VacationSelector

Dublin or Istanbul?

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

Your match

Dublin
55
match

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

Istanbul
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on value for money and nightlife 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.

DublinIstanbul
Beaches & swimming. Dublin leads by 6 points.6
DublinIstanbul
Score4943
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km112
Coast distance3 km0 km
Water distance3 km0 km
Places to eat. Dublin and Istanbul are level on 70.
DublinIstanbul
Score7070
Restaurants within 2 km of centre9202,086
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3720
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 11 points.11
DublinIstanbul
Score5566
Museums within 10 km47145
Museums within 2 km of centre3771
Share of museums within 2 km %7949
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 15 points.15
DublinIstanbul
Score6479
Drinking venues within 4 km1,2392,266
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre9341,176
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7552
Nightclubs within 4 km40221
Nature & day trips. Dublin leads by 1 points.1
DublinIstanbul
Score2625
Protected land share 50 km %31
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %6248
Park area within 2 km43 hectares60 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 13 points.13
DublinIstanbul
Score5467
Tourist attractions within 2 km4168
Park area within 2 km43 hectares60 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 13 points.13
DublinIstanbul
Score6275
Notable places within 2 km141285
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 32 points.32
DublinIstanbul
Score5789
Price level global80.235.2
Daily budget€187€100
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 15 points.15
DublinIstanbul
Score5469
Monthly daytime high8.2 °C to 19.5 °C9.2 °C to 29.7 °C
Monthly rainfall52 mm to 83 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
Dublin
8
9
10
12
15
18
20
19
17
14
10
8
Istanbul
9
10
12
17
22
27
30
30
26
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Dublin
9
8
8
9
11
13
15
15
15
13
12
11
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Rainfall, mm
Dublin
62
52
52
55
58
65
62
74
61
78
83
72
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Daylight, hours per day
Dublin
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Dublin
2
3
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. Dublin: 1991-2020 normals, Dublin Airport (9.3 km from centre). Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDublinIstanbul
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 10 m
€33-43
DUB · 9 km
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€43-47
DUB · 9 km
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 35 m
€80-139
DUB · 9 km
3 h 15 m
€161-174
IST · 36 km
AntalyaAYT
4 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
1 h 15 m
€54-87
SAW · 30 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
4 h 15 m
€177-220
IST · 36 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
IzmirADB
4 h 15 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
1 h 5 m
€49-61
IST · 36 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 0 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 25 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
CancunCUN
9 h 30 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
12 h 55 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

MeasureDublinIstanbul
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
Elevation20 m100 m
Main airportDublin Airport (DUB)9 km from centre201 non-stop destinationsİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureDublinIstanbul
City population592,71315,655,924
People per km²5,1542,930
Museums within 10 km4072
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre7462
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 Dublin 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.