VacationSelector

Cape Town or Izmir?

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

Your match

Cape Town
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on places to eat and year-round weather with your weighting.

Izmir
53
match

Wins on nightlife 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.

Cape TownIzmir
Beaches & swimming. Cape Town leads by 5 points.5
Cape TownIzmir
Score6055
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km294
Coast distance1 km1 km
Water distance1 km1 km
Places to eat. Cape Town leads by 18 points.18
Cape TownIzmir
Score6749
Restaurants within 2 km of centre650770
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4212
Museums & heritage. Cape Town leads by 11 points.11
Cape TownIzmir
Score5443
Museums within 10 km2547
Museums within 2 km of centre2027
Share of museums within 2 km %8057
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Izmir leads by 15 points.15
Cape TownIzmir
Score4762
Drinking venues within 4 km4831,028
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre389695
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8168
Nightclubs within 4 km4770
Nature & day trips. Cape Town leads by 7 points.7
Cape TownIzmir
Score3629
Protected land share 50 km %64
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4284
Park area within 2 km27 hectares62 hectares
Good for families. Cape Town leads by 1 points.1
Cape TownIzmir
Score3635
Tourist attractions within 2 km196
Park area within 2 km27 hectares62 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Cape Town leads by 5 points.5
Cape TownIzmir
Score4540
Notable places within 2 km5139
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Izmir leads by 4 points.4
Cape TownIzmir
Score8589
Price level global40.535.2
Daily budget—€100
Year-round weather. Cape Town leads by 14 points.14
Cape TownIzmir
Score8672
Monthly daytime high18 °C to 27.5 °C13 °C to 33.9 °C
Monthly rainfall10 mm to 97 mm1 mm to 127 mm
Dry months65
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
Cape Town
27
28
26
24
21
18
18
18
20
22
24
26
Izmir
13
14
17
21
27
31
34
34
29
24
19
14
Sea temperature, °C
Cape Town
18
18
17
16
15
15
15
15
15
15
16
17
Izmir
16
16
16
17
19
22
23
24
23
21
19
17
Rainfall, mm
Cape Town
10
11
13
42
65
97
89
76
47
32
27
13
Izmir
119
107
77
51
33
13
1
4
22
55
96
127
Daylight, hours per day
Cape Town
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Izmir
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Cape Town
12
10
9
8
6
6
6
7
8
9
10
11
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. Cape Town: 1991-2020 normals, Cape Town Airport (17.5 km from centre). Izmir: 1991-2020 normals, Izmir (3.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCape TownIzmir
IstanbulIST, SAW
10 h 35 m
€717-799
1 stop
CPT · 18 km
1 h 5 m
€46-55
ADB · 13 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
12 h 5 m
€634-815
CPT · 18 km
3 h 45 m
€119-184
ADB · 13 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 45 m
€632-724
1 stop
CPT · 18 km
3 h 0 m
€204-238
1 stop
ADB · 13 km
MunichMUC
11 h 30 m
no fares
CPT · 18 km
2 h 40 m
€185-288
1 stop
ADB · 13 km
AmsterdamAMS
12 h 5 m
no fares
CPT · 18 km
3 h 25 m
€221-272
1 stop
ADB · 13 km
ZurichZRH
11 h 25 m
no fares
CPT · 18 km
2 h 50 m
€161-180
1 stop
ADB · 13 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 40 m
€742-801
2 stops
CPT · 18 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
ADB · 13 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
9 h 40 m
€611-615
1 stop
CPT · 18 km
4 h 15 m
no fares
ADB · 13 km
DohaDOH
9 h 25 m
€850-932
2 stops
CPT · 18 km
3 h 45 m
no fares
BJV · 137 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

MeasureCape TownIzmir
Official languageEnglish, Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans, Venda, Northern Sotho, Swazi, Tswana, Tsonga, Sesotho, Southern Ndebele, South African Sign LanguageTurkish
CurrencyRand (ZAR)Turkish Lira (TRY)
SocketsCMN230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+2UTC+3
Emergency number112112
Elevation5 m2 m
Main airportCape Town International Airport (CPT)18 km from centre44 non-stop destinationsAdnan Menderes International Airport (ADB)13 km from centre120 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureCape TownIzmir
City population3,776,3134,493,242
People per km²1,5384,760
Museums within 10 km2229
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre6520
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cape Town 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. 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.