VacationSelector

Faro or Istanbul?

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

Your match

Faro
47
match

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

Istanbul
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on nightlife and sights concentration 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.

FaroIstanbul
Beaches & swimming. Faro leads by 18 points.18
FaroIstanbul
Score6143
Swim season months33
Beaches 10 km132
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 26 points.26
FaroIstanbul
Score4470
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2552,086
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2220
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 44 points.44
FaroIstanbul
Score2266
Museums within 10 km9145
Museums within 2 km of centre871
Share of museums within 2 km %8949
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 58 points.58
FaroIstanbul
Score2179
Drinking venues within 4 km1432,266
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1231,176
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8652
Nightclubs within 4 km8221
Nature & day trips. Faro leads by 32 points.32
FaroIstanbul
Score5725
Protected land share 50 km %111
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4248
Park area within 2 km34 hectares60 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 31 points.31
FaroIstanbul
Score3667
Tourist attractions within 2 km1068
Park area within 2 km34 hectares60 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 53 points.53
FaroIstanbul
Score2275
Notable places within 2 km14285
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 15 points.15
FaroIstanbul
Score7489
Price level global55.935.2
Daily budget€109€100
Year-round weather. Faro leads by 14 points.14
FaroIstanbul
Score8369
Monthly daytime high16.3 °C to 29 °C9.2 °C to 29.7 °C
Monthly rainfall1 mm to 102 mm23 mm to 101 mm
Dry months64
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
Faro
16
17
19
21
24
27
29
29
26
23
19
17
Istanbul
9
10
12
17
22
27
30
30
26
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Faro
17
16
16
17
18
20
21
22
21
21
19
17
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Rainfall, mm
Faro
55
39
44
40
23
6
1
5
28
57
75
102
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Daylight, hours per day
Faro
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Faro
6
6
8
9
10
12
12
11
9
8
6
6
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. Faro: 1991-2020 normals, Faro / Aeroporto (2.8 km from centre). Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromFaroIstanbul
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 40 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
DublinDUB
2 h 50 m
€75-114
FAO · 3 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 30 m
€126-204
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 50 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 0 m
€144-189
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
3 h 15 m
€161-174
IST · 36 km
BristolBRS
2 h 35 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
SAW · 30 km
DusseldorfDUS, NRN
3 h 0 m
€138-208
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
3 h 5 m
€124-141
SAW · 30 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
3 h 0 m
€137-201
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
2 h 50 m
€137-196
IST · 36 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 15 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
MarrakechRAK
1 h 20 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
4 h 40 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 2026-09 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

MeasureFaroIstanbul
Official languagePortugueseTurkish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Turkish Lira (TRY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+3
Emergency number112112
Elevation10 m100 m
Main airportFaro - Gago Coutinho International Airport (FAO)3 km from centre91 non-stop destinationsİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureFaroIstanbul
City population64,56015,655,924
People per km²3192,930
Museums within 10 km272
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre3462
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months3 months

Where else could you go?

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