VacationSelector

Cardiff or Izmir?

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

Your match

Cardiff
48
match

Wins on nature & day trips and places to eat with your weighting.

Izmir
✓ Best match
53
match

Wins on value for money 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.

CardiffIzmir
Beaches & swimming. Izmir leads by 9 points.9
CardiffIzmir
Score4655
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km84
Coast distance2 km1 km
Water distance2 km1 km
Places to eat. Cardiff leads by 11 points.11
CardiffIzmir
Score6049
Restaurants within 2 km of centre541770
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3212
Museums & heritage. Izmir leads by 4 points.4
CardiffIzmir
Score3943
Museums within 10 km6147
Museums within 2 km of centre627
Share of museums within 2 km %1057
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Izmir leads by 14 points.14
CardiffIzmir
Score4862
Drinking venues within 4 km5361,028
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre395695
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7468
Nightclubs within 4 km3570
Nature & day trips. Cardiff leads by 21 points.21
CardiffIzmir
Score5029
Protected land share 50 km %184
Landscape blanket share 50 km %150
Land share of disc %6884
Park area within 2 km88 hectares62 hectares
Good for families. Izmir leads by 3 points.3
CardiffIzmir
Score3235
Tourist attractions within 2 km46
Park area within 2 km88 hectares62 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Cardiff leads by 5 points.5
CardiffIzmir
Score4540
Notable places within 2 km5139
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Izmir leads by 35 points.35
CardiffIzmir
Score5489
Price level global84.935.2
Daily budget€100
Year-round weather. Izmir leads by 18 points.18
CardiffIzmir
Score5472
Monthly daytime high7.7 °C to 20.2 °C13 °C to 33.9 °C
Monthly rainfall49 mm to 87 mm1 mm to 127 mm
Dry months05
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
Cardiff
8
8
10
13
16
18
20
20
18
14
11
9
Izmir
13
14
17
21
27
31
34
34
29
24
19
14
Sea temperature, °C
Cardiff
8
7
8
9
12
15
17
18
17
15
12
9
Izmir
16
16
16
17
19
22
23
24
23
21
19
17
Rainfall, mm
Cardiff
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Izmir
119
107
77
51
33
13
1
4
22
55
96
127
Daylight, hours per day
Cardiff
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Izmir
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Cardiff
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
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. Cardiff: 1991-2020 normals, Cardiff-Wales Airport (14.9 km from centre). Izmir: 1991-2020 normals, Izmir (3.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCardiffIzmir
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 45 m
no fares
BHX · 146 km
1 h 5 m
€46-55
ADB · 13 km
AntalyaAYT
4 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 5 m
€75-89
ADB · 13 km
DusseldorfDUS, NRN
1 h 20 m
no fares
BHX · 146 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
ADB · 13 km
ThessalonikiSKG
3 h 25 m
€95-154
BRS · 34 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
SMI · 83 km
ZurichZRH
1 h 45 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 50 m
€161-180
1 stop
ADB · 13 km
HeraklionHER
4 h 0 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
MJT · 86 km
RhodesRHO
4 h 10 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
50 m
no fares
SMI · 83 km
GenevaGVA
1 h 40 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
ADB · 13 km
RovaniemiRVN
3 h 25 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
4 h 20 m
no fares
ADB · 13 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 35 m
no fares
BHX · 146 km
3 h 0 m
€204-238
1 stop
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 2026-09, 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

MeasureCardiffIzmir
Official languageEnglishTurkish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Turkish Lira (TRY)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+3
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation41 m2 m
Main airportCardiff International Airport (CWL)15 km from centre8 non-stop destinationsAdnan Menderes International Airport (ADB)13 km from centre120 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureCardiffIzmir
City population383,5364,493,242
People per km²2,7344,760
Museums within 10 km929
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre5520
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 Cardiff 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.