VacationSelector

Athens or Sofia?

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

Your match

Athens
✓ Best match
68
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nightlife with your weighting.

Sofia
56
match

Wins on value for money and nature & day trips 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.

AthensSofia
Beaches & swimming. Athens leads by 48 points.48
AthensSofia
Score480
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km140
Coast distance6 km214 km
Water distance6 km
Places to eat. Athens leads by 5 points.5
AthensSofia
Score6964
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,431845
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2528
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 16 points.16
AthensSofia
Score7357
Museums within 10 km12251
Museums within 2 km of centre7840
Share of museums within 2 km %6478
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Athens leads by 20 points.20
AthensSofia
Score8161
Drinking venues within 4 km2,718958
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,354608
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5063
Nightclubs within 4 km136102
Nature & day trips. Sofia leads by 6 points.6
AthensSofia
Score4551
Protected land share 50 km %512
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %50100
Park area within 2 km128 hectares229 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 16 points.16
AthensSofia
Score7155
Tourist attractions within 2 km6820
Park area within 2 km128 hectares229 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 18 points.18
AthensSofia
Score7557
Notable places within 2 km291104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 25 points.25
AthensSofia
Score7499
Price level global55.821.4
Daily budget€125€77
Year-round weather. Athens leads by 10 points.10
AthensSofia
Score7464
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C3.5 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm36 mm to 78 mm
Dry months73
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
Athens
13
14
17
21
27
32
34
35
30
24
19
15
Sofia
4
7
11
17
21
25
28
28
23
18
11
5
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Sofia
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sofia
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
Sofia
3
4
6
6
8
9
10
10
7
5
3
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Athens: 1991-2020 normals, Athens / Athenai / Pláka (2.2 km from centre). Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensSofia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 20 m
€95-237
ATH · 20 km
1 h 15 m
€116-123
SOF · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€174-212
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 10 m
€83-197
ATH · 20 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 8 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
€97-139
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 8 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 25 m
€71-91
ATH · 20 km
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 8 km
MunichMUC
2 h 25 m
€214-254
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 5 m
€125-147
ATH · 20 km
2 h 30 m
€154-198
SOF · 8 km
LarnacaLCA
1 h 45 m
€63-80
ATH · 20 km
2 h 5 m
€98-127
SOF · 8 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

MeasureAthensSofia
Official languageGreekBulgarian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation74 m560 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensSofia
City population643,4521,213,134
People per km²16,4992,466
Museums within 10 km8842
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre8251
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 Athens or Sofia 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.