VacationSelector

Istanbul or Lima?

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 nightlife and sights concentration with your weighting.

Lima
55
match

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

IstanbulLima
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul leads by 6 points.6
IstanbulLima
Score4337
Swim season months32
Beaches 10 km212
Coast distance0 km6 km
Water distance0 km6 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 18 points.18
IstanbulLima
Score7052
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,086796
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2014
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 2 points.2
IstanbulLima
Score6664
Museums within 10 km14589
Museums within 2 km of centre7147
Share of museums within 2 km %4953
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 34 points.34
IstanbulLima
Score7945
Drinking venues within 4 km2,266409
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,176177
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5243
Nightclubs within 4 km22163
Nature & day trips. Lima leads by 2 points.2
IstanbulLima
Score2527
Protected land share 50 km %12
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4851
Park area within 2 km60 hectares54 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 11 points.11
IstanbulLima
Score6756
Tourist attractions within 2 km6825
Park area within 2 km60 hectares54 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km24
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 29 points.29
IstanbulLima
Score7546
Notable places within 2 km28554
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 9 points.9
IstanbulLima
Score8980
Price level global35.247.7
Daily budget€100
Year-round weather. Lima leads by 23 points.23
IstanbulLima
Score6992
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C18.6 °C to 27.4 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm0 mm to 1 mm
Dry months412
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
Lima
26
27
27
25
22
20
19
19
19
20
22
24
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Lima
21
22
21
20
19
18
18
17
17
17
18
19
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Lima
1
1
0
0
1
1
1
1
1
1
0
1
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Lima
13
13
12
12
12
11
12
12
12
12
13
13
Sunshine, hours per day
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2
Lima
5
5
6
6
3
1
1
1
1
2
3
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre). Lima: 1991-2020 normals, Lima-Callao / Aerop. Internacional Jorgechavez (10.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulLima
Buenos AiresEZE, AEP
15 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
4 h 25 m
€256
LIM · 9 km
SantiagoSCL
16 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
3 h 35 m
€181-198
LIM · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
12 h 45 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 15 m
€161-174
IST · 36 km
13 h 5 m
€876-946
1 stop
LIM · 9 km
MadridMAD
3 h 50 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
11 h 50 m
€895-903
LIM · 9 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
13 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
4 h 45 m
€282-372
LIM · 9 km
MiamiMIA, OPF
11 h 55 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
5 h 40 m
€403-426
1 stop
LIM · 9 km
BogotaBOG
13 h 15 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
14 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
5 h 40 m
€348-370
1 stop
LIM · 9 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

MeasureIstanbulLima
Official languageTurkishSpanish, Aymara, Quechua
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)Sol (PEN)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzABC220 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+3UTC-5
Emergency number112111 or 911
Elevation100 m154 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsJorge Chávez International Airport (LIM)9 km from centre63 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulLima
City population15,655,9249,943,800
People per km²2,9303,721
Museums within 10 km7246
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre6233
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Istanbul or Lima 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.