VacationSelector

Cologne or Sofia?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Cologne
57
match

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

Sofia
56
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.

CologneSofia
Beaches & swimming. Cologne and Sofia are level on 0.
CologneSofia
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km400
Coast distance256 km214 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 8 points.8
CologneSofia
Score7264
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,142845
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3528
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 3 points.3
CologneSofia
Score6057
Museums within 10 km4751
Museums within 2 km of centre2740
Share of museums within 2 km %5778
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 3 points.3
CologneSofia
Score6461
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107958
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727608
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6663
Nightclubs within 4 km90102
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 20 points.20
CologneSofia
Score7151
Protected land share 50 km %5312
Landscape blanket share 50 km %524
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km118 hectares229 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 17 points.17
CologneSofia
Score7255
Tourist attractions within 2 km4320
Park area within 2 km118 hectares229 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km60
Sights concentration. Sofia leads by 4 points.4
CologneSofia
Score5357
Notable places within 2 km81104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 39 points.39
CologneSofia
Score6099
Price level global75.921.4
Daily budget€163€77
Year-round weather. Sofia leads by 4 points.4
CologneSofia
Score6064
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C3.5 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 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
Cologne
6
7
12
16
20
23
25
25
21
15
10
7
Sofia
4
7
11
17
21
25
28
28
23
18
11
5
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sofia
9
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
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. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneSofia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
1 h 15 m
€116-123
SOF · 8 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 30 m
€204-239
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
1 h 45 m
€187-205
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 8 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 8 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
2 h 45 m
€88-145
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 8 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
4 h 20 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
2 h 30 m
€154-198
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 2026-10, 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

MeasureCologneSofia
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 m560 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneSofia
City population1,024,6211,213,134
People per km²2,5302,466
Museums within 10 km4042
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre8451

Where else could you go?

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