VacationSelector

Istanbul or Krakow?

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

Your match

Istanbul
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nightlife with your weighting.

Krakow
58
match

Wins on nature & day trips and museums & heritage 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.

IstanbulKrakow
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul leads by 43 points.43
IstanbulKrakow
Score430
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km29
Coast distance0 km456 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 2 points.2
IstanbulKrakow
Score7068
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,0861,032
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2030
Museums & heritage. Krakow leads by 9 points.9
IstanbulKrakow
Score6675
Museums within 10 km14584
Museums within 2 km of centre7169
Share of museums within 2 km %4982
Unesco sites within 50 km14
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 22 points.22
IstanbulKrakow
Score7957
Drinking venues within 4 km2,266836
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,176697
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5283
Nightclubs within 4 km22154
Nature & day trips. Krakow leads by 21 points.21
IstanbulKrakow
Score2546
Protected land share 50 km %114
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %48100
Park area within 2 km60 hectares79 hectares
Good for families. Krakow leads by 7 points.7
IstanbulKrakow
Score6774
Tourist attractions within 2 km6877
Park area within 2 km60 hectares79 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km24
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 7 points.7
IstanbulKrakow
Score7568
Notable places within 2 km285198
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 10 points.10
IstanbulKrakow
Score8979
Price level global35.249
Daily budget€100€133
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 11 points.11
IstanbulKrakow
Score6958
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C1.5 °C to 25.3 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm31 mm to 100 mm
Dry months44
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
Istanbul
9
10
12
17
22
27
30
30
26
21
16
11
Krakow
2
4
8
15
20
23
25
25
19
14
8
3
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Krakow
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Krakow
38
31
38
47
79
77
100
75
67
51
41
35
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Krakow
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2
Krakow
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre). Krakow: 1991-2020 normals, Krakow (10.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulKrakow
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
AntalyaAYT
1 h 15 m
€54-87
SAW · 30 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€137-196
IST · 36 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 40 m
€142-153
1 stop
IST · 36 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
OsloOSL, TRF
3 h 30 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 15 m
€161-174
IST · 36 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 15 m
€177-220
IST · 36 km
5 h 30 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
8 h 45 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
ColomboCMB
8 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
9 h 20 m
no fares
KTW · 76 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

MeasureIstanbulKrakow
Official languageTurkishPolish
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)Zloty (PLN)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCE50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+3UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation100 m219 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsKraków John Paul II International Airport (KRK)11 km from centre133 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulKrakow
City population15,655,924804,237
People per km²2,9302,459
Museums within 10 km72114
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km14
Distinct cuisines in the centre6268
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 Istanbul or Krakow 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). 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. 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.