VacationSelector

Istanbul or Rio de Janeiro?

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

Your match

Istanbul
65
match

Wins on nightlife and sights concentration with your weighting.

Rio de Janeiro
✓ Best match
69
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.

IstanbulRio de Janeiro
Beaches & swimming. Rio de Janeiro leads by 57 points.57
IstanbulRio de Janeiro
Score43100
Swim season months312
Beaches 10 km261
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 16 points.16
IstanbulRio de Janeiro
Score7054
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,086804
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2016
Museums & heritage. Rio de Janeiro leads by 3 points.3
IstanbulRio de Janeiro
Score6669
Museums within 10 km145110
Museums within 2 km of centre7151
Share of museums within 2 km %4946
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 22 points.22
IstanbulRio de Janeiro
Score7957
Drinking venues within 4 km2,266818
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,176509
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5262
Nightclubs within 4 km22150
Nature & day trips. Rio de Janeiro leads by 37 points.37
IstanbulRio de Janeiro
Score2562
Protected land share 50 km %121
Landscape blanket share 50 km %017
Land share of disc %4857
Park area within 2 km60 hectares113 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 8 points.8
IstanbulRio de Janeiro
Score6759
Tourist attractions within 2 km6830
Park area within 2 km60 hectares113 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 19 points.19
IstanbulRio de Janeiro
Score7556
Notable places within 2 km28598
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 8 points.8
IstanbulRio de Janeiro
Score8981
Price level global35.246.1
Daily budget€100
Year-round weather. Rio de Janeiro leads by 16 points.16
IstanbulRio de Janeiro
Score6985
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C24 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm42 mm to 232 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
Rio de Janeiro
28
28
28
27
25
24
24
25
25
26
26
27
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Rio de Janeiro
25
25
25
25
24
23
22
21
21
22
23
24
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Rio de Janeiro
208
151
173
101
71
49
45
42
69
108
220
232
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Rio de Janeiro
13
13
12
12
11
11
11
11
12
13
13
14
Sunshine, hours per day
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2
Rio de Janeiro
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). Rio de Janeiro: 2001-2020 normals, NASA POWER reanalysis grid, no weather station within 90 km.

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulRio de Janeiro
Buenos AiresEZE, AEP
15 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
3 h 0 m
€212-267
GIG · 12 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
13 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 5 m
€113-134
GIG · 12 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
11 h 35 m
€996-1109
2 stops
GIG · 12 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
9 h 45 m
€609-699
2 stops
GIG · 12 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 15 m
€177-220
IST · 36 km
14 h 40 m
€1,154-1306
GIG · 12 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
11 h 30 m
€957-1014
2 stops
GIG · 12 km
SantiagoSCL
16 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
GIG · 12 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€137-196
IST · 36 km
11 h 55 m
€915-1205
2 stops
GIG · 12 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 15 m
€161-174
IST · 36 km
11 h 55 m
€900-974
1 stop
GIG · 12 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
10 h 15 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
GIG · 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

MeasureIstanbulRio de Janeiro
Official languageTurkishPortuguese
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)Brazilian Real (BRL)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCN60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+3UTC-3
Emergency number112Police 190, ambulance 192, fire 193
Elevation100 m31 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsRio de Janeiro Galeão – Tom Jobim International Airport (GIG)12 km from centre59 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulRio de Janeiro
City population15,655,9246,211,223
People per km²2,9304,930
Museums within 10 km7270
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre6227
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months12 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Istanbul or Rio de Janeiro 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. Temperature and rainfall for destinations with no weather station are from the NASA POWER 2001-2020 climatology, derived from MERRA-2. 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.