VacationSelector

Istanbul or Tokyo?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Istanbul
65
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Tokyo
66
match

Wins on nature & day trips and places to eat 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.

IstanbulTokyo
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul leads by 22 points.22
IstanbulTokyo
Score4321
Swim season months34
Beaches 10 km21
Coast distance0 km5 km
Water distance0 km5 km
Places to eat. Tokyo leads by 20 points.20
IstanbulTokyo
Score7090
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,0866,936
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2025
Museums & heritage. Istanbul and Tokyo are level on 66.
IstanbulTokyo
Score6666
Museums within 10 km145302
Museums within 2 km of centre7152
Share of museums within 2 km %4917
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Tokyo leads by 16 points.16
IstanbulTokyo
Score7995
Drinking venues within 4 km2,2666,895
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,1763,033
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5244
Nightclubs within 4 km22158
Nature & day trips. Tokyo leads by 33 points.33
IstanbulTokyo
Score2558
Protected land share 50 km %1
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4885
Park area within 2 km60 hectares85 hectares
Good for families. Tokyo leads by 4 points.4
IstanbulTokyo
Score6771
Tourist attractions within 2 km6840
Park area within 2 km60 hectares85 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km29
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 15 points.15
IstanbulTokyo
Score7560
Notable places within 2 km285121
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 19 points.19
IstanbulTokyo
Score8970
Price level global35.262.4
Daily budget€100
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 5 points.5
IstanbulTokyo
Score6964
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C10 °C to 31.5 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm57 mm to 237 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
Tokyo
10
11
14
19
24
26
30
32
28
22
17
12
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Tokyo
14
13
13
15
18
21
23
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Tokyo
60
57
117
134
140
168
157
155
221
237
97
58
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Tokyo
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2
Tokyo
6
6
6
6
6
4
5
6
4
4
5
6

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre). Tokyo: 1991-2020 normals, Tokyo (3.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulTokyo
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 0 m
€533-647
IST · 36 km
2 h 10 m
€124-187
NRT · 56 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
10 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
2 h 45 m
€296-314
HND · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
11 h 55 m
€820-907
1 stop
HND · 18 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
9 h 30 m
€507-517
1 stop
IST · 36 km
6 h 10 m
€318-337
NRT · 56 km
Hong KongHKG
10 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
4 h 10 m
€255-268
NRT · 56 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
12 h 5 m
€835-923
HND · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
13 h 30 m
€813-1004
HND · 18 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
13 h 35 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
11 h 0 m
€789-943
HND · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 15 m
€177-220
IST · 36 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
HND · 18 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
14 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
13 h 55 m
no fares
NRT · 56 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

MeasureIstanbulTokyo
Official languageTurkishJapanese
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)Yen (JPY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+3UTC+9
Emergency number112Police 110, fire 119
Elevation100 m6 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsTokyo Haneda International Airport (HND)18 km from centre97 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulTokyo
City population15,655,92414,264,798
People per km²2,9306,501
Museums within 10 km72191
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre62125
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months4 months

Where else could you go?

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