VacationSelector

Istanbul or San Jose?

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 sights concentration and nightlife with your weighting.

San Jose
39
match

Wins on nature & day trips and year-round weather 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 Jose
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul leads by 35 points.35
IstanbulSan Jose
Score438
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km21
Coast distance0 km14 km
Water distance0 km14 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 29 points.29
IstanbulSan Jose
Score7041
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,086313
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2016
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 40 points.40
IstanbulSan Jose
Score6626
Museums within 10 km14520
Museums within 2 km of centre719
Share of museums within 2 km %4945
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 48 points.48
IstanbulSan Jose
Score7931
Drinking venues within 4 km2,266231
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,17688
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5238
Nightclubs within 4 km22116
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 45 points.45
IstanbulSan Jose
Score2570
Protected land share 50 km %126
Landscape blanket share 50 km %02
Land share of disc %4891
Park area within 2 km60 hectares101 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 34 points.34
IstanbulSan Jose
Score6733
Tourist attractions within 2 km682
Park area within 2 km60 hectares101 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 61 points.61
IstanbulSan Jose
Score7514
Notable places within 2 km2859
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 46 points.46
IstanbulSan Jose
Score8943
Price level global35.2100
Daily budget€100
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 16 points.16
IstanbulSan Jose
Score6985
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C15.4 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm0 mm to 78 mm
Dry months48
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 Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
San Jose
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2
San Jose
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 Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulSan Jose
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 10 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 0 m
€533-647
IST · 36 km
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 57 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€137-196
IST · 36 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 15 m
€177-220
IST · 36 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
12 h 30 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
11 h 55 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
Panama CityPTY, PAC
13 h 25 m
€1,201-1341
1 stop
IST · 36 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
SFO · 57 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 Jose
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 m25 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulSan Jose
City population15,655,9241,013,240
People per km²2,9302,167
Museums within 10 km7219
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre6230
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 San Jose 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.