VacationSelector

Istanbul or Sao Paulo?

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 beaches & swimming and sights concentration with your weighting.

Sao Paulo
56
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.

IstanbulSao Paulo
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul leads by 43 points.43
IstanbulSao Paulo
Score430
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km20
Coast distance0 km51 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Sao Paulo leads by 3 points.3
IstanbulSao Paulo
Score7073
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,0861,735
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2027
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 23 points.23
IstanbulSao Paulo
Score6643
Museums within 10 km14582
Museums within 2 km of centre7126
Share of museums within 2 km %4932
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 7 points.7
IstanbulSao Paulo
Score7972
Drinking venues within 4 km2,2661,747
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,176896
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5251
Nightclubs within 4 km221118
Nature & day trips. Sao Paulo leads by 26 points.26
IstanbulSao Paulo
Score2551
Protected land share 50 km %126
Landscape blanket share 50 km %015
Land share of disc %4895
Park area within 2 km60 hectares52 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 12 points.12
IstanbulSao Paulo
Score6755
Tourist attractions within 2 km6838
Park area within 2 km60 hectares52 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 25 points.25
IstanbulSao Paulo
Score7550
Notable places within 2 km28568
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 8 points.8
IstanbulSao Paulo
Score8981
Price level global35.246.1
Daily budget€100
Year-round weather. Sao Paulo leads by 14 points.14
IstanbulSao Paulo
Score6983
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C22.8 °C to 29.2 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm26 mm to 297 mm
Dry months41
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
Sao Paulo
28
29
28
27
24
23
23
25
25
27
27
28
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Sao Paulo
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Sao Paulo
297
259
206
89
64
55
53
26
82
128
146
234
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sao Paulo
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
Sao Paulo
4
6
6
5
5
5
6
6
5
6
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre). Sao Paulo: 1991-2020 normals, Sao Paulo (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulSao Paulo
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
9 h 40 m
€576-611
GRU · 21 km
Buenos AiresEZE, AEP
15 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
2 h 40 m
€281-355
GRU · 21 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 15 m
€177-220
IST · 36 km
15 h 0 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
11 h 45 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
MadridMAD
3 h 50 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
10 h 30 m
€739-741
GRU · 21 km
SantiagoSCL
16 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
3 h 45 m
€255-300
GRU · 21 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€137-196
IST · 36 km
12 h 10 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 15 m
€161-174
IST · 36 km
12 h 10 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 0 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
21 h 20 m
€1,139-1567
2 stops
GRU · 21 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

MeasureIstanbulSao Paulo
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 m760 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsSão Paulo/Guarulhos–Governor André Franco Montoro International Airport (GRU)21 km from centre102 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulSao Paulo
City population15,655,92411,451,999
People per km²2,9307,519
Museums within 10 km7290
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre6259
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months

Where else could you go?

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