VacationSelector

Istanbul or The Hague?

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 nightlife and value for money with your weighting.

The Hague
57
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.

IstanbulThe Hague
Beaches & swimming. The Hague leads by 17 points.17
IstanbulThe Hague
Score4360
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km234
Coast distance0 km3 km
Water distance0 km3 km
Places to eat. Istanbul and The Hague are level on 70.
IstanbulThe Hague
Score7070
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,086798
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2043
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 4 points.4
IstanbulThe Hague
Score6662
Museums within 10 km14546
Museums within 2 km of centre7126
Share of museums within 2 km %4957
Unesco sites within 50 km14
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 33 points.33
IstanbulThe Hague
Score7946
Drinking venues within 4 km2,266511
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,176288
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5256
Nightclubs within 4 km22119
Nature & day trips. The Hague leads by 29 points.29
IstanbulThe Hague
Score2554
Protected land share 50 km %18
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4856
Park area within 2 km60 hectares159 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 11 points.11
IstanbulThe Hague
Score6756
Tourist attractions within 2 km6810
Park area within 2 km60 hectares159 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km27
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 21 points.21
IstanbulThe Hague
Score7554
Notable places within 2 km28586
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 31 points.31
IstanbulThe Hague
Score8958
Price level global35.279.2
Daily budget€100€181
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 15 points.15
IstanbulThe Hague
Score6954
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C6.1 °C to 21.3 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm42 mm to 85 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
The Hague
6
7
9
13
16
19
21
21
18
14
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
The Hague
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
The Hague
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
The Hague
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2
The Hague
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre). The Hague: 1991-2020 normals, Valkenburg (13.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulThe Hague
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 40 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 15 m
€177-220
IST · 36 km
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 40 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 40 km
DublinDUB
4 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 40 km
MadridMAD
3 h 50 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 40 km
CopenhagenCPH
3 h 5 m
no fares
SAW · 30 km
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 40 km
ManchesterMAN
3 h 50 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 40 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
3 h 15 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
2 h 0 m
€156-208
AMS · 40 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
10 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 40 km
Panama CityPTY, PAC
13 h 25 m
€1,201-1341
1 stop
IST · 36 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
AMS · 40 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

MeasureIstanbulThe Hague
Official languageTurkishDutch
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+3UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 911
Elevation100 m1 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)16 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulThe Hague
City population15,655,924548,320
People per km²2,9305,589
Museums within 10 km7254
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km14
Distinct cuisines in the centre6277
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 The Hague 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.