VacationSelector

Izmir or Riga?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Too close to call, level with your weighting

Izmir
53
match

Wins on year-round weather and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Riga
53
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage 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.

IzmirRiga
Beaches & swimming. Izmir leads by 15 points.15
IzmirRiga
Score5540
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km457
Coast distance1 km12 km
Water distance1 km12 km
Places to eat. Riga leads by 10 points.10
IzmirRiga
Score4959
Restaurants within 2 km of centre770470
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1233
Museums & heritage. Riga leads by 18 points.18
IzmirRiga
Score4361
Museums within 10 km4769
Museums within 2 km of centre2747
Share of museums within 2 km %5768
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Izmir leads by 11 points.11
IzmirRiga
Score6251
Drinking venues within 4 km1,028584
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre695456
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6878
Nightclubs within 4 km7054
Nature & day trips. Riga leads by 15 points.15
IzmirRiga
Score2944
Protected land share 50 km %410
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8473
Park area within 2 km62 hectares68 hectares
Good for families. Izmir and Riga are level on 35.
IzmirRiga
Score3535
Tourist attractions within 2 km67
Park area within 2 km62 hectares68 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Riga leads by 22 points.22
IzmirRiga
Score4062
Notable places within 2 km39137
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Izmir leads by 13 points.13
IzmirRiga
Score8976
Price level global35.253.7
Daily budget€100€132
Year-round weather. Izmir leads by 20 points.20
IzmirRiga
Score7252
Monthly daytime high13 °C to 33.9 °C-0.1 °C to 23.5 °C
Monthly rainfall1 mm to 127 mm33 mm to 87 mm
Dry months53
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
Izmir
13
14
17
21
27
31
34
34
29
24
19
14
Riga
0
0
4
12
17
21
24
22
17
11
5
1
Sea temperature, °C
Izmir
16
16
16
17
19
22
23
24
23
21
19
17
Riga
2
1
1
3
9
14
18
19
16
11
8
5
Rainfall, mm
Izmir
119
107
77
51
33
13
1
4
22
55
96
127
Riga
43
40
35
33
52
69
87
78
65
82
58
50
Daylight, hours per day
Izmir
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Riga
8
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Izmir
5
5
7
8
10
11
13
12
10
8
6
4
Riga
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Izmir: 1991-2020 normals, Izmir (3.4 km from centre). Riga: 1991-2020 normals, Riga (4.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIzmirRiga
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 5 m
€46-55
ADB · 13 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 45 m
€119-184
ADB · 13 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
3 h 0 m
€204-238
1 stop
ADB · 13 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
BerlinBER
2 h 55 m
€177-214
1 stop
ADB · 13 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
3 h 40 m
no fares
SMI · 83 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
AntalyaAYT
1 h 5 m
€75-89
ADB · 13 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
OsloOSL, TRF
3 h 55 m
no fares
SMI · 83 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 25 m
€221-272
1 stop
ADB · 13 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
TashkentTAS
4 h 55 m
€319-343
1 stop
ADB · 13 km
4 h 55 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
Sharm el SheikhSSH
2 h 15 m
no fares
ADB · 13 km
4 h 35 m
no fares
RIX · 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

MeasureIzmirRiga
Official languageTurkishLatvian
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+3UTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation2 m6 m
Main airportAdnan Menderes International Airport (ADB)13 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsRiga International Airport (RIX)9 km from centre101 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days

By the numbers

MeasureIzmirRiga
City population4,493,242588,911
People per km²4,760
Museums within 10 km2912
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre2055
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

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