VacationSelector

Buenos Aires or Istanbul?

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

Buenos Aires
63
match

Wins on nature & day trips and year-round weather with your weighting.

Istanbul
65
match

Wins on sights concentration and nightlife 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.

Buenos AiresIstanbul
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul leads by 10 points.10
Buenos AiresIstanbul
Score3343
Swim season months43
Beaches 10 km02
Coast distance2 km0 km
Water distance2 km0 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 3 points.3
Buenos AiresIstanbul
Score6770
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1972,086
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2620
Museums & heritage. Buenos Aires and Istanbul are level on 66.
Buenos AiresIstanbul
Score6666
Museums within 10 km148145
Museums within 2 km of centre7171
Share of museums within 2 km %4849
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 11 points.11
Buenos AiresIstanbul
Score6879
Drinking venues within 4 km1,2952,266
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre7771,176
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6052
Nightclubs within 4 km160221
Nature & day trips. Buenos Aires leads by 18 points.18
Buenos AiresIstanbul
Score4325
Protected land share 50 km %91
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %6748
Park area within 2 km69 hectares60 hectares
Good for families. Buenos Aires leads by 2 points.2
Buenos AiresIstanbul
Score6967
Tourist attractions within 2 km4968
Park area within 2 km69 hectares60 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km62
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 15 points.15
Buenos AiresIstanbul
Score6075
Notable places within 2 km125285
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 7 points.7
Buenos AiresIstanbul
Score8289
Price level global45.835.2
Daily budget€100
Year-round weather. Buenos Aires leads by 6 points.6
Buenos AiresIstanbul
Score7569
Monthly daytime high14.7 °C to 28.5 °C9.2 °C to 29.7 °C
Monthly rainfall50 mm to 135 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
Buenos Aires
29
27
26
22
19
16
15
17
18
22
24
28
Istanbul
9
10
12
17
22
27
30
30
26
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Buenos Aires
25
25
23
21
17
14
13
13
15
18
21
23
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Rainfall, mm
Buenos Aires
135
94
123
122
85
54
50
52
58
98
87
107
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Daylight, hours per day
Buenos Aires
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Buenos Aires
10
8
8
6
6
4
5
6
6
7
8
9
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. Buenos Aires: 1991-2020 normals, Aeroparque Bs. As. Aerodrome (4.9 km from centre). Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBuenos AiresIstanbul
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
13 h 45 m
€1,147-1238
2 stops
EZE · 28 km
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
2 h 40 m
€283-314
EZE · 28 km
13 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
SantiagoSCL
2 h 0 m
€156-221
EZE · 28 km
16 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
16 h 45 m
€1,481-1680
EZE · 28 km
4 h 15 m
€177-220
IST · 36 km
MadridMAD
12 h 30 m
€961-982
EZE · 28 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 40 m
no fares
EZE · 28 km
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
13 h 45 m
€1,227-1245
2 stops
EZE · 28 km
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
MiamiMIA, OPF
9 h 5 m
no fares
EZE · 28 km
11 h 55 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
14 h 10 m
€1,193-1373
3 stops
EZE · 28 km
2 h 50 m
€137-196
IST · 36 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
23 h 45 m
no fares
EZE · 28 km
10 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 2026-09 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

MeasureBuenos AiresIstanbul
Official languageSpanishTurkish
CurrencyArgentine Peso (ARS)Turkish Lira (TRY)
SocketsCI220 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC-3UTC+3
Emergency number117 or 911112
Elevation25 m100 m
Main airportEzeiza International Airport - Ministro Pistarini (EZE)28 km from centre53 non-stop destinationsİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBuenos AiresIstanbul
City population3,121,70715,655,924
People per km²15,3552,930
Museums within 10 km7572
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre5562
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Buenos Aires 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). 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. 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.