VacationSelector

Bucharest or Izmir?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Bucharest
55
match

Wins on good for families and sights concentration with your weighting.

Izmir
53
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

Scoreboard

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

BucharestIzmir
Beaches & swimming. Izmir leads by 55 points.55
BucharestIzmir
Score055
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km34
Coast distance198 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Bucharest leads by 18 points.18
BucharestIzmir
Score6749
Restaurants within 2 km of centre667770
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4112
Museums & heritage. Bucharest leads by 6 points.6
BucharestIzmir
Score4943
Museums within 10 km7347
Museums within 2 km of centre4027
Share of museums within 2 km %5557
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Bucharest and Izmir are level on 62.
BucharestIzmir
Score6262
Drinking venues within 4 km1,0171,028
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre541695
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5368
Nightclubs within 4 km8070
Nature & day trips. Bucharest leads by 7 points.7
BucharestIzmir
Score3629
Protected land share 50 km %44
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10084
Park area within 2 km133 hectares62 hectares
Good for families. Bucharest leads by 33 points.33
BucharestIzmir
Score6835
Tourist attractions within 2 km456
Park area within 2 km133 hectares62 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Bucharest leads by 21 points.21
BucharestIzmir
Score6140
Notable places within 2 km13039
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Izmir leads by 4 points.4
BucharestIzmir
Score8589
Price level global40.935.2
Daily budget€99€100
Year-round weather. Izmir leads by 9 points.9
BucharestIzmir
Score6372
Monthly daytime high2.8 °C to 30.5 °C13 °C to 33.9 °C
Monthly rainfall33 mm to 82 mm1 mm to 127 mm
Dry months15
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
Bucharest
3
6
12
19
24
28
30
31
25
18
11
4
Izmir
13
14
17
21
27
31
34
34
29
24
19
14
Sea temperature, °C
Bucharest
No coastline within reach
Izmir
16
16
16
17
19
22
23
24
23
21
19
17
Rainfall, mm
Bucharest
40
33
42
49
71
82
68
48
62
59
44
47
Izmir
119
107
77
51
33
13
1
4
22
55
96
127
Daylight, hours per day
Bucharest
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Izmir
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Bucharest
2
4
5
6
8
9
10
9
7
5
3
2
Izmir
5
5
7
8
10
11
13
12
10
8
6
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bucharest: 1991-2020 normals, Bucuresti / Imh (10 km from centre). Izmir: 1991-2020 normals, Izmir (3.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBucharestIzmir
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 10 m
€121-131
OTP · 18 km
1 h 5 m
€46-55
ADB · 13 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 10 m
€72-175
OTP · 18 km
3 h 45 m
€119-184
ADB · 13 km
AnkaraESB
1 h 35 m
no fares
OTP · 18 km
1 h 20 m
€54-66
ADB · 13 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 50 m
€118-127
OTP · 18 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
ADB · 13 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 20 m
€123-173
1 stop
OTP · 18 km
3 h 0 m
€204-238
1 stop
ADB · 13 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 15 m
€45-61
OTP · 18 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
ADB · 13 km
AntalyaAYT
1 h 45 m
€140-237
1 stop
OTP · 18 km
1 h 5 m
€75-89
ADB · 13 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 45 m
€198-212
1 stop
OTP · 18 km
3 h 25 m
€221-272
1 stop
ADB · 13 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 40 m
€92-150
OTP · 18 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
ADB · 13 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 30 m
€144-199
OTP · 18 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
ADB · 13 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 2026-09 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

MeasureBucharestIzmir
Official languageRomanianTurkish
CurrencyRomanian Leu (RON)Turkish Lira (TRY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+3
Emergency number112112
Elevation70 m2 m
Main airportBucharest Henri Coandă International Airport (OTP)18 km from centre123 non-stop destinationsAdnan Menderes International Airport (ADB)13 km from centre120 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year17 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBucharestIzmir
City population1,716,9614,493,242
People per km²7,5974,760
Museums within 10 km4129
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre6820
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bucharest or Izmir 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). 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.