VacationSelector

Copenhagen 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

Copenhagen
63
match

Wins on nature & day trips and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Istanbul
65
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.

CopenhagenIstanbul
Beaches & swimming. Copenhagen leads by 11 points.11
CopenhagenIstanbul
Score5443
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km172
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Copenhagen leads by 3 points.3
CopenhagenIstanbul
Score7370
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1832,086
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3720
Museums & heritage. Copenhagen leads by 9 points.9
CopenhagenIstanbul
Score7566
Museums within 10 km83145
Museums within 2 km of centre5171
Share of museums within 2 km %6149
Unesco sites within 50 km51
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 12 points.12
CopenhagenIstanbul
Score6779
Drinking venues within 4 km1,3842,266
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre8061,176
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5852
Nightclubs within 4 km64221
Nature & day trips. Copenhagen leads by 25 points.25
CopenhagenIstanbul
Score5025
Protected land share 50 km %51
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %3948
Park area within 2 km138 hectares60 hectares
Good for families. Copenhagen leads by 4 points.4
CopenhagenIstanbul
Score7167
Tourist attractions within 2 km5468
Park area within 2 km138 hectares60 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 1 points.1
CopenhagenIstanbul
Score7475
Notable places within 2 km273285
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 37 points.37
CopenhagenIstanbul
Score5289
Price level global87.835.2
Daily budget€214€100
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 14 points.14
CopenhagenIstanbul
Score5569
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 22.7 °C9.2 °C to 29.7 °C
Monthly rainfall28 mm to 74 mm23 mm to 101 mm
Dry months34
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
Copenhagen
4
4
7
12
17
20
23
22
18
13
8
5
Istanbul
9
10
12
17
22
27
30
30
26
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Copenhagen
3
2
3
6
10
14
17
18
15
12
9
5
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Rainfall, mm
Copenhagen
44
32
30
28
47
60
59
74
59
61
49
47
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Daylight, hours per day
Copenhagen
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
8
7
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Copenhagen
No sunshine record
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. Copenhagen: 1991-2020 normals, Koebenhavn / Landbohoejskolen (2.4 km from centre). Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCopenhagenIstanbul
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 50 m
€55-95
CPH · 8 km
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 25 m
€167-221
CPH · 8 km
3 h 15 m
€161-174
IST · 36 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 50 m
€70-135
CPH · 8 km
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
OsloOSL, TRF
1 h 15 m
no fares
CPH · 8 km
3 h 30 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 20 m
€90-98
1 stop
CPH · 8 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 35 m
no fares
CPH · 8 km
1 h 15 m
€54-87
SAW · 30 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 20 m
€338-366
1 stop
CPH · 8 km
4 h 15 m
€177-220
IST · 36 km
IzmirADB
3 h 15 m
no fares
CPH · 8 km
1 h 5 m
€49-61
IST · 36 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 55 m
€460-501
1 stop
CPH · 8 km
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
10 h 50 m
no fares
CPH · 8 km
9 h 30 m
€507-517
1 stop
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

MeasureCopenhagenIstanbul
Official languageDanishTurkish
CurrencyDanish Krone (DKK)Turkish Lira (TRY)
SocketsCEFK230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+3
Emergency number112112
Elevation14 m100 m
Main airportCopenhagen Kastrup Airport (CPH)8 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureCopenhagenIstanbul
City population667,09915,655,924
People per km²7,3392,930
Museums within 10 km7272
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km51
Distinct cuisines in the centre8262
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone3 months

Where else could you go?

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