VacationSelector

Alicante or Plovdiv?

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

Your match

Alicante
✓ Best match
56
match

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

Plovdiv
44
match

Wins on value for money and sights concentration 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.

AlicantePlovdiv
Beaches & swimming. Alicante leads by 77 points.77
AlicantePlovdiv
Score770
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km331
Coast distance1 km130 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Alicante leads by 20 points.20
AlicantePlovdiv
Score6646
Restaurants within 2 km of centre867369
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3119
Museums & heritage. Alicante leads by 4 points.4
AlicantePlovdiv
Score4238
Museums within 10 km1426
Museums within 2 km of centre1126
Share of museums within 2 km %79100
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Alicante leads by 9 points.9
AlicantePlovdiv
Score5142
Drinking venues within 4 km591392
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre488285
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8373
Nightclubs within 4 km5426
Nature & day trips. Alicante leads by 3 points.3
AlicantePlovdiv
Score4037
Protected land share 50 km %75
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %59100
Park area within 2 km60 hectares125 hectares
Good for families. Alicante leads by 11 points.11
AlicantePlovdiv
Score4231
Tourist attractions within 2 km135
Park area within 2 km60 hectares125 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Plovdiv leads by 15 points.15
AlicantePlovdiv
Score2641
Notable places within 2 km1841
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Plovdiv leads by 28 points.28
AlicantePlovdiv
Score7199
Price level global60.821.4
Daily budget€122€77
Year-round weather. Alicante leads by 22 points.22
AlicantePlovdiv
Score8765
Monthly daytime high17 °C to 31.1 °C5.4 °C to 31.1 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 52 mm25 mm to 81 mm
Dry months112
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
Alicante
17
18
20
22
24
28
30
31
29
25
21
18
Plovdiv
5
9
14
19
24
28
31
31
26
19
13
7
Sea temperature, °C
Alicante
15
14
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Plovdiv
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Alicante
21
18
25
34
21
8
3
12
52
32
34
23
Plovdiv
65
63
61
53
67
62
40
25
48
66
59
81
Daylight, hours per day
Alicante
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Plovdiv
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Alicante
6
6
8
8
10
10
11
10
8
7
6
6
Plovdiv
3
4
5
6
8
9
10
10
7
5
3
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Alicante: 1991-2020 normals, Alicante (2.8 km from centre). Plovdiv: 1997-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Plovdiv (1.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAlicantePlovdiv
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€46-56
ALC · 10 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 25 m
€102-119
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
2 h 40 m
€71-94
SOF · 125 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
€62-93
ALC · 10 km
2 h 45 m
€88-145
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 40 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
SOF · 125 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 0 m
€62-83
ALC · 10 km
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 125 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 45 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 125 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 15 m
€128-199
1 stop
VLC · 127 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 5 m
€85-109
ALC · 10 km
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 0 m
€102-136
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 125 km
MarrakechRAK
1 h 50 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
4 h 15 m
no fares
SOF · 125 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

MeasureAlicantePlovdiv
Official languageSpanishBulgarian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation3 m172 m
Main airportAlicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport (ALC)10 km from centre124 non-stop destinationsPlovdiv International Airport (PDV)12 km from centre8 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureAlicantePlovdiv
City population366,221333,994
People per km²1,8193,274
Museums within 10 km818
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre5236
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Alicante or Plovdiv 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). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.