VacationSelector

Cologne or Istanbul?

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

Your match

Cologne
57
match

Wins on nature & day trips and good for families with your weighting.

Istanbul
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

CologneIstanbul
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul leads by 43 points.43
CologneIstanbul
Score043
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km402
Coast distance256 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 2 points.2
CologneIstanbul
Score7270
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1422,086
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3520
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 6 points.6
CologneIstanbul
Score6066
Museums within 10 km47145
Museums within 2 km of centre2771
Share of museums within 2 km %5749
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 15 points.15
CologneIstanbul
Score6479
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1072,266
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre7271,176
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6652
Nightclubs within 4 km90221
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 46 points.46
CologneIstanbul
Score7125
Protected land share 50 km %531
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %10048
Park area within 2 km118 hectares60 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 5 points.5
CologneIstanbul
Score7267
Tourist attractions within 2 km4368
Park area within 2 km118 hectares60 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km62
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 22 points.22
CologneIstanbul
Score5375
Notable places within 2 km81285
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 29 points.29
CologneIstanbul
Score6089
Price level global75.935.2
Daily budget€163€100
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 9 points.9
CologneIstanbul
Score6069
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C9.2 °C to 29.7 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 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
Cologne
6
7
12
16
20
23
25
25
21
15
10
7
Istanbul
9
10
12
17
22
27
30
30
26
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
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. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneIstanbul
AntalyaAYT
3 h 30 m
€204-239
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
1 h 15 m
€54-87
SAW · 30 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
IzmirADB
3 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 5 m
€49-61
IST · 36 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
3 h 15 m
€179-269
IST · 36 km
AnkaraESB
3 h 25 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 5 m
€42-52
IST · 36 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
BerlinBER
1 h 15 m
€136-255
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
2 h 40 m
€125-140
IST · 36 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
2 h 40 m
€142-153
1 stop
IST · 36 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 35 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
4 h 15 m
€177-220
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

MeasureCologneIstanbul
Official languageGermanTurkish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Turkish Lira (TRY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+3
Emergency number112112
Elevation59 m100 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneIstanbul
City population1,024,62115,655,924
People per km²2,5302,930
Museums within 10 km4072
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre8462
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months

Where else could you go?

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