VacationSelector

Istanbul or Zadar?

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 nightlife and places to eat with your weighting.

Zadar
47
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.

IstanbulZadar
Beaches & swimming. Zadar leads by 30 points.30
IstanbulZadar
Score4373
Swim season months34
Beaches 10 km249
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 45 points.45
IstanbulZadar
Score7025
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,086143
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2011
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 33 points.33
IstanbulZadar
Score6633
Museums within 10 km1458
Museums within 2 km of centre718
Share of museums within 2 km %49100
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 54 points.54
IstanbulZadar
Score7925
Drinking venues within 4 km2,266194
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,176139
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5272
Nightclubs within 4 km2214
Nature & day trips. Zadar leads by 30 points.30
IstanbulZadar
Score2555
Protected land share 50 km %112
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4847
Park area within 2 km60 hectares30 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 36 points.36
IstanbulZadar
Score6731
Tourist attractions within 2 km689
Park area within 2 km60 hectares30 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 44 points.44
IstanbulZadar
Score7531
Notable places within 2 km28523
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 9 points.9
IstanbulZadar
Score8980
Price level global35.248.5
Daily budget€100€138
Year-round weather. Istanbul and Zadar are level on 69.
IstanbulZadar
Score6969
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C10.4 °C to 31 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm25 mm to 117 mm
Dry months42
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
Zadar
10
11
15
19
23
28
31
31
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Zadar
14
13
13
14
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Zadar
73
64
59
62
58
49
25
32
82
80
117
99
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Zadar
9
10
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
Zadar
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). Zadar: 1999-2020 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Zadar / Zemunik (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulZadar
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 15 m
€161-174
IST · 36 km
2 h 10 m
€186-201
1 stop
SPU · 107 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
2 h 5 m
€169-225
SPU · 107 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
ZAD · 10 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 15 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 5 m
€294
SPU · 107 km
CologneCGN
3 h 5 m
€118-142
SAW · 30 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
ZAD · 10 km
MunichMUC
2 h 30 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
SPU · 107 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 40 m
€142-153
1 stop
IST · 36 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
ZAD · 10 km
DusseldorfDUS, NRN
3 h 5 m
€124-141
SAW · 30 km
1 h 50 m
€132-174
ZAD · 10 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€137-196
IST · 36 km
1 h 40 m
€161-226
1 stop
ZAD · 10 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
SPU · 107 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

MeasureIstanbulZadar
Official languageTurkishCroatian
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+3UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation100 m5 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsZadar Airport (ZAD)10 km from centre67 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulZadar
City population15,655,92470,779
People per km²2,930
Museums within 10 km721
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre6217
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 Zadar 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.