VacationSelector

Edinburgh or Istanbul?

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

Your match

Edinburgh
58
match

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

Istanbul
✓ Best match
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.

EdinburghIstanbul
Beaches & swimming. Edinburgh leads by 12 points.12
EdinburghIstanbul
Score5543
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km202
Coast distance3 km0 km
Water distance3 km0 km
Places to eat. Edinburgh and Istanbul are level on 70.
EdinburghIstanbul
Score7070
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0232,086
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3520
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 9 points.9
EdinburghIstanbul
Score5766
Museums within 10 km30145
Museums within 2 km of centre2271
Share of museums within 2 km %7349
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 15 points.15
EdinburghIstanbul
Score6479
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1932,266
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre8841,176
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7452
Nightclubs within 4 km65221
Nature & day trips. Edinburgh leads by 10 points.10
EdinburghIstanbul
Score3525
Protected land share 50 km %21
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %8548
Park area within 2 km166 hectares60 hectares
Good for families. Edinburgh leads by 5 points.5
EdinburghIstanbul
Score7267
Tourist attractions within 2 km8768
Park area within 2 km166 hectares60 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 15 points.15
EdinburghIstanbul
Score6075
Notable places within 2 km126285
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 35 points.35
EdinburghIstanbul
Score5489
Price level global84.935.2
Daily budget€100
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 18 points.18
EdinburghIstanbul
Score5169
Monthly daytime high6.6 °C to 18.8 °C9.2 °C to 29.7 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 80 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
Edinburgh
7
7
9
12
14
17
19
19
17
13
9
7
Istanbul
9
10
12
17
22
27
30
30
26
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Edinburgh
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Rainfall, mm
Edinburgh
62
47
47
43
49
63
65
69
55
80
68
63
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Daylight, hours per day
Edinburgh
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Edinburgh
2
3
4
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
3
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. Edinburgh: 1991-2020 normals, Edinburgh Airport (10 km from centre). Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromEdinburghIstanbul
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
€41-45
EDI · 11 km
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
AntalyaAYT
4 h 35 m
€195-238
2 stops
EDI · 11 km
1 h 15 m
€54-87
SAW · 30 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€78-108
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
DalamanDLM
4 h 25 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
1 h 15 m
€53-54
SAW · 30 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 20 m
€75-101
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
2 h 40 m
€142-153
1 stop
IST · 36 km
IzmirADB
4 h 15 m
no fares
GLA · 78 km
1 h 5 m
€49-61
IST · 36 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 50 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
DusseldorfDUS, NRN
1 h 40 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
3 h 5 m
€124-141
SAW · 30 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
CancunCUN
9 h 40 m
no fares
GLA · 78 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

MeasureEdinburghIstanbul
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
Elevation47 m100 m
Main airportEdinburgh Airport (EDI)11 km from centre158 non-stop destinationsİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureEdinburghIstanbul
City population488,05015,655,924
People per km²1,8842,930
Museums within 10 km3272
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre7862
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 Edinburgh 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). 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.