VacationSelector

Istanbul or Vancouver?

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.

Vancouver
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.

IstanbulVancouver
Beaches & swimming. Vancouver leads by 17 points.17
IstanbulVancouver
Score4360
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km2109
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. Vancouver leads by 4 points.4
IstanbulVancouver
Score7074
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,0861,330
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2035
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 32 points.32
IstanbulVancouver
Score6634
Museums within 10 km14527
Museums within 2 km of centre7115
Share of museums within 2 km %4956
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 22 points.22
IstanbulVancouver
Score7957
Drinking venues within 4 km2,266848
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,176602
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5271
Nightclubs within 4 km22144
Nature & day trips. Vancouver leads by 52 points.52
IstanbulVancouver
Score2577
Protected land share 50 km %119
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4860
Park area within 2 km60 hectares103 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 14 points.14
IstanbulVancouver
Score6753
Tourist attractions within 2 km6815
Park area within 2 km60 hectares103 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km23
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 27 points.27
IstanbulVancouver
Score7548
Notable places within 2 km28563
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 35 points.35
IstanbulVancouver
Score8954
Price level global35.284
Daily budget€100
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 16 points.16
IstanbulVancouver
Score6953
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C7.3 °C to 23 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm42 mm to 245 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
Vancouver
7
8
11
14
18
20
23
23
19
14
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Vancouver
7
7
8
10
12
14
16
16
14
11
9
8
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Vancouver
237
121
164
114
73
65
42
49
71
155
245
196
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Vancouver
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2
Vancouver
2
3
4
6
8
7
10
9
7
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). Vancouver: 1991-2020 normals, Vancouver Harbour CS (4.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulVancouver
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
13 h 35 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
2 h 45 m
€147-217
1 stop
YVR · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€137-196
IST · 36 km
10 h 10 m
€743-810
1 stop
YVR · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
5 h 15 m
€353-356
YVR · 9 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
10 h 15 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
4 h 35 m
€210-223
1 stop
YVR · 9 km
San FranciscoSFO
13 h 20 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 10 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 0 m
€533-647
IST · 36 km
10 h 20 m
€629-762
1 stop
YVR · 9 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
14 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
5 h 20 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
9 h 45 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
5 h 0 m
€219-262
2 stops
YVR · 9 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

MeasureIstanbulVancouver
Official languageTurkishFrench, English
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)Canadian Dollar (CAD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+3UTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation100 m2 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsVancouver International Airport (YVR)9 km from centre99 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulVancouver
City population15,655,924662,248
People per km²2,9305,759
Museums within 10 km7226
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre6285
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 Vancouver 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.