VacationSelector

Hamburg or Sofia?

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

Your match

Hamburg
53
match

Wins on places to eat and nightlife with your weighting.

Sofia
✓ Best match
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.

HamburgSofia
Beaches & swimming. Hamburg and Sofia are level on 0.
HamburgSofia
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km160
Coast distance22 km214 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Hamburg leads by 9 points.9
HamburgSofia
Score7364
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,150845
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3828
Museums & heritage. Hamburg leads by 3 points.3
HamburgSofia
Score6057
Museums within 10 km9451
Museums within 2 km of centre5040
Share of museums within 2 km %5378
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Hamburg leads by 7 points.7
HamburgSofia
Score6861
Drinking venues within 4 km1,339958
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre834608
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6263
Nightclubs within 4 km119102
Nature & day trips. Sofia leads by 11 points.11
HamburgSofia
Score4051
Protected land share 50 km %1412
Landscape blanket share 50 km %104
Land share of disc %99100
Park area within 2 km89 hectares229 hectares
Good for families. Hamburg leads by 5 points.5
HamburgSofia
Score6055
Tourist attractions within 2 km4020
Park area within 2 km89 hectares229 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Hamburg leads by 2 points.2
HamburgSofia
Score5957
Notable places within 2 km118104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 39 points.39
HamburgSofia
Score6099
Price level global75.921.4
Daily budget€163€77
Year-round weather. Sofia leads by 9 points.9
HamburgSofia
Score5564
Monthly daytime high4.3 °C to 23.2 °C3.5 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall39 mm to 82 mm36 mm to 78 mm
Dry months13
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
Hamburg
4
5
9
14
18
21
23
23
19
14
8
5
Sofia
4
7
11
17
21
25
28
28
23
18
11
5
Rainfall, mm
Hamburg
67
55
57
39
58
74
82
77
65
63
61
72
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Daylight, hours per day
Hamburg
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Sofia
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Hamburg
1
2
4
6
7
7
7
7
5
4
2
1
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. Hamburg: 1991-2020 normals, Hamburg Airport (9.3 km from centre). Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHamburgSofia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€89-225
HAM · 9 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 10 m
no fares
HAM · 9 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
MunichMUC
1 h 20 m
€195-270
HAM · 9 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€178-237
HAM · 9 km
1 h 15 m
€116-123
SOF · 8 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€167-214
1 stop
HAM · 9 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 8 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 35 m
no fares
HAM · 9 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 35 m
€162-200
HAM · 9 km
1 h 45 m
€187-205
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 25 m
€127-153
HAM · 9 km
2 h 45 m
€88-145
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 45 m
€96-167
1 stop
HAM · 9 km
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 8 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 25 m
€357-416
HAM · 9 km
4 h 45 m
€298-357
1 stop
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

MeasureHamburgSofia
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
Elevation6 m560 m
Main airportHamburg Helmut Schmidt Airport (HAM)9 km from centre119 non-stop destinationsSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureHamburgSofia
City population1,910,1601,213,134
People per km²2,5302,466
Museums within 10 km7742
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre8351

Where else could you go?

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