VacationSelector

Izmir or Tirana?

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, 2 points apart

Izmir
53
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Tirana
51
match

Wins on nature & day trips and good for families 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.

IzmirTirana
Beaches & swimming. Izmir leads by 38 points.38
IzmirTirana
Score5517
Swim season months55
Beaches 10 km40
Coast distance1 km26 km
Water distance1 km26 km
Places to eat. Tirana leads by 6 points.6
IzmirTirana
Score4955
Restaurants within 2 km of centre770572
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1222
Museums & heritage. Izmir leads by 18 points.18
IzmirTirana
Score4325
Museums within 10 km4712
Museums within 2 km of centre278
Share of museums within 2 km %5767
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Izmir leads by 4 points.4
IzmirTirana
Score6258
Drinking venues within 4 km1,028945
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre695683
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6872
Nightclubs within 4 km7029
Nature & day trips. Tirana leads by 20 points.20
IzmirTirana
Score2949
Protected land share 50 km %411
Landscape blanket share 50 km %03
Land share of disc %8483
Park area within 2 km62 hectares147 hectares
Good for families. Tirana leads by 17 points.17
IzmirTirana
Score3552
Tourist attractions within 2 km621
Park area within 2 km62 hectares147 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Tirana leads by 13 points.13
IzmirTirana
Score4053
Notable places within 2 km3983
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Izmir leads by 5 points.5
IzmirTirana
Score8984
Price level global35.242.6
Daily budget€100€76
Year-round weather. Izmir leads by 5 points.5
IzmirTirana
Score7267
Monthly daytime high13 °C to 33.9 °C11.6 °C to 30.7 °C
Monthly rainfall1 mm to 127 mm43 mm to 172 mm
Dry months50
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
Tirana
12
13
16
19
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Sea temperature, °C
Izmir
16
16
16
17
19
22
23
24
23
21
19
17
Tirana
15
14
14
16
19
23
24
25
24
21
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Izmir
119
107
77
51
33
13
1
4
22
55
96
127
Tirana
143
117
116
103
84
66
43
55
78
114
172
148
Daylight, hours per day
Izmir
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Tirana
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Izmir
5
5
7
8
10
11
13
12
10
8
6
4
Tirana
4
4
5
6
9
10
12
11
9
7
4
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Izmir: 1991-2020 normals, Izmir (3.4 km from centre). Tirana: 1961-1990 normals, Tirana (3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIzmirTirana
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 5 m
€46-55
ADB · 13 km
1 h 35 m
€100-109
TIA · 13 km
AnkaraESB
1 h 20 m
€54-66
ADB · 13 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
TIA · 13 km
AntalyaAYT
1 h 5 m
€75-89
ADB · 13 km
1 h 55 m
€150-169
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 20 m
no fares
ADB · 13 km
2 h 30 m
€73-102
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 45 m
€119-184
ADB · 13 km
2 h 55 m
€62-138
TIA · 13 km
DusseldorfDUS, NRN
3 h 10 m
no fares
ADB · 13 km
2 h 25 m
€120-141
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
KatowiceKTW
2 h 35 m
no fares
BJV · 137 km
1 h 50 m
€73-87
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
2 h 45 m
€232-282
2 stops
BJV · 137 km
2 h 5 m
€68-80
TIA · 13 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
1 h 50 m
no fares
ADB · 13 km
2 h 40 m
€222-261
TIA · 13 km
AlmatyALA
5 h 35 m
no fares
ADB · 13 km
6 h 5 m
€370-455
3 stops
TGD · 124 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

MeasureIzmirTirana
Official languageTurkishAlbanian
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)Lek (ALL)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+3UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation2 m110 m
Main airportAdnan Menderes International Airport (ADB)13 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsTirana International Airport Mother Teresa (TIA)13 km from centre129 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureIzmirTirana
City population4,493,242389,323
People per km²4,7609,314
Museums within 10 km2911
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre2046
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months5 months

Where else could you go?

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