VacationSelector

Cork or Istanbul?

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

Your match

Cork
38
match

Wins on nature & day trips with your weighting.

Istanbul
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage 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.

CorkIstanbul
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul leads by 15 points.15
CorkIstanbul
Score2843
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km12
Coast distance3 km0 km
Water distance3 km0 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 20 points.20
CorkIstanbul
Score5070
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2242,086
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3520
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 43 points.43
CorkIstanbul
Score2366
Museums within 10 km10145
Museums within 2 km of centre871
Share of museums within 2 km %8049
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 41 points.41
CorkIstanbul
Score3879
Drinking venues within 4 km3612,266
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2921,176
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8152
Nightclubs within 4 km9221
Nature & day trips. Cork leads by 27 points.27
CorkIstanbul
Score5225
Protected land share 50 km %1
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7448
Park area within 2 km48 hectares60 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 40 points.40
CorkIstanbul
Score2767
Tourist attractions within 2 km768
Park area within 2 km48 hectares60 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 53 points.53
CorkIstanbul
Score2275
Notable places within 2 km14285
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 32 points.32
CorkIstanbul
Score5789
Price level global80.235.2
Daily budget€187€100
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 20 points.20
CorkIstanbul
Score4969
Monthly daytime high8.3 °C to 18.6 °C9.2 °C to 29.7 °C
Monthly rainfall78 mm to 140 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
Cork
8
9
10
12
15
17
19
19
17
13
10
9
Istanbul
9
10
12
17
22
27
30
30
26
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Cork
10
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
14
12
11
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Rainfall, mm
Cork
132
100
92
85
78
88
86
98
91
140
125
134
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Daylight, hours per day
Cork
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cork
2
2
4
5
6
6
5
5
4
3
2
2
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. Cork: 1991-2020 normals, Cork Airport (5.6 km from centre). Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCorkIstanbul
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 45 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
3 h 15 m
€161-174
IST · 36 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 30 m
no fares
SNN · 94 km
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 40 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
IzmirADB
4 h 20 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
1 h 5 m
€49-61
IST · 36 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 10 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
EdinburghEDI
1 h 20 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
4 h 0 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 10 m
no fares
KIR · 78 km
2 h 50 m
€137-196
IST · 36 km
DublinDUB
1 h 0 m
no fares
KIR · 78 km
4 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 2026-08 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

MeasureCorkIstanbul
Official languageEnglish, IrishTurkish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Turkish Lira (TRY)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+3
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m100 m
Main airportCork International Airport (ORK)7 km from centre46 non-stop destinationsİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureCorkIstanbul
City population222,33315,655,924
People per km²5,9612,930
Museums within 10 km572
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre4962
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 Cork 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). 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. 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.