In this paper, a geothermal district heating system (GDHS) is comparatively evaluated in terms of thermodynamic and economic aspects using advanced exergy-based methods to identify the potential for improvement, the interactions among system components, and the direction and potential for energy savings. The actual operational data are taken from the Saraykoy GDHS, Turkey. In the advanced exergetic and exergoeconomic analyses, the exergy destruction and the total operating cost within each component of the system are split into endogenous/exogenous and unavoidable/avoidable parts. The advantages of these analyses over conventional ones are demonstrated. The results indicate that the advanced exergy-based method is a more meaningful and effective tool than the conventional one for system performance evaluation. The exergetic efficiency and the exergoeconomic factor of the overall system for the Saraykoy GDHS were determined to be 43.72% and 5.25% according to the conventional tools and 45.06% and 12.98% according to the advanced tools. The improvement potential and the total cost-savings potential of the overall system were also determined to be 2.98% and 14.05%, respectively. All of the pumps have the highest improvement potential and total cost-savings potential because the pumps were selected to have high power during installation at the Saraykoy GDHS. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.