VacationSelector

Istanbul or Washington DC?

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 good for families with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
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.

IstanbulWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul leads by 25 points.25
IstanbulWashington DC
Score4318
Swim season months33
Beaches 10 km21
Coast distance0 km34 km
Water distance0 km34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 7 points.7
IstanbulWashington DC
Score7077
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,0861,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2036
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 11 points.11
IstanbulWashington DC
Score6655
Museums within 10 km14583
Museums within 2 km of centre7155
Share of museums within 2 km %4966
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 18 points.18
IstanbulWashington DC
Score7961
Drinking venues within 4 km2,2661,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,176593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5258
Nightclubs within 4 km22154
Nature & day trips. Washington DC leads by 17 points.17
IstanbulWashington DC
Score2542
Protected land share 50 km %110
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %4894
Park area within 2 km60 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 29 points.29
IstanbulWashington DC
Score6738
Tourist attractions within 2 km687
Park area within 2 km60 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 1 points.1
IstanbulWashington DC
Score7576
Notable places within 2 km285305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 46 points.46
IstanbulWashington DC
Score8943
Price level global35.2100
Daily budget€100
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 7 points.7
IstanbulWashington DC
Score6962
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm65 mm to 108 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
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2
Washington DC
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). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulWashington DC
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
11 h 35 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 40 m
€267-307
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 15 m
€177-220
IST · 36 km
14 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
10 h 15 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
13 h 35 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
5 h 0 m
€226-372
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
12 h 10 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
5 h 5 m
€329-399
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
JeddahJED
3 h 30 m
€173-178
IST · 36 km
13 h 10 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 0 m
€533-647
IST · 36 km
13 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
Panama CityPTY, PAC
13 h 25 m
€1,201-1341
1 stop
IST · 36 km
4 h 35 m
no fares
IAD · 37 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

MeasureIstanbulWashington DC
Official languageTurkish
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+3UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation100 m72 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulWashington DC
City population15,655,924689,545
People per km²2,9303,896
Museums within 10 km7299
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre6282
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months3 months

Where else could you go?

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