VacationSelector

Cork or Sofia?

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

Your match

Cork
38
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Sofia
✓ Best match
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.

CorkSofia
Beaches & swimming. Cork leads by 28 points.28
CorkSofia
Score280
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km10
Coast distance3 km214 km
Water distance3 km
Places to eat. Sofia leads by 14 points.14
CorkSofia
Score5064
Restaurants within 2 km of centre224845
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3528
Museums & heritage. Sofia leads by 34 points.34
CorkSofia
Score2357
Museums within 10 km1051
Museums within 2 km of centre840
Share of museums within 2 km %8078
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Sofia leads by 23 points.23
CorkSofia
Score3861
Drinking venues within 4 km361958
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre292608
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8163
Nightclubs within 4 km9102
Nature & day trips. Cork leads by 1 points.1
CorkSofia
Score5251
Protected land share 50 km %12
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %74100
Park area within 2 km48 hectares229 hectares
Good for families. Sofia leads by 28 points.28
CorkSofia
Score2755
Tourist attractions within 2 km720
Park area within 2 km48 hectares229 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Sofia leads by 35 points.35
CorkSofia
Score2257
Notable places within 2 km14104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 42 points.42
CorkSofia
Score5799
Price level global80.221.4
Daily budget€187€77
Year-round weather. Sofia leads by 15 points.15
CorkSofia
Score4964
Monthly daytime high8.3 °C to 18.6 °C3.5 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall78 mm to 140 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
Cork
8
9
10
12
15
17
19
19
17
13
10
9
Sofia
4
7
11
17
21
25
28
28
23
18
11
5
Sea temperature, °C
Cork
10
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
14
12
11
Sofia
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Cork
132
100
92
85
78
88
86
98
91
140
125
134
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Daylight, hours per day
Cork
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
Cork
2
2
4
5
6
6
5
5
4
3
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. Cork: 1991-2020 normals, Cork Airport (5.6 km from centre). Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCorkSofia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 45 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 10 m
no fares
KIR · 78 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 40 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 20 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 8 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 55 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 8 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 10 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 20 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
2 h 45 m
€88-145
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
MunichMUC
2 h 25 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
2 h 0 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 2026-08 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

MeasureCorkSofia
Official languageEnglish, IrishBulgarian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m560 m
Main airportCork International Airport (ORK)7 km from centre46 non-stop destinationsSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureCorkSofia
City population222,3331,213,134
People per km²5,9612,466
Museums within 10 km542
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre4951
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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