VacationSelector

Istanbul or Thessaloniki?

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 good for families and places to eat with your weighting.

Thessaloniki
59
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.

IstanbulThessaloniki
Beaches & swimming. Thessaloniki leads by 12 points.12
IstanbulThessaloniki
Score4355
Swim season months35
Beaches 10 km24
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 20 points.20
IstanbulThessaloniki
Score7050
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,086640
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2015
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 17 points.17
IstanbulThessaloniki
Score6649
Museums within 10 km14534
Museums within 2 km of centre7122
Share of museums within 2 km %4965
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 12 points.12
IstanbulThessaloniki
Score7967
Drinking venues within 4 km2,2661,407
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,176805
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5257
Nightclubs within 4 km22161
Nature & day trips. Thessaloniki leads by 40 points.40
IstanbulThessaloniki
Score2565
Protected land share 50 km %125
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4883
Park area within 2 km60 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 26 points.26
IstanbulThessaloniki
Score6741
Tourist attractions within 2 km6816
Park area within 2 km60 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 19 points.19
IstanbulThessaloniki
Score7556
Notable places within 2 km28598
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 15 points.15
IstanbulThessaloniki
Score8974
Price level global35.255.8
Daily budget€100€125
Year-round weather. Thessaloniki leads by 3 points.3
IstanbulThessaloniki
Score6972
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C9.7 °C to 32.1 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm21 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
Thessaloniki
10
11
15
19
25
30
32
32
27
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Thessaloniki
14
13
13
15
19
23
26
27
25
21
18
15
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Thessaloniki
35
32
38
36
44
30
23
21
33
41
38
56
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Thessaloniki
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2
Thessaloniki
4
4
6
6
9
11
11
10
8
6
4
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre). Thessaloniki: 1991-2020 normals, Thessaloniki Airport (14 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulThessaloniki
AthensATH
1 h 20 m
€128-154
IST · 36 km
1 h 0 m
€97-118
SKG · 14 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
3 h 15 m
€95-156
SKG · 14 km
DusseldorfDUS, NRN
3 h 5 m
€124-141
SAW · 30 km
2 h 40 m
€127-199
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€137-196
IST · 36 km
2 h 30 m
€119-127
SKG · 14 km
IzmirADB
1 h 5 m
€49-61
IST · 36 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
SKG · 14 km
HeraklionHER
1 h 30 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
SKG · 14 km
BerlinBER
2 h 40 m
€125-140
IST · 36 km
2 h 25 m
€156-243
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 15 m
€161-174
IST · 36 km
2 h 55 m
€225-285
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
MunichMUC
2 h 30 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
2 h 10 m
€188-242
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
BucharestOTP, BBU
1 h 10 m
€106-133
IST · 36 km
1 h 15 m
€86-115
SKG · 14 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

MeasureIstanbulThessaloniki
Official languageTurkishGreek
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+3UTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation100 m6 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsThessaloniki Macedonia International Airport (SKG)14 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulThessaloniki
City population15,655,924309,617
People per km²2,93016,042
Museums within 10 km7231
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre6245
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months5 months

Where else could you go?

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