VacationSelector

Istanbul or Mexico City?

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 sights concentration with your weighting.

Mexico City
62
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

IstanbulMexico City
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul leads by 43 points.43
IstanbulMexico City
Score430
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km24
Coast distance0 km247 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 4 points.4
IstanbulMexico City
Score7066
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,0862,179
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2015
Museums & heritage. Mexico City leads by 13 points.13
IstanbulMexico City
Score6679
Museums within 10 km145138
Museums within 2 km of centre7165
Share of museums within 2 km %4947
Unesco sites within 50 km16
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 1 points.1
IstanbulMexico City
Score7978
Drinking venues within 4 km2,2662,156
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,176926
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5243
Nightclubs within 4 km221198
Nature & day trips. Mexico City leads by 38 points.38
IstanbulMexico City
Score2563
Protected land share 50 km %130
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %48100
Park area within 2 km60 hectares32 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 17 points.17
IstanbulMexico City
Score6750
Tourist attractions within 2 km6823
Park area within 2 km60 hectares32 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km24
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 21 points.21
IstanbulMexico City
Score7554
Notable places within 2 km28588
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 13 points.13
IstanbulMexico City
Score8976
Price level global35.254.2
Daily budget€100
Year-round weather. Mexico City leads by 21 points.21
IstanbulMexico City
Score6990
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C22.2 °C to 27.9 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm3 mm to 186 mm
Dry months46
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
Mexico City
22
25
26
28
27
26
25
25
24
23
23
22
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Mexico City
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Mexico City
7
3
19
27
53
127
176
186
144
79
10
9
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Mexico City
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
Sunshine, hours per day
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2
Mexico City
8
8
9
8
8
6
6
6
5
6
7
7

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre). Mexico City: 1991-2020 normals, Mexico Central, D. F. (7.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulMexico City
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
4 h 40 m
€335-379
MEX · 7 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 15 m
€177-220
IST · 36 km
17 h 30 m
€1,075-1211
2 stops
MEX · 7 km
CancunCUN
12 h 55 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
2 h 10 m
€123-162
MEX · 7 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
13 h 35 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
3 h 35 m
€248-282
1 stop
MEX · 7 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
11 h 0 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
3 h 50 m
€259-271
MEX · 7 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
11 h 30 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
BarcelonaBCN
3 h 15 m
€179-269
IST · 36 km
11 h 50 m
€883-934
2 stops
MEX · 7 km
BogotaBOG
13 h 15 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
4 h 25 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 0 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
15 h 20 m
€1,089-1205
3 stops
MEX · 7 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

MeasureIstanbulMexico City
Official languageTurkishSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec Maya
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)Mexican Peso (MXN)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB127 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+3UTC-6
Emergency number112911
Elevation100 m2,240 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsMexico City Benito Juárez International Airport (MEX)7 km from centre95 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days9 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulMexico City
City population15,655,9249,209,944
People per km²2,9306,202
Museums within 10 km72108
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km16
Distinct cuisines in the centre6250
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 Mexico City 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.