VacationSelector

Dresden or Plovdiv?

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

Your match

Dresden
✓ Best match
48
match

Wins on good for families and museums & heritage 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.

DresdenPlovdiv
Beaches & swimming. Dresden and Plovdiv are level on 0.
DresdenPlovdiv
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km221
Coast distance267 km130 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Dresden leads by 15 points.15
DresdenPlovdiv
Score6146
Restaurants within 2 km of centre422369
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4219
Museums & heritage. Dresden leads by 16 points.16
DresdenPlovdiv
Score5438
Museums within 10 km6626
Museums within 2 km of centre3426
Share of museums within 2 km %52100
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Dresden and Plovdiv are level on 42.
DresdenPlovdiv
Score4242
Drinking venues within 4 km359392
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre265285
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7473
Nightclubs within 4 km4326
Nature & day trips. Dresden leads by 2 points.2
DresdenPlovdiv
Score3937
Protected land share 50 km %145
Landscape blanket share 50 km %90
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km80 hectares125 hectares
Good for families. Dresden leads by 28 points.28
DresdenPlovdiv
Score5931
Tourist attractions within 2 km325
Park area within 2 km80 hectares125 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Dresden leads by 12 points.12
DresdenPlovdiv
Score5341
Notable places within 2 km8241
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Plovdiv leads by 39 points.39
DresdenPlovdiv
Score6099
Price level global75.921.4
Daily budget€163€77
Year-round weather. Plovdiv leads by 3 points.3
DresdenPlovdiv
Score6265
Monthly daytime high4 °C to 26.2 °C5.4 °C to 31.1 °C
Monthly rainfall31 mm to 83 mm25 mm to 81 mm
Dry months42
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
Dresden
4
6
10
17
21
24
26
26
21
15
9
6
Plovdiv
5
9
14
19
24
28
31
31
26
19
13
7
Rainfall, mm
Dresden
46
31
36
36
64
72
80
83
55
49
40
45
Plovdiv
65
63
61
53
67
62
40
25
48
66
59
81
Daylight, hours per day
Dresden
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Plovdiv
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Dresden
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
7
6
4
2
2
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. Dresden: 1991-2020 normals, Dresden-Strehlen (3.8 km from centre). Plovdiv: 1997-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Plovdiv (1.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDresdenPlovdiv
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 40 m
no fares
LEJ · 113 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 25 m
€57-79
PRG · 112 km
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 125 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€86-113
PRG · 112 km
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 45 m
€62-97
PRG · 112 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 125 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€118-136
PRG · 112 km
1 h 15 m
€116-123
SOF · 125 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 5 m
no fares
DRS · 10 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 30 m
€163-247
PRG · 112 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SOF · 125 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 0 m
€123-212
1 stop
PRG · 112 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 125 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
4 h 0 m
€208-225
1 stop
BER · 147 km
2 h 30 m
€154-198
SOF · 125 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
10 h 45 m
no fares
PRG · 112 km
10 h 0 m
€614-660
2 stops
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 2026-08 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

MeasureDresdenPlovdiv
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
Elevation126 m172 m
Main airportDresden Airport (DRS)10 km from centre12 non-stop destinationsPlovdiv International Airport (PDV)12 km from centre8 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureDresdenPlovdiv
City population564,904333,994
People per km²1,7203,274
Museums within 10 km7018
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre7736

Where else could you go?

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