VacationSelector

Istanbul or Osaka?

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, level with your weighting

Istanbul
65
match

Wins on sights concentration and value for money with your weighting.

Osaka
65
match

Wins on places to eat and nightlife 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.

IstanbulOsaka
Beaches & swimming. Osaka leads by 12 points.12
IstanbulOsaka
Score4355
Swim season months35
Beaches 10 km225
Coast distance0 km7 km
Water distance0 km7 km
Places to eat. Osaka leads by 20 points.20
IstanbulOsaka
Score7090
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,0869,134
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2025
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 2 points.2
IstanbulOsaka
Score6664
Museums within 10 km14578
Museums within 2 km of centre7122
Share of museums within 2 km %4928
Unesco sites within 50 km16
Nightlife. Osaka leads by 18 points.18
IstanbulOsaka
Score7997
Drinking venues within 4 km2,2668,473
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,1764,492
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5253
Nightclubs within 4 km22197
Nature & day trips. Osaka leads by 3 points.3
IstanbulOsaka
Score2528
Protected land share 50 km %11
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %4884
Park area within 2 km60 hectares88 hectares
Good for families. Osaka leads by 5 points.5
IstanbulOsaka
Score6772
Tourist attractions within 2 km6847
Park area within 2 km60 hectares88 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km27
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 27 points.27
IstanbulOsaka
Score7548
Notable places within 2 km28563
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 19 points.19
IstanbulOsaka
Score8970
Price level global35.262.4
Daily budget€100
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 6 points.6
IstanbulOsaka
Score6963
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C9.7 °C to 33.6 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm47 mm to 185 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
Osaka
10
11
14
20
25
28
32
34
30
24
18
12
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Osaka
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Osaka
47
61
103
103
136
185
175
113
146
140
73
56
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Osaka
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2
Osaka
5
5
6
6
7
5
6
7
5
5
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). Osaka: 1991-2020 normals, Osaka (1.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulOsaka
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 0 m
€533-647
IST · 36 km
1 h 40 m
€107-142
KIX · 38 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 10 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 10 m
€118-135
ITM · 11 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
9 h 30 m
€507-517
1 stop
IST · 36 km
5 h 35 m
€288-317
KIX · 38 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
10 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
2 h 10 m
€237-303
KIX · 38 km
TehranIKA, THR
3 h 5 m
€261-292
IST · 36 km
9 h 25 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
12 h 0 m
€859-891
3 stops
KIX · 38 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 15 m
€177-220
IST · 36 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
KIX · 38 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€137-196
IST · 36 km
11 h 30 m
€1,507-1966
2 stops
ITM · 11 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
ITM · 11 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

MeasureIstanbulOsaka
Official languageTurkishJapanese
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)Yen (JPY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+3UTC+9
Emergency number112Police 110, fire 119
Elevation100 m20 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsKansai International Airport (KIX)38 km from centre62 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulOsaka
City population15,655,9242,751,862
People per km²2,93012,340
Museums within 10 km7243
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km16
Distinct cuisines in the centre6297
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months5 months

Where else could you go?

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