VacationSelector

Izmir or Sofia?

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

Your match

Izmir
53
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather with your weighting.

Sofia
✓ Best match
56
match

Wins on nature & day trips and good for families 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.

IzmirSofia
Beaches & swimming. Izmir leads by 55 points.55
IzmirSofia
Score550
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km40
Coast distance1 km214 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Sofia leads by 15 points.15
IzmirSofia
Score4964
Restaurants within 2 km of centre770845
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1228
Museums & heritage. Sofia leads by 14 points.14
IzmirSofia
Score4357
Museums within 10 km4751
Museums within 2 km of centre2740
Share of museums within 2 km %5778
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Izmir leads by 1 points.1
IzmirSofia
Score6261
Drinking venues within 4 km1,028958
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre695608
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6863
Nightclubs within 4 km70102
Nature & day trips. Sofia leads by 22 points.22
IzmirSofia
Score2951
Protected land share 50 km %412
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %84100
Park area within 2 km62 hectares229 hectares
Good for families. Sofia leads by 20 points.20
IzmirSofia
Score3555
Tourist attractions within 2 km620
Park area within 2 km62 hectares229 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Sofia leads by 17 points.17
IzmirSofia
Score4057
Notable places within 2 km39104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 10 points.10
IzmirSofia
Score8999
Price level global35.221.4
Daily budget€100€77
Year-round weather. Izmir leads by 8 points.8
IzmirSofia
Score7264
Monthly daytime high13 °C to 33.9 °C3.5 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall1 mm to 127 mm36 mm to 78 mm
Dry months53
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
Izmir
13
14
17
21
27
31
34
34
29
24
19
14
Sofia
4
7
11
17
21
25
28
28
23
18
11
5
Sea temperature, °C
Izmir
16
16
16
17
19
22
23
24
23
21
19
17
Sofia
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Izmir
119
107
77
51
33
13
1
4
22
55
96
127
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Daylight, hours per day
Izmir
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sofia
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Izmir
5
5
7
8
10
11
13
12
10
8
6
4
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. Izmir: 1991-2020 normals, Izmir (3.4 km from centre). Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIzmirSofia
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 5 m
€46-55
ADB · 13 km
1 h 15 m
€116-123
SOF · 8 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 45 m
€119-184
ADB · 13 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
3 h 0 m
€204-238
1 stop
ADB · 13 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 20 m
no fares
ADB · 13 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 8 km
MunichMUC
2 h 40 m
€185-288
1 stop
ADB · 13 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
AntalyaAYT
1 h 5 m
€75-89
ADB · 13 km
1 h 45 m
€187-205
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 40 m
no fares
ADB · 13 km
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 8 km
BerlinBER
2 h 55 m
€177-214
1 stop
ADB · 13 km
2 h 10 m
€76-204
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 15 m
no fares
ADB · 13 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 8 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
1 h 50 m
no fares
ADB · 13 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 2026-08 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

MeasureIzmirSofia
Official languageTurkishBulgarian
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+3UTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation2 m560 m
Main airportAdnan Menderes International Airport (ADB)13 km from centre120 non-stop destinationsSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureIzmirSofia
City population4,493,2421,213,134
People per km²4,7602,466
Museums within 10 km2942
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre2051
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Izmir 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. 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). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.

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.