VacationSelector

Istanbul or Munich?

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 value for money with your weighting.

Munich
57
match

Wins on nature & day trips and good for families 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.

IstanbulMunich
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul leads by 43 points.43
IstanbulMunich
Score430
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km26
Coast distance0 km579 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Munich leads by 3 points.3
IstanbulMunich
Score7073
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,0861,280
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2035
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 5 points.5
IstanbulMunich
Score6661
Museums within 10 km14574
Museums within 2 km of centre7148
Share of museums within 2 km %4965
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 12 points.12
IstanbulMunich
Score7967
Drinking venues within 4 km2,2661,335
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,176763
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5257
Nightclubs within 4 km221103
Nature & day trips. Munich leads by 23 points.23
IstanbulMunich
Score2548
Protected land share 50 km %117
Landscape blanket share 50 km %015
Land share of disc %48100
Park area within 2 km60 hectares199 hectares
Good for families. Munich leads by 12 points.12
IstanbulMunich
Score6779
Tourist attractions within 2 km6880
Park area within 2 km60 hectares199 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 7 points.7
IstanbulMunich
Score7568
Notable places within 2 km285196
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 29 points.29
IstanbulMunich
Score8960
Price level global35.275.9
Daily budget€100€163
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 13 points.13
IstanbulMunich
Score6956
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C4 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm46 mm to 121 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
Munich
4
6
10
15
19
23
25
25
20
15
8
5
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Munich
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Munich
52
46
61
56
107
121
119
117
78
67
58
59
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Munich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2
Munich
2
3
5
6
7
7
8
8
6
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre). Munich: 1991-2020 normals, München (1.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulMunich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
1 h 45 m
€116-210
MUC · 29 km
AntalyaAYT
1 h 15 m
€54-87
SAW · 30 km
3 h 0 m
€207-225
MUC · 29 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
1 h 30 m
€183-250
MUC · 29 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 15 m
€177-220
IST · 36 km
6 h 0 m
€292-332
MUC · 29 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€137-196
IST · 36 km
1 h 0 m
€177-210
MUC · 29 km
DusseldorfDUS, NRN
3 h 5 m
€124-141
SAW · 30 km
1 h 15 m
€157-185
MUC · 29 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 15 m
€161-174
IST · 36 km
1 h 25 m
€227-267
MUC · 29 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
8 h 15 m
no fares
MUC · 29 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
9 h 30 m
€507-517
1 stop
IST · 36 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
MUC · 29 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
13 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
12 h 15 m
no fares
MUC · 29 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

MeasureIstanbulMunich
Official languageTurkishGerman
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+3UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation100 m519 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsMunich Airport (MUC)29 km from centre208 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulMunich
City population15,655,9241,510,378
People per km²2,9304,861
Museums within 10 km7274
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre6289
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 Munich 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.