VacationSelector

Istanbul or Lucerne?

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 value for money and nightlife with your weighting.

Lucerne
33
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

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.

IstanbulLucerne
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul leads by 43 points.43
IstanbulLucerne
Score430
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km216
Coast distance0 km669 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 23 points.23
IstanbulLucerne
Score7047
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,086269
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2025
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 26 points.26
IstanbulLucerne
Score6640
Museums within 10 km14523
Museums within 2 km of centre7113
Share of museums within 2 km %4957
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 51 points.51
IstanbulLucerne
Score7928
Drinking venues within 4 km2,266202
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,176151
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5275
Nightclubs within 4 km22111
Nature & day trips. Istanbul and Lucerne are level on 25.
IstanbulLucerne
Score2525
Protected land share 50 km %17
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %48100
Park area within 2 km60 hectares29 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 29 points.29
IstanbulLucerne
Score6738
Tourist attractions within 2 km6815
Park area within 2 km60 hectares29 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 40 points.40
IstanbulLucerne
Score7535
Notable places within 2 km28529
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 54 points.54
IstanbulLucerne
Score8935
Price level global35.2110.5
Daily budget€100€248
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 16 points.16
IstanbulLucerne
Score6953
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm60 mm to 128 mm
Dry months40
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
Lucerne
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Lucerne
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2
Lucerne
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre). Lucerne: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (41.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulLucerne
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
AntalyaAYT
1 h 15 m
€54-87
SAW · 30 km
3 h 15 m
€154-180
ZRH · 49 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 15 m
€177-220
IST · 36 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 15 m
€161-174
IST · 36 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 49 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 49 km
BerlinBER
2 h 40 m
€125-140
IST · 36 km
1 h 25 m
€140-176
ZRH · 49 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€137-196
IST · 36 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
9 h 30 m
€507-517
1 stop
IST · 36 km
11 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
13 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
12 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 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

MeasureIstanbulLucerne
Official languageTurkishFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+3UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation100 m436 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulLucerne
City population15,655,92486,234
People per km²2,9302,963
Museums within 10 km7214
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre6246
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 Lucerne 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.