VacationSelector

Galway or Plovdiv?

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

Your match

Galway
39
match

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

Plovdiv
✓ Best match
44
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.

GalwayPlovdiv
Beaches & swimming. Galway leads by 51 points.51
GalwayPlovdiv
Score510
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km131
Coast distance1 km130 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Plovdiv leads by 9 points.9
GalwayPlovdiv
Score3746
Restaurants within 2 km of centre173369
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2019
Museums & heritage. Plovdiv leads by 18 points.18
GalwayPlovdiv
Score2038
Museums within 10 km526
Museums within 2 km of centre526
Share of museums within 2 km %100100
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Plovdiv leads by 16 points.16
GalwayPlovdiv
Score2642
Drinking venues within 4 km185392
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre153285
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8373
Nightclubs within 4 km826
Nature & day trips. Galway leads by 18 points.18
GalwayPlovdiv
Score5537
Protected land share 50 km %5
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %85100
Park area within 2 km65 hectares125 hectares
Good for families. Plovdiv leads by 6 points.6
GalwayPlovdiv
Score2531
Tourist attractions within 2 km55
Park area within 2 km65 hectares125 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Plovdiv leads by 19 points.19
GalwayPlovdiv
Score2241
Notable places within 2 km1441
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Plovdiv leads by 42 points.42
GalwayPlovdiv
Score5799
Price level global80.221.4
Daily budget€187€77
Year-round weather. Plovdiv leads by 11 points.11
GalwayPlovdiv
Score5465
Monthly daytime high8.9 °C to 19.6 °C5.4 °C to 31.1 °C
Monthly rainfall63 mm to 113 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
Galway
9
10
11
14
16
19
20
19
18
14
11
9
Plovdiv
5
9
14
19
24
28
31
31
26
19
13
7
Sea temperature, °C
Galway
9
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
15
14
12
10
Plovdiv
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Galway
100
87
76
63
63
72
76
89
77
101
104
113
Plovdiv
65
63
61
53
67
62
40
25
48
66
59
81
Daylight, hours per day
Galway
8
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
Galway
2
2
4
5
6
5
4
5
4
3
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. Galway: 1991-2020 normals, Shannon Airport (64.2 km from centre). Plovdiv: 1997-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Plovdiv (1.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGalwayPlovdiv
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 10 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
DublinDUB
1 h 0 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
SOF · 125 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 30 m
no fares
NOC · 73 km
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 125 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 40 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
3 h 5 m
€109-169
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 50 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
SOF · 125 km
RomeFCO, CIA
3 h 0 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 125 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 45 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 10 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
SOF · 125 km
WroclawWRO
2 h 45 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
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

MeasureGalwayPlovdiv
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
Elevation25 m172 m
Main airportShannon Airport (SNN)64 km from centre36 non-stop destinationsPlovdiv International Airport (PDV)12 km from centre8 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureGalwayPlovdiv
City population83,456333,994
People per km²1,5633,274
Museums within 10 km418
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre2536
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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