VacationSelector

Istanbul or Riga?

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 good for families and nightlife with your weighting.

Riga
53
match

Wins on 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.

IstanbulRiga
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul leads by 3 points.3
IstanbulRiga
Score4340
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km257
Coast distance0 km12 km
Water distance0 km12 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 11 points.11
IstanbulRiga
Score7059
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,086470
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2033
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 5 points.5
IstanbulRiga
Score6661
Museums within 10 km14569
Museums within 2 km of centre7147
Share of museums within 2 km %4968
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 28 points.28
IstanbulRiga
Score7951
Drinking venues within 4 km2,266584
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,176456
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5278
Nightclubs within 4 km22154
Nature & day trips. Riga leads by 19 points.19
IstanbulRiga
Score2544
Protected land share 50 km %110
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4873
Park area within 2 km60 hectares68 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 32 points.32
IstanbulRiga
Score6735
Tourist attractions within 2 km687
Park area within 2 km60 hectares68 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 13 points.13
IstanbulRiga
Score7562
Notable places within 2 km285137
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 13 points.13
IstanbulRiga
Score8976
Price level global35.253.7
Daily budget€100€132
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 17 points.17
IstanbulRiga
Score6952
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C-0.1 °C to 23.5 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm33 mm to 87 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
Riga
0
0
4
12
17
21
24
22
17
11
5
1
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Riga
2
1
1
3
9
14
18
19
16
11
8
5
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Riga
43
40
35
33
52
69
87
78
65
82
58
50
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Riga
8
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2
Riga
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). Riga: 1991-2020 normals, Riga (4.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulRiga
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
AntalyaAYT
1 h 15 m
€54-87
SAW · 30 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€137-196
IST · 36 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
HelsinkiHEL
3 h 10 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 15 m
€161-174
IST · 36 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
3 h 15 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
OsloOSL, TRF
3 h 30 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
BerlinBER
2 h 40 m
€125-140
IST · 36 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
TashkentTAS
4 h 35 m
€285-352
IST · 36 km
4 h 55 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
Sharm el SheikhSSH
2 h 25 m
no fares
SAW · 30 km
4 h 35 m
no fares
RIX · 9 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

MeasureIstanbulRiga
Official languageTurkishLatvian
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+3UTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation100 m6 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsRiga International Airport (RIX)9 km from centre101 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulRiga
City population15,655,924588,911
People per km²2,930
Museums within 10 km7212
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre6255
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 Riga 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.