VacationSelector

Florence 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

Florence
55
match

Wins on museums & heritage and sights concentration with your weighting.

Sofia
56
match

Wins on value for money and nature & day trips 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.

FlorenceSofia
Beaches & swimming. Florence and Sofia are level on 0.
FlorenceSofia
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km00
Coast distance78 km214 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Sofia leads by 5 points.5
FlorenceSofia
Score5964
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,299845
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1528
Museums & heritage. Florence leads by 25 points.25
FlorenceSofia
Score8257
Museums within 10 km13251
Museums within 2 km of centre9340
Share of museums within 2 km %7078
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Sofia leads by 5 points.5
FlorenceSofia
Score5661
Drinking venues within 4 km818958
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre599608
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7363
Nightclubs within 4 km34102
Nature & day trips. Sofia leads by 13 points.13
FlorenceSofia
Score3851
Protected land share 50 km %912
Landscape blanket share 50 km %24
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km86 hectares229 hectares
Good for families. Sofia leads by 3 points.3
FlorenceSofia
Score5255
Tourist attractions within 2 km3020
Park area within 2 km86 hectares229 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Florence leads by 18 points.18
FlorenceSofia
Score7557
Notable places within 2 km292104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 31 points.31
FlorenceSofia
Score6899
Price level global64.921.4
Daily budget€155€77
Year-round weather. Florence leads by 4 points.4
FlorenceSofia
Score6864
Monthly daytime high10.8 °C to 32.7 °C3.5 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 132 mm36 mm to 78 mm
Dry months23
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
Florence
11
12
16
20
24
29
32
33
27
22
16
11
Sofia
4
7
11
17
21
25
28
28
23
18
11
5
Rainfall, mm
Florence
68
58
59
65
63
41
32
35
102
125
132
95
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Daylight, hours per day
Florence
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sofia
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Florence
4
4
6
6
8
9
11
10
7
5
4
3
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. Florence: 1995-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Firenze / Peretola (5.6 km from centre). Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromFlorenceSofia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 5 m
€180-199
1 stop
FLR · 6 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€143-159
FLR · 6 km
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 30 m
no fares
FLR · 6 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
RomeFCO, CIA
55 m
€136-139
1 stop
FLR · 6 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 8 km
MunichMUC
1 h 15 m
no fares
FLR · 6 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 35 m
€113-168
FLR · 6 km
2 h 45 m
€88-145
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 25 m
€185-255
1 stop
FLR · 6 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 8 km
TiranaTIA
1 h 35 m
no fares
PSA · 70 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 55 m
€232-255
2 stops
FLR · 6 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
3 h 35 m
no fares
BLQ · 85 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

MeasureFlorenceSofia
Official languageItalianBulgarian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation50 m560 m
Main airportFlorence Airport, Peretola (FLR)6 km from centre36 non-stop destinationsSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureFlorenceSofia
City population360,9301,213,134
People per km²3,5282,466
Museums within 10 km14042
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre6251

Where else could you go?

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