VacationSelector

Istanbul or Limassol?

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 sights concentration and good for families with your weighting.

Limassol
46
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather 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.

IstanbulLimassol
Beaches & swimming. Limassol leads by 36 points.36
IstanbulLimassol
Score4379
Swim season months36
Beaches 10 km227
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 27 points.27
IstanbulLimassol
Score7043
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,086298
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2019
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 22 points.22
IstanbulLimassol
Score6644
Museums within 10 km14517
Museums within 2 km of centre7110
Share of museums within 2 km %4959
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 40 points.40
IstanbulLimassol
Score7939
Drinking venues within 4 km2,266340
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,176256
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5275
Nightclubs within 4 km22120
Nature & day trips. Istanbul leads by 3 points.3
IstanbulLimassol
Score2522
Protected land share 50 km %12
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4849
Park area within 2 km60 hectares32 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 51 points.51
IstanbulLimassol
Score6716
Tourist attractions within 2 km683
Park area within 2 km60 hectares32 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 61 points.61
IstanbulLimassol
Score7514
Notable places within 2 km2859
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 19 points.19
IstanbulLimassol
Score8970
Price level global35.261.4
Daily budget€100€129
Year-round weather. Limassol leads by 16 points.16
IstanbulLimassol
Score6985
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C16.5 °C to 31.2 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm0 mm to 98 mm
Dry months48
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
Limassol
17
17
19
22
25
29
31
31
30
27
23
19
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Limassol
18
17
17
18
20
23
26
27
26
25
22
20
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Limassol
81
47
29
17
10
2
1
0
5
14
42
98
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Limassol
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2
Limassol
6
6
8
9
11
12
13
12
10
9
7
6

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre). Limassol: 1998-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Akrotiri (11.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulLimassol
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
4 h 25 m
€125-167
PFO · 51 km
ManchesterMAN
3 h 50 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
PFO · 51 km
AntalyaAYT
1 h 15 m
€54-87
SAW · 30 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ECN · 68 km
AthensATH
1 h 20 m
€128-154
IST · 36 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
PFO · 51 km
IzmirADB
1 h 5 m
€49-61
IST · 36 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
ECN · 68 km
ThessalonikiSKG
1 h 15 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 55 m
€96-218
PFO · 51 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
4 h 5 m
€197-331
1 stop
PFO · 51 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 15 m
€161-174
IST · 36 km
4 h 5 m
€253-340
1 stop
PFO · 51 km
AnkaraESB
1 h 5 m
€42-52
IST · 36 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
ECN · 68 km
AlmatyALA
5 h 15 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
5 h 10 m
€377-465
2 stops
LCA · 58 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

MeasureIstanbulLimassol
Official languageTurkishTurkish, Greek, Modern Greek
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG240 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+3UTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation100 m10 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsLarnaca International Airport (LCA)58 km from centre109 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days17 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulLimassol
City population15,655,924107,970
People per km²2,9302,405
Museums within 10 km722
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre6228
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months6 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Istanbul or Limassol 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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.