VacationSelector

Kyoto 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, 2 points apart

Kyoto
58
match

Wins on places to eat and nightlife with your weighting.

Sofia
56
match

Wins on nature & day trips and value for money 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.

KyotoSofia
Beaches & swimming. Kyoto leads by 17 points.17
KyotoSofia
Score170
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km00
Coast distance47 km214 km
Water distance47 km
Places to eat. Kyoto leads by 20 points.20
KyotoSofia
Score8464
Restaurants within 2 km of centre5,023845
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2228
Museums & heritage. Kyoto leads by 15 points.15
KyotoSofia
Score7257
Museums within 10 km13251
Museums within 2 km of centre5140
Share of museums within 2 km %3978
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Kyoto leads by 19 points.19
KyotoSofia
Score8061
Drinking venues within 4 km3,215958
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,363608
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7363
Nightclubs within 4 km26102
Nature & day trips. Sofia leads by 29 points.29
KyotoSofia
Score2251
Protected land share 50 km %212
Landscape blanket share 50 km %24
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km45 hectares229 hectares
Good for families. Kyoto leads by 11 points.11
KyotoSofia
Score6655
Tourist attractions within 2 km6220
Park area within 2 km45 hectares229 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km40
Sights concentration. Sofia leads by 5 points.5
KyotoSofia
Score5257
Notable places within 2 km79104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 29 points.29
KyotoSofia
Score7099
Price level global62.421.4
Daily budget€77
Year-round weather. Sofia leads by 2 points.2
KyotoSofia
Score6264
Monthly daytime high8.6 °C to 32.4 °C3.5 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall40 mm to 232 mm36 mm to 78 mm
Dry months03
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
Kyoto
9
9
13
20
24
27
31
32
28
22
17
11
Sofia
4
7
11
17
21
25
28
28
23
18
11
5
Sea temperature, °C
Kyoto
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Sofia
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Kyoto
47
67
112
150
147
232
225
149
215
108
68
40
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Daylight, hours per day
Kyoto
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sofia
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Kyoto
5
5
6
6
7
5
6
7
5
5
5
5
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. Kyoto: 1971-2000 (sunshine 1991-2020) normals, Kyoto (3.2 km from centre). Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromKyotoSofia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 30 m
€1,507-1966
2 stops
ITM · 39 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
12 h 0 m
€859-891
3 stops
KIX · 81 km
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
MunichMUC
11 h 30 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
10 h 55 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
1 h 15 m
€116-123
SOF · 8 km
RomeFCO, CIA
12 h 5 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 8 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
5 h 35 m
€288-317
KIX · 81 km
10 h 0 m
€614-660
2 stops
SOF · 8 km
CopenhagenCPH
10 h 45 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
2 h 35 m
€100-146
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
9 h 35 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
4 h 45 m
€298-357
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
AmsterdamAMS
11 h 30 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
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

MeasureKyotoSofia
Official languageJapaneseBulgarian
CurrencyYen (JPY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the regionCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+9UTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, fire 119112
Elevation51 m560 m
Main airportKansai International Airport (KIX)81 km from centre62 non-stop destinationsSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureKyotoSofia
City population1,463,7231,213,134
People per km²1,7682,466
Museums within 10 km7642
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre8951
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 Kyoto 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. 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). 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.