VacationSelector

Lisbon or Plovdiv?

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

Your match

Lisbon
✓ Best match
68
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and good for families with your weighting.

Plovdiv
44
match

Wins on 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.

LisbonPlovdiv
Beaches & swimming. Lisbon leads by 57 points.57
LisbonPlovdiv
Score570
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km241
Coast distance2 km130 km
Water distance2 km
Places to eat. Lisbon leads by 34 points.34
LisbonPlovdiv
Score8046
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,496369
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3119
Museums & heritage. Lisbon leads by 32 points.32
LisbonPlovdiv
Score7038
Museums within 10 km12426
Museums within 2 km of centre5426
Share of museums within 2 km %44100
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Lisbon leads by 23 points.23
LisbonPlovdiv
Score6542
Drinking venues within 4 km1,225392
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre956285
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7873
Nightclubs within 4 km6526
Nature & day trips. Lisbon leads by 19 points.19
LisbonPlovdiv
Score5637
Protected land share 50 km %115
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %54100
Park area within 2 km77 hectares125 hectares
Good for families. Lisbon leads by 38 points.38
LisbonPlovdiv
Score6931
Tourist attractions within 2 km825
Park area within 2 km77 hectares125 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Lisbon leads by 25 points.25
LisbonPlovdiv
Score6641
Notable places within 2 km16941
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Plovdiv leads by 25 points.25
LisbonPlovdiv
Score7499
Price level global55.921.4
Daily budget€109€77
Year-round weather. Lisbon leads by 13 points.13
LisbonPlovdiv
Score7865
Monthly daytime high14.9 °C to 28.4 °C5.4 °C to 31.1 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 121 mm25 mm to 81 mm
Dry months42
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
Lisbon
15
16
19
20
23
26
28
28
26
23
18
15
Plovdiv
5
9
14
19
24
28
31
31
26
19
13
7
Sea temperature, °C
Lisbon
15
15
15
15
16
18
18
19
19
18
17
16
Plovdiv
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Lisbon
104
73
72
67
53
13
3
7
36
108
121
102
Plovdiv
65
63
61
53
67
62
40
25
48
66
59
81
Daylight, hours per day
Lisbon
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Plovdiv
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Lisbon
5
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
5
5
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. Lisbon: 1991-2020 normals, Lisboa / Geof (1.1 km from centre). Plovdiv: 1997-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Plovdiv (1.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLisbonPlovdiv
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 30 m
€112-185
LIS · 7 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 25 m
€118-145
LIS · 7 km
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
MadridMAD
1 h 15 m
€64-74
LIS · 7 km
3 h 20 m
€114-128
SOF · 125 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€164-250
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 50 m
€74-97
LIS · 7 km
2 h 45 m
€88-145
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 35 m
€124-144
LIS · 7 km
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 125 km
ViennaVIE
3 h 25 m
€170-237
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 125 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 50 m
€120-145
LIS · 7 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 125 km
MunichMUC
3 h 0 m
€222-263
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 125 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
5 h 25 m
no fares
LIS · 7 km
2 h 30 m
€154-198
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

MeasureLisbonPlovdiv
Official languagePortugueseBulgarian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation100 m172 m
Main airportLisbon Humberto Delgado Airport (LIS)7 km from centre153 non-stop destinationsPlovdiv International Airport (PDV)12 km from centre8 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureLisbonPlovdiv
City population545,796333,994
People per km²5,4533,274
Museums within 10 km7818
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre10636
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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