VacationSelector

Istanbul or Toronto?

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 value for money and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Toronto
54
match

Wins on places to eat and 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.

IstanbulToronto
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul and Toronto are level on 43.
IstanbulToronto
Score4343
Swim season months31
Beaches 10 km258
Coast distance0 km533 km
Water distance0 km5 km
Places to eat. Toronto leads by 12 points.12
IstanbulToronto
Score7082
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,0862,133
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2039
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 23 points.23
IstanbulToronto
Score6643
Museums within 10 km14535
Museums within 2 km of centre7125
Share of museums within 2 km %4971
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 10 points.10
IstanbulToronto
Score7969
Drinking venues within 4 km2,2661,500
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,176966
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5264
Nightclubs within 4 km221103
Nature & day trips. Toronto leads by 1 points.1
IstanbulToronto
Score2526
Protected land share 50 km %12
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %48100
Park area within 2 km60 hectares68 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 10 points.10
IstanbulToronto
Score6757
Tourist attractions within 2 km6823
Park area within 2 km60 hectares68 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km24
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 14 points.14
IstanbulToronto
Score7561
Notable places within 2 km285128
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 35 points.35
IstanbulToronto
Score8954
Price level global35.284
Daily budget€100
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 14 points.14
IstanbulToronto
Score6955
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C-0.2 °C to 27.4 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm51 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
Toronto
0
0
5
12
19
24
27
26
22
15
8
2
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Toronto
4
3
3
4
7
15
20
21
19
13
8
5
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Toronto
62
58
51
74
58
85
83
69
62
75
65
66
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Toronto
9
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
Toronto
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre). Toronto: 1991-2020 normals, Toronto City (1.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulToronto
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
1 h 20 m
€244-359
YYZ · 20 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
7 h 25 m
€443-479
1 stop
YYZ · 20 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 15 m
€177-220
IST · 36 km
13 h 40 m
€717-891
YYZ · 20 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
7 h 45 m
€477
YYZ · 20 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
9 h 45 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 15 m
€143-160
YYZ · 20 km
CancunCUN
12 h 55 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
3 h 45 m
no fares
YYZ · 20 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€137-196
IST · 36 km
8 h 10 m
€510-561
YYZ · 20 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 15 m
€161-174
IST · 36 km
7 h 45 m
€533-534
1 stop
YYZ · 20 km
JeddahJED
3 h 30 m
€173-178
IST · 36 km
12 h 55 m
no fares
YYZ · 20 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 0 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
13 h 5 m
€1,024-1087
2 stops
YYZ · 20 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

MeasureIstanbulToronto
Official languageTurkishFrench, English
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)Canadian Dollar (CAD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+3UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation100 m76 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsToronto Pearson International Airport (YYZ)20 km from centre189 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulToronto
City population15,655,9242,794,356
People per km²2,9304,434
Museums within 10 km7232
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre62102
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months1 month

Where else could you go?

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