VacationSelector

Istanbul or San Diego?

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 value for money and sights concentration with your weighting.

San Diego
58
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

IstanbulSan Diego
Beaches & swimming. San Diego leads by 20 points.20
IstanbulSan Diego
Score4363
Swim season months31
Beaches 10 km242
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 7 points.7
IstanbulSan Diego
Score7063
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,086823
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2027
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 22 points.22
IstanbulSan Diego
Score6644
Museums within 10 km14559
Museums within 2 km of centre7130
Share of museums within 2 km %4951
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 29 points.29
IstanbulSan Diego
Score7950
Drinking venues within 4 km2,266615
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,176408
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5266
Nightclubs within 4 km22131
Nature & day trips. San Diego leads by 30 points.30
IstanbulSan Diego
Score2555
Protected land share 50 km %16
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4852
Park area within 2 km60 hectares308 hectares
Good for families. San Diego leads by 8 points.8
IstanbulSan Diego
Score6775
Tourist attractions within 2 km6840
Park area within 2 km60 hectares308 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km23
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 35 points.35
IstanbulSan Diego
Score7540
Notable places within 2 km28540
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 46 points.46
IstanbulSan Diego
Score8943
Price level global35.2100
Daily budget€100
Year-round weather. San Diego leads by 19 points.19
IstanbulSan Diego
Score6988
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C18.6 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm0 mm to 56 mm
Dry months49
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
San Diego
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
23
21
19
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
San Diego
15
15
16
16
17
19
20
21
21
19
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
San Diego
50
56
37
17
7
1
2
0
3
13
20
42
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
San Diego
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2
San Diego
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). San Diego: 1991-2020 normals, San Diego International Airport (2.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulSan Diego
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
5 h 15 m
€299-455
1 stop
SAN · 3 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
San FranciscoSFO
13 h 20 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 30 m
€121-158
SAN · 3 km
DenverDEN, APA
12 h 15 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
2 h 15 m
€64-224
SAN · 3 km
BostonBOS, PSM
9 h 45 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
5 h 35 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
11 h 0 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
12 h 30 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 15 m
€161-174
IST · 36 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 10 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
Panama CityPTY, PAC
13 h 25 m
€1,201-1341
1 stop
IST · 36 km
6 h 10 m
no fares
SAN · 3 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

MeasureIstanbulSan Diego
Official languageTurkish
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+3UTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation100 m129 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsSan Diego International Airport (SAN)3 km from centre87 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulSan Diego
City population15,655,9241,386,932
People per km²2,9301,438
Museums within 10 km7226
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre6244
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months1 month

Where else could you go?

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