VacationSelector

Galway or Istanbul?

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

Your match

Galway
39
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.

GalwayIstanbul
Beaches & swimming. Galway leads by 8 points.8
GalwayIstanbul
Score5143
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km132
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 33 points.33
GalwayIstanbul
Score3770
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1732,086
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2020
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 46 points.46
GalwayIstanbul
Score2066
Museums within 10 km5145
Museums within 2 km of centre571
Share of museums within 2 km %10049
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 53 points.53
GalwayIstanbul
Score2679
Drinking venues within 4 km1852,266
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1531,176
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8352
Nightclubs within 4 km8221
Nature & day trips. Galway leads by 30 points.30
GalwayIstanbul
Score5525
Protected land share 50 km %—1
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8548
Park area within 2 km65 hectares60 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 42 points.42
GalwayIstanbul
Score2567
Tourist attractions within 2 km568
Park area within 2 km65 hectares60 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 53 points.53
GalwayIstanbul
Score2275
Notable places within 2 km14285
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 32 points.32
GalwayIstanbul
Score5789
Price level global80.235.2
Daily budget€187€100
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 15 points.15
GalwayIstanbul
Score5469
Monthly daytime high8.9 °C to 19.6 °C9.2 °C to 29.7 °C
Monthly rainfall63 mm to 113 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
Galway
9
10
11
14
16
19
20
19
18
14
11
9
Istanbul
9
10
12
17
22
27
30
30
26
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Galway
9
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
15
14
12
10
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Rainfall, mm
Galway
100
87
76
63
63
72
76
89
77
101
104
113
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Daylight, hours per day
Galway
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
Galway
2
2
4
5
6
5
4
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. Galway: 1991-2020 normals, Shannon Airport (64.2 km from centre). Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGalwayIstanbul
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 30 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
DublinDUB
1 h 0 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
BostonBOS, PSM
6 h 10 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 45 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 10 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
2 h 50 m
€137-196
IST · 36 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 10 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
KrakowKRK
3 h 0 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 40 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
3 h 40 m
no fares
SAW · 30 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 50 m
no fares
SNN · 64 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

MeasureGalwayIstanbul
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
Elevation25 m100 m
Main airportShannon Airport (SNN)64 km from centre36 non-stop destinationsİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureGalwayIstanbul
City population83,45615,655,924
People per km²1,5632,930
Museums within 10 km472
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre2562
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 Galway 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.