VacationSelector

Istanbul or Tirana?

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 museums & heritage and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Tirana
51
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

IstanbulTirana
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul leads by 26 points.26
IstanbulTirana
Score4317
Swim season months35
Beaches 10 km20
Coast distance0 km26 km
Water distance0 km26 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 15 points.15
IstanbulTirana
Score7055
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,086572
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2022
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 41 points.41
IstanbulTirana
Score6625
Museums within 10 km14512
Museums within 2 km of centre718
Share of museums within 2 km %4967
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 21 points.21
IstanbulTirana
Score7958
Drinking venues within 4 km2,266945
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,176683
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5272
Nightclubs within 4 km22129
Nature & day trips. Tirana leads by 24 points.24
IstanbulTirana
Score2549
Protected land share 50 km %111
Landscape blanket share 50 km %03
Land share of disc %4883
Park area within 2 km60 hectares147 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 15 points.15
IstanbulTirana
Score6752
Tourist attractions within 2 km6821
Park area within 2 km60 hectares147 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 22 points.22
IstanbulTirana
Score7553
Notable places within 2 km28583
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 5 points.5
IstanbulTirana
Score8984
Price level global35.242.6
Daily budget€100€76
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 2 points.2
IstanbulTirana
Score6967
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C11.6 °C to 30.7 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm43 mm to 172 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
Tirana
12
13
16
19
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Tirana
15
14
14
16
19
23
24
25
24
21
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Tirana
143
117
116
103
84
66
43
55
78
114
172
148
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Tirana
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2
Tirana
4
4
5
6
9
10
12
11
9
7
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). Tirana: 1961-1990 normals, Tirana (3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulTirana
AntalyaAYT
1 h 15 m
€54-87
SAW · 30 km
1 h 55 m
€150-169
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
2 h 55 m
€62-138
TIA · 13 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
2 h 30 m
€73-102
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
AthensATH
1 h 20 m
€128-154
IST · 36 km
1 h 15 m
€73-127
TIA · 13 km
BodrumBJV
1 h 10 m
€53-55
SAW · 30 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
TIA · 13 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
2 h 15 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
2 h 5 m
€68-80
TIA · 13 km
IzmirADB
1 h 5 m
€49-61
IST · 36 km
1 h 35 m
€208-256
TGD · 124 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 40 m
€142-153
1 stop
IST · 36 km
1 h 50 m
€33-74
TIA · 13 km
AlmatyALA
5 h 15 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
6 h 5 m
€370-455
3 stops
TGD · 124 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
10 h 15 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
TIA · 13 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

MeasureIstanbulTirana
Official languageTurkishAlbanian
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)Lek (ALL)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+3UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation100 m110 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsTirana International Airport Mother Teresa (TIA)13 km from centre129 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulTirana
City population15,655,924389,323
People per km²2,9309,314
Museums within 10 km7211
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre6246
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 Tirana 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.