VacationSelector

Istanbul or Porto?

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 sights concentration with your weighting.

Porto
62
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips 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.

IstanbulPorto
Beaches & swimming. Porto leads by 17 points.17
IstanbulPorto
Score4360
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km252
Coast distance0 km4 km
Water distance0 km3 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 2 points.2
IstanbulPorto
Score7068
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,0861,172
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2027
Museums & heritage. Porto leads by 5 points.5
IstanbulPorto
Score6671
Museums within 10 km145101
Museums within 2 km of centre7157
Share of museums within 2 km %4956
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 21 points.21
IstanbulPorto
Score7958
Drinking venues within 4 km2,266900
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,176570
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5263
Nightclubs within 4 km22138
Nature & day trips. Porto leads by 8 points.8
IstanbulPorto
Score2533
Protected land share 50 km %17
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4861
Park area within 2 km60 hectares30 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 2 points.2
IstanbulPorto
Score6765
Tourist attractions within 2 km68122
Park area within 2 km60 hectares30 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 21 points.21
IstanbulPorto
Score7554
Notable places within 2 km28585
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 15 points.15
IstanbulPorto
Score8974
Price level global35.255.9
Daily budget€100€109
Year-round weather. Porto leads by 2 points.2
IstanbulPorto
Score6971
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C13.8 °C to 25.2 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm22 mm to 181 mm
Dry months43
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
Porto
14
15
18
18
21
23
25
25
24
20
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Porto
14
13
14
14
16
17
17
17
17
17
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Porto
151
97
104
99
89
35
22
33
75
158
181
173
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Porto
10
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
Porto
5
5
7
8
9
9
10
9
8
5
5
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre). Porto: 1991-2020 normals, Porto / Serra Do Pilar (2.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulPorto
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
2 h 5 m
€88-127
OPO · 12 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
2 h 10 m
€90-144
1 stop
OPO · 12 km
MadridMAD
3 h 50 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 10 m
€70-124
OPO · 12 km
BarcelonaBCN
3 h 15 m
€179-269
IST · 36 km
1 h 45 m
€81-135
OPO · 12 km
GenevaGVA
2 h 55 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
2 h 10 m
€128-166
1 stop
OPO · 12 km
LisbonLIS
4 h 25 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 0 m
€81
OPO · 12 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 15 m
€161-174
IST · 36 km
2 h 35 m
€158-202
1 stop
OPO · 12 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
OPO · 12 km
MarrakechRAK
4 h 40 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
OPO · 12 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
13 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
10 h 15 m
no fares
OPO · 12 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

MeasureIstanbulPorto
Official languageTurkishPortuguese
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+3UTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation100 m104 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsFrancisco de Sá Carneiro Airport (OPO)12 km from centre132 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulPorto
City population15,655,924231,800
People per km²2,9305,599
Museums within 10 km7242
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre6270
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

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