Nomad Istanbul
Independent · written in Istanbul
Nomad Istanbul is written by a small Turkish-born team who live in Istanbul and have done the paperwork themselves. It started because every time a friend asked "should I move to Istanbul?" we had to send them 8 different links, and most of those links were 4 years out of date.
The rule is simple: if we wouldn't tell a friend in person, it doesn't go on the site.
Why this site exists
Moving somewhere means making lots of small decisions: where to live, how to get online, where to work and which paperwork to tackle first. This guide brings those decisions together for people planning a stay in Istanbul.
How to use the guide
- Check the date and sources. Prices, opening hours and provider terms can change.
- Research-based lists are identified as such. They are not a claim that every service has been personally tested.
- For your own legal, tax or medical decisions, confirm the details with a qualified professional.
- Found an error? Send the page and correction to hello@nomadistanbul.com.
How the site is funded
Nomad Istanbul earns commissions on eligible purchases through affiliate links, currently including Simbye, GetYourGuide, NordVPN, SafetyWing, Discover Cars, Hotels.com, Preply, Tekce, Kiwitaxi, Bounce and Wise. Paid links are disclosed on the page they appear on. Providers handle bookings, payments and customer support. The guides are free to read.
A commission never buys a recommendation. We test what we can from Istanbul, publish the date we tested it, and say plainly when we have not tested something. When a provider's own page contradicts what we have written, we change what we have written: in September 2026 we removed a claim that our top eSIM pick ran on all three Turkish networks, because its own plan page listed two.
If a recommendation lets you down, tell us
This site is read by people who are about to spend money in a country they do not know well, often on the strength of a page we wrote. That only works if the recommendations stay honest after we publish them, and we cannot check every provider every week on our own.
So if something we pointed you at went wrong, we want to hear it. A price that did not match what we published. A checkout that refused your card. Support that never replied. A product that did not work the way we described. Email hello@nomadistanbul.com with the page and what happened.
What we do with it: retest the claim ourselves, correct the page and date the correction, and take the provider off the site if the problem is real and repeated. We would rather lose the commission than keep sending readers somewhere that let one of them down. We cannot mediate between you and a provider, and we are not a substitute for their support, but we can stop the next person walking into it.
Get in touch
Email hello@nomadistanbul.com.
Things we're happy to hear from you about:
- Corrections, we'd rather you tell us than someone else read the wrong thing
- Questions an article didn't answer (these become future articles)
- Recommendations for coworking spaces, neighbourhoods, services we should test
- Your story if you've moved here. A sample size of one still counts as data
Things we're probably not the right people for: legal advice on your specific case (talk to a lawyer), tax advice on your specific case (talk to a CPA), real-estate brokerage (talk to a broker). The guide explains how those things work; it's not a substitute for them.