VacationSelector

Istanbul or New York?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Istanbul
65
match

Wins on value for money and year-round weather with your weighting.

New York
66
match

Wins on places to eat and beaches & swimming 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.

IstanbulNew York
Beaches & swimming. New York leads by 21 points.21
IstanbulNew York
Score4364
Swim season months33
Beaches 10 km217
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. New York leads by 25 points.25
IstanbulNew York
Score7095
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,0866,032
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2038
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 6 points.6
IstanbulNew York
Score6660
Museums within 10 km145119
Museums within 2 km of centre7131
Share of museums within 2 km %4926
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. New York leads by 10 points.10
IstanbulNew York
Score7989
Drinking venues within 4 km2,2664,159
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,1762,015
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5248
Nightclubs within 4 km221192
Nature & day trips. New York leads by 14 points.14
IstanbulNew York
Score2539
Protected land share 50 km %14
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4869
Park area within 2 km60 hectares134 hectares
Good for families. New York leads by 5 points.5
IstanbulNew York
Score6772
Tourist attractions within 2 km6837
Park area within 2 km60 hectares134 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km27
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 1 points.1
IstanbulNew York
Score7574
Notable places within 2 km285268
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 46 points.46
IstanbulNew York
Score8943
Price level global35.2100
Daily budget€100
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 11 points.11
IstanbulNew York
Score6958
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C4.5 °C to 30.1 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm74 mm to 112 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
New York
5
6
10
16
22
27
30
29
25
19
13
7
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
New York
6
4
5
8
13
18
22
23
21
17
13
9
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
New York
83
74
102
97
91
103
107
112
98
97
80
104
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
New York
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2
New York
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre). New York: 1991-2020 normals, LaGuardia Airport (12.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulNew York
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
7 h 10 m
€459-498
JFK · 21 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
7 h 30 m
€445-517
JFK · 21 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€137-196
IST · 36 km
7 h 55 m
€439-457
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
11 h 0 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
2 h 5 m
€236-237
LGA · 13 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
10 h 30 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 5 m
€203-258
LGA · 13 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 15 m
€177-220
IST · 36 km
13 h 40 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 40 m
€142-153
1 stop
IST · 36 km
8 h 15 m
€430-458
JFK · 21 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
11 h 35 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
2 h 5 m
€165-236
EWR · 14 km
TashkentTAS
4 h 35 m
€285-352
IST · 36 km
12 h 40 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
14 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
4 h 40 m
€374-446
1 stop
JFK · 21 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

MeasureIstanbulNew York
Official languageTurkish
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+3UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation100 m25 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsJohn F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)21 km from centre188 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulNew York
City population15,655,9248,804,190
People per km²2,9307,256
Museums within 10 km72157
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre62132
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Istanbul or New York 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.