VacationSelector

Istanbul or West Palm Beach?

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 sights concentration and nightlife with your weighting.

West Palm Beach
42
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

IstanbulWest Palm Beach
Beaches & swimming. West Palm Beach leads by 45 points.45
IstanbulWest Palm Beach
Score4388
Swim season months312
Beaches 10 km210
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 33 points.33
IstanbulWest Palm Beach
Score7037
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,086262
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2014
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 49 points.49
IstanbulWest Palm Beach
Score6617
Museums within 10 km1455
Museums within 2 km of centre713
Share of museums within 2 km %4960
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 59 points.59
IstanbulWest Palm Beach
Score7920
Drinking venues within 4 km2,266132
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,17690
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5268
Nightclubs within 4 km22110
Nature & day trips. West Palm Beach leads by 44 points.44
IstanbulWest Palm Beach
Score2569
Protected land share 50 km %115
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4845
Park area within 2 km60 hectares34 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 46 points.46
IstanbulWest Palm Beach
Score6721
Tourist attractions within 2 km683
Park area within 2 km60 hectares34 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 63 points.63
IstanbulWest Palm Beach
Score7512
Notable places within 2 km2858
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 46 points.46
IstanbulWest Palm Beach
Score8943
Price level global35.2100
Daily budget€100
Year-round weather. West Palm Beach leads by 6 points.6
IstanbulWest Palm Beach
Score6975
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C24 °C to 32.5 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm67 mm to 217 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
West Palm Beach
24
25
26
28
30
32
32
33
31
30
27
25
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
West Palm Beach
25
25
25
26
27
28
29
30
29
28
27
26
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
West Palm Beach
86
67
84
92
126
214
145
217
199
147
88
78
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
West Palm Beach
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Sunshine, hours per day
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2
West Palm Beach
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). West Palm Beach: 1991-2020 normals, Palm Beach International (5.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulWest Palm Beach
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
DJT · 6 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 15 m
€177-220
IST · 36 km
15 h 30 m
€891-1074
2 stops
MIA · 105 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
9 h 0 m
€550-628
1 stop
MIA · 105 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
10 h 30 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
DJT · 6 km
MadridMAD
3 h 50 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
9 h 0 m
€522-631
1 stop
MIA · 105 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
10 h 15 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
DJT · 6 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
11 h 35 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
DJT · 6 km
BostonBOS, PSM
9 h 45 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
DJT · 6 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
11 h 0 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
DJT · 6 km
Panama CityPTY, PAC
13 h 25 m
€1,201-1341
1 stop
IST · 36 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
FLL · 72 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

MeasureIstanbulWest Palm Beach
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 m6 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsPresident Donald J. Trump International Airport (DJT)6 km from centre37 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulWest Palm Beach
City population15,655,924117,415
People per km²2,930786
Museums within 10 km724
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre6218
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months12 months

Where else could you go?

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