VacationSelector

Cardiff or Sofia?

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

Your match

Cardiff
48
match

Wins on beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Sofia
✓ Best match
56
match

Wins on value for money 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.

CardiffSofia
Beaches & swimming. Cardiff leads by 46 points.46
CardiffSofia
Score460
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km80
Coast distance2 km214 km
Water distance2 km
Places to eat. Sofia leads by 4 points.4
CardiffSofia
Score6064
Restaurants within 2 km of centre541845
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3228
Museums & heritage. Sofia leads by 18 points.18
CardiffSofia
Score3957
Museums within 10 km6151
Museums within 2 km of centre640
Share of museums within 2 km %1078
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Sofia leads by 13 points.13
CardiffSofia
Score4861
Drinking venues within 4 km536958
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre395608
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7463
Nightclubs within 4 km35102
Nature & day trips. Sofia leads by 1 points.1
CardiffSofia
Score5051
Protected land share 50 km %1812
Landscape blanket share 50 km %154
Land share of disc %68100
Park area within 2 km88 hectares229 hectares
Good for families. Sofia leads by 23 points.23
CardiffSofia
Score3255
Tourist attractions within 2 km420
Park area within 2 km88 hectares229 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Sofia leads by 12 points.12
CardiffSofia
Score4557
Notable places within 2 km51104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 45 points.45
CardiffSofia
Score5499
Price level global84.921.4
Daily budget€77
Year-round weather. Sofia leads by 10 points.10
CardiffSofia
Score5464
Monthly daytime high7.7 °C to 20.2 °C3.5 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall49 mm to 87 mm36 mm to 78 mm
Dry months03
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
Cardiff
8
8
10
13
16
18
20
20
18
14
11
9
Sofia
4
7
11
17
21
25
28
28
23
18
11
5
Sea temperature, °C
Cardiff
8
7
8
9
12
15
17
18
17
15
12
9
Sofia
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Cardiff
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Daylight, hours per day
Cardiff
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sofia
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cardiff
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
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. Cardiff: 1991-2020 normals, Cardiff-Wales Airport (14.9 km from centre). Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCardiffSofia
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 55 m
€85-113
1 stop
BRS · 34 km
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 8 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 35 m
no fares
BHX · 146 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
AntalyaAYT
4 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 45 m
€187-205
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 45 m
€88-145
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
3 h 20 m
€114-128
SOF · 8 km
MunichMUC
1 h 55 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
PaphosPFO
4 h 40 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 45 m
no fares
BHX · 146 km
1 h 15 m
€116-123
SOF · 8 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
4 h 15 m
no fares
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 2026-09 to 2026-09, 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

MeasureCardiffSofia
Official languageEnglishBulgarian
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation41 m560 m
Main airportCardiff International Airport (CWL)15 km from centre8 non-stop destinationsSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureCardiffSofia
City population383,5361,213,134
People per km²2,7342,466
Museums within 10 km942
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre5551
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cardiff 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). 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.