VacationSelector

Interlaken or Istanbul?

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

Your match

Interlaken
23
match

Wins on nature & day trips with your weighting.

Istanbul
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on nightlife and value for money 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.

InterlakenIstanbul
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul leads by 43 points.43
InterlakenIstanbul
Score043
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km122
Coast distance713 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 41 points.41
InterlakenIstanbul
Score2970
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1182,086
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1720
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 43 points.43
InterlakenIstanbul
Score2366
Museums within 10 km5145
Museums within 2 km of centre271
Share of museums within 2 km %4049
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 75 points.75
InterlakenIstanbul
Score479
Drinking venues within 4 km422,266
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre381,176
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %9052
Nightclubs within 4 km3221
Nature & day trips. Interlaken leads by 2 points.2
InterlakenIstanbul
Score2725
Protected land share 50 km %191
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10048
Park area within 2 km5 hectares60 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 53 points.53
InterlakenIstanbul
Score1467
Tourist attractions within 2 km1168
Park area within 2 km5 hectares60 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 53 points.53
InterlakenIstanbul
Score2275
Notable places within 2 km14285
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 54 points.54
InterlakenIstanbul
Score3589
Price level global110.535.2
Daily budget€248€100
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 12 points.12
InterlakenIstanbul
Score5769
Monthly daytime high2.8 °C to 23.6 °C9.2 °C to 29.7 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 68 mm23 mm to 101 mm
Dry months34
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
Interlaken
3
5
9
15
17
22
24
23
18
14
7
4
Istanbul
9
10
12
17
22
27
30
30
26
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Interlaken
No coastline within reach
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Rainfall, mm
Interlaken
53
41
37
34
52
48
62
61
38
43
51
68
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Daylight, hours per day
Interlaken
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
9
9
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Interlaken
No sunshine record
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. Interlaken: 2005-2020 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Meiringen / Unterbach (19.3 km from centre). Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromInterlakenIstanbul
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 100 km
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 15 m
€154-180
ZRH · 100 km
1 h 15 m
€54-87
SAW · 30 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 100 km
4 h 15 m
€177-220
IST · 36 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 100 km
3 h 15 m
€161-174
IST · 36 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 100 km
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
BerlinBER
1 h 25 m
€140-176
ZRH · 100 km
2 h 40 m
€125-140
IST · 36 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 100 km
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 100 km
2 h 50 m
€137-196
IST · 36 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 100 km
9 h 30 m
€507-517
1 stop
IST · 36 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 100 km
13 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

MeasureInterlakenIstanbul
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
Elevation571 m100 m
Main airportZürich Airport (ZRH)100 km from centre181 non-stop destinationsİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureInterlakenIstanbul
City population6,12315,655,924
People per km²1,4242,930
Museums within 10 km372
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre2262
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 Interlaken 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). 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.