VacationSelector

Ghent or Plovdiv?

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

Your match

Ghent
✓ Best match
50
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and places to eat 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.

GhentPlovdiv
Beaches & swimming. Ghent leads by 26 points.26
GhentPlovdiv
Score260
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km81
Coast distance32 km130 km
Water distance32 km
Places to eat. Ghent leads by 24 points.24
GhentPlovdiv
Score7046
Restaurants within 2 km of centre764369
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4919
Museums & heritage. Ghent leads by 20 points.20
GhentPlovdiv
Score5838
Museums within 10 km2426
Museums within 2 km of centre2026
Share of museums within 2 km %83100
Unesco sites within 50 km50
Nightlife. Ghent leads by 7 points.7
GhentPlovdiv
Score4942
Drinking venues within 4 km570392
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre446285
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7873
Nightclubs within 4 km2626
Nature & day trips. Plovdiv leads by 3 points.3
GhentPlovdiv
Score3437
Protected land share 50 km %75
Landscape blanket share 50 km %40
Land share of disc %87100
Park area within 2 km84 hectares125 hectares
Good for families. Ghent leads by 19 points.19
GhentPlovdiv
Score5031
Tourist attractions within 2 km195
Park area within 2 km84 hectares125 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Ghent leads by 5 points.5
GhentPlovdiv
Score4641
Notable places within 2 km5541
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Plovdiv leads by 39 points.39
GhentPlovdiv
Score6099
Price level global76.221.4
Daily budget€180€77
Year-round weather. Plovdiv leads by 9 points.9
GhentPlovdiv
Score5665
Monthly daytime high6.4 °C to 22 °C5.4 °C to 31.1 °C
Monthly rainfall35 mm to 79 mm25 mm to 81 mm
Dry months12
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
Ghent
6
7
10
13
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Plovdiv
5
9
14
19
24
28
31
31
26
19
13
7
Sea temperature, °C
Ghent
6
6
6
9
12
16
18
19
18
15
11
8
Plovdiv
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Ghent
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
Plovdiv
65
63
61
53
67
62
40
25
48
66
59
81
Daylight, hours per day
Ghent
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
Ghent
3
3
5
7
8
8
8
7
6
4
3
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. Ghent: 1991-2020 normals, Vlissingen (44.9 km from centre). Plovdiv: 1997-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Plovdiv (1.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGhentPlovdiv
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 56 km
3 h 20 m
€114-128
SOF · 125 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 45 m
€93-156
BRU · 56 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 125 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
€138-162
2 stops
BRU · 56 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 56 km
2 h 45 m
€88-145
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 125 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 56 km
1 h 15 m
€116-123
SOF · 125 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 25 m
€36-101
BRU · 56 km
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 125 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
4 h 45 m
€298-357
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 56 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

MeasureGhentPlovdiv
Official languageFrench, German, DutchBulgarian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation12 m172 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)56 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsPlovdiv International Airport (PDV)12 km from centre8 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureGhentPlovdiv
City population272,657333,994
People per km²1,7283,274
Museums within 10 km3018
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km50
Distinct cuisines in the centre8336
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Ghent 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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.