VacationSelector

Geneva or Istanbul?

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

Your match

Geneva
50
match

Wins on nature & day trips with your weighting.

Istanbul
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on value for money and beaches & swimming 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.

GenevaIstanbul
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul leads by 43 points.43
GenevaIstanbul
Score043
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km432
Coast distance279 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Geneva and Istanbul are level on 70.
GenevaIstanbul
Score7070
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0282,086
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3520
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 14 points.14
GenevaIstanbul
Score5266
Museums within 10 km35145
Museums within 2 km of centre2071
Share of museums within 2 km %5749
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 29 points.29
GenevaIstanbul
Score5079
Drinking venues within 4 km5492,266
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre4271,176
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7852
Nightclubs within 4 km60221
Nature & day trips. Geneva leads by 34 points.34
GenevaIstanbul
Score5925
Protected land share 50 km %271
Landscape blanket share 50 km %210
Land share of disc %10048
Park area within 2 km182 hectares60 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 2 points.2
GenevaIstanbul
Score6567
Tourist attractions within 2 km2868
Park area within 2 km182 hectares60 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 19 points.19
GenevaIstanbul
Score5675
Notable places within 2 km99285
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 54 points.54
GenevaIstanbul
Score3589
Price level global110.535.2
Daily budget€248€100
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 10 points.10
GenevaIstanbul
Score5969
Monthly daytime high5.1 °C to 26.8 °C9.2 °C to 29.7 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 94 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
Geneva
5
7
12
16
20
24
27
26
21
16
9
6
Istanbul
9
10
12
17
22
27
30
30
26
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Geneva
No coastline within reach
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Rainfall, mm
Geneva
71
55
61
66
77
81
77
80
87
94
87
88
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Daylight, hours per day
Geneva
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Geneva
2
3
6
6
7
8
9
8
6
4
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. Geneva: 1991-2020 normals, Geneve-Cointrin (5.7 km from centre). Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGenevaIstanbul
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€91-200
GVA · 5 km
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€104-203
GVA · 5 km
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 30 m
€160-186
GVA · 5 km
3 h 15 m
€161-174
IST · 36 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 25 m
€318-351
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
4 h 15 m
€177-220
IST · 36 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
1 h 15 m
€54-87
SAW · 30 km
PortoOPO
2 h 10 m
€127-171
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
4 h 20 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 25 m
€65-78
GVA · 5 km
3 h 15 m
€179-269
IST · 36 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 25 m
€156-181
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
4 h 25 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 0 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
9 h 0 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

MeasureGenevaIstanbul
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, RomanshTurkish
CurrencySwiss Franc (CHF)Turkish Lira (TRY)
SocketsCJ230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+3
Emergency number112112
Elevation403 m100 m
Main airportGeneva International Airport (GVA)5 km from centre140 non-stop destinationsİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureGenevaIstanbul
City population209,06115,655,924
People per km²13,1482,930
Museums within 10 km3572
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre8062
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Geneva 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.