VacationSelector

Granada or Istanbul?

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

Your match

Granada
53
match

Wins on nature & day trips and year-round weather with your weighting.

Istanbul
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

GranadaIstanbul
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul leads by 43 points.43
GranadaIstanbul
Score043
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km02
Coast distance48 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 3 points.3
GranadaIstanbul
Score6770
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8722,086
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3420
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 18 points.18
GranadaIstanbul
Score4866
Museums within 10 km28145
Museums within 2 km of centre2671
Share of museums within 2 km %9349
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 27 points.27
GranadaIstanbul
Score5279
Drinking venues within 4 km6372,266
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre4941,176
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7852
Nightclubs within 4 km46221
Nature & day trips. Granada leads by 38 points.38
GranadaIstanbul
Score6325
Protected land share 50 km %271
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %9648
Park area within 2 km46 hectares60 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 11 points.11
GranadaIstanbul
Score5667
Tourist attractions within 2 km6068
Park area within 2 km46 hectares60 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 31 points.31
GranadaIstanbul
Score4475
Notable places within 2 km50285
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 18 points.18
GranadaIstanbul
Score7189
Price level global60.835.2
Daily budget€122€100
Year-round weather. Granada leads by 5 points.5
GranadaIstanbul
Score7469
Monthly daytime high13.1 °C to 34.8 °C9.2 °C to 29.7 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 51 mm23 mm to 101 mm
Dry months74
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
Granada
13
15
18
20
25
31
35
34
29
24
17
14
Istanbul
9
10
12
17
22
27
30
30
26
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Granada
No coastline within reach
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Rainfall, mm
Granada
39
33
45
44
29
6
0
3
28
45
51
44
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Daylight, hours per day
Granada
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
Granada
6
6
7
8
10
12
13
11
8
7
5
5
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. Granada: 1991-2020 normals, Granada / Caserío Hospicio (5 km from centre). Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGranadaIstanbul
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 40 m
€67-129
AGP · 97 km
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 55 m
€146-177
AGP · 97 km
3 h 15 m
€161-174
IST · 36 km
DublinDUB
2 h 50 m
€122-139
1 stop
AGP · 97 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 45 m
€110-142
1 stop
AGP · 97 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 25 m
€61-88
AGP · 97 km
2 h 40 m
€142-153
1 stop
IST · 36 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 30 m
€92-138
GRX · 16 km
3 h 15 m
€179-269
IST · 36 km
DusseldorfDUS, NRN
2 h 50 m
€133-149
AGP · 97 km
3 h 5 m
€124-141
SAW · 30 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 50 m
no fares
AGP · 97 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
AGP · 97 km
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
MarrakechRAK
1 h 25 m
€58-149
AGP · 97 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 2026-08 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

MeasureGranadaIstanbul
Official languageSpanishTurkish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Turkish Lira (TRY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+3
Emergency number112112
Elevation693 m100 m
Main airportF.G.L. Airport Granada-Jaén Airport (GRX)16 km from centre12 non-stop destinationsİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureGranadaIstanbul
City population233,97515,655,924
People per km²2,6592,930
Museums within 10 km1972
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre6262
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 Granada 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. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.