VacationSelector

Istanbul or Montpellier?

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 museums & heritage with your weighting.

Montpellier
47
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.

IstanbulMontpellier
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul leads by 11 points.11
IstanbulMontpellier
Score4332
Swim season months32
Beaches 10 km28
Coast distance0 km9 km
Water distance0 km9 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 5 points.5
IstanbulMontpellier
Score7065
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,086737
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2034
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 40 points.40
IstanbulMontpellier
Score6626
Museums within 10 km14514
Museums within 2 km of centre713
Share of museums within 2 km %4921
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 41 points.41
IstanbulMontpellier
Score7938
Drinking venues within 4 km2,266318
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,176265
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5283
Nightclubs within 4 km22125
Nature & day trips. Montpellier leads by 18 points.18
IstanbulMontpellier
Score2543
Protected land share 50 km %115
Landscape blanket share 50 km %010
Land share of disc %4870
Park area within 2 km60 hectares55 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 23 points.23
IstanbulMontpellier
Score6744
Tourist attractions within 2 km688
Park area within 2 km60 hectares55 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km27
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 37 points.37
IstanbulMontpellier
Score7538
Notable places within 2 km28535
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 27 points.27
IstanbulMontpellier
Score8962
Price level global35.273.7
Daily budget€100€160
Year-round weather. Montpellier leads by 5 points.5
IstanbulMontpellier
Score6974
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C12 °C to 29.6 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm17 mm to 93 mm
Dry months45
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
Montpellier
12
13
16
19
23
27
30
29
25
21
16
13
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Montpellier
12
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
20
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Montpellier
56
35
39
56
46
33
17
36
88
93
78
59
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Montpellier
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2
Montpellier
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
10
8
6
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre). Montpellier: 1991-2020 normals, Montpellier (7.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulMontpellier
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
BordeauxBOD
3 h 30 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€137-196
IST · 36 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
TunisTUN
2 h 40 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
MadridMAD
3 h 50 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
AntalyaAYT
1 h 15 m
€54-87
SAW · 30 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
MunichMUC
2 h 30 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
9 h 45 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 0 m
€533-647
IST · 36 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 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

MeasureIstanbulMontpellier
Official languageTurkishFrench
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+3UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation100 m7 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsMontpellier-Méditerranée Airport (MPL)8 km from centre36 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulMontpellier
City population15,655,924310,240
People per km²2,9305,452
Museums within 10 km7214
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre6265
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 Montpellier 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.