Official languageFrench, German, DutchTurkish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Turkish Lira (TRY)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+3
Emergency number112112
Elevation2 m100 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)94 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBrugesIstanbul
City population118,50915,655,924
People per km²8402,930
Museums within 10 km3872
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre5162
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 Bruges 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). 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. 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.