VacationSelector

Cologne or Plovdiv?

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

Your match

Cologne
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on good for families and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Plovdiv
44
match

Wins on value for money and year-round weather 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.

ColognePlovdiv
Beaches & swimming. Cologne and Plovdiv are level on 0.
ColognePlovdiv
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km401
Coast distance256 km130 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 26 points.26
ColognePlovdiv
Score7246
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,142369
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3519
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 22 points.22
ColognePlovdiv
Score6038
Museums within 10 km4726
Museums within 2 km of centre2726
Share of museums within 2 km %57100
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 22 points.22
ColognePlovdiv
Score6442
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107392
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727285
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6673
Nightclubs within 4 km9026
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 34 points.34
ColognePlovdiv
Score7137
Protected land share 50 km %535
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km118 hectares125 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 41 points.41
ColognePlovdiv
Score7231
Tourist attractions within 2 km435
Park area within 2 km118 hectares125 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km60
Sights concentration. Cologne leads by 12 points.12
ColognePlovdiv
Score5341
Notable places within 2 km8141
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Plovdiv leads by 39 points.39
ColognePlovdiv
Score6099
Price level global75.921.4
Daily budget€163€77
Year-round weather. Plovdiv leads by 5 points.5
ColognePlovdiv
Score6065
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C5.4 °C to 31.1 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm25 mm to 81 mm
Dry months02
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
Cologne
6
7
12
16
20
23
25
25
21
15
10
7
Plovdiv
5
9
14
19
24
28
31
31
26
19
13
7
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Plovdiv
65
63
61
53
67
62
40
25
48
66
59
81
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Plovdiv
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
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. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Plovdiv: 1997-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Plovdiv (1.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromColognePlovdiv
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
1 h 15 m
€116-123
SOF · 125 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 30 m
€204-239
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
1 h 45 m
€187-205
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SOF · 125 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 125 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 125 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 125 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
2 h 45 m
€88-145
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 125 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
4 h 20 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
2 h 30 m
€154-198
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 2026-09 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

MeasureColognePlovdiv
Official languageGermanBulgarian
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
Elevation59 m172 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsPlovdiv International Airport (PDV)12 km from centre8 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureColognePlovdiv
City population1,024,621333,994
People per km²2,5303,274
Museums within 10 km4018
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre8436

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cologne 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. 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.