VacationSelector

Los Angeles or Sofia?

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

Your match

Los Angeles
53
match

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

Sofia
✓ Best match
56
match

Wins on value for money 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.

Los AngelesSofia
Beaches & swimming. Los Angeles leads by 29 points.29
Los AngelesSofia
Score290
Beaches 25 km11
Beaches 10 km00
Swim season months00
Warmest sea temp20.2 °C
Scoring variantbeachScoreWideRing
Declared2026-08-25
Registerseed/editorial-overrides.json
Coast distance214 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Los Angeles leads by 2 points.2
Los AngelesSofia
Score6664
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,337845
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2228
Museums & heritage. Sofia leads by 8 points.8
Los AngelesSofia
Score4957
Museums within 10 km6951
Museums within 2 km of centre2340
Share of museums within 2 km %3378
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Sofia leads by 7 points.7
Los AngelesSofia
Score5461
Drinking venues within 4 km660958
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre432608
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6563
Nightclubs within 4 km64102
Nature & day trips. Los Angeles leads by 11 points.11
Los AngelesSofia
Score6251
Protected land share 50 km %2612
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %80100
Park area within 2 km20 hectares229 hectares
Good for families. Sofia leads by 22 points.22
Los AngelesSofia
Score3355
Tourist attractions within 2 km1120
Park area within 2 km20 hectares229 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Sofia leads by 3 points.3
Los AngelesSofia
Score5457
Notable places within 2 km88104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 56 points.56
Los AngelesSofia
Score4399
Price level global10021.4
Daily budget€77
Year-round weather. Los Angeles leads by 23 points.23
Los AngelesSofia
Score8764
Monthly daytime high18.6 °C to 24.7 °C3.5 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 76 mm36 mm to 78 mm
Dry months83
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
Los Angeles
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
24
22
19
Sofia
4
7
11
17
21
25
28
28
23
18
11
5
Sea temperature, °C
Los Angeles
15
15
15
15
17
18
20
20
20
19
17
16
Sofia
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Los Angeles
73
76
44
16
7
2
1
0
3
13
21
57
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Daylight, hours per day
Los Angeles
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
10
10
Sofia
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Los Angeles
No sunshine record
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. Los Angeles: 1991-2020 normals, Los Angeles Airport (18.5 km from centre). Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLos AngelesSofia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 0 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
ViennaVIE
12 h 15 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 40 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
MunichMUC
12 h 0 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 25 m
€600-640
1 stop
LAX · 19 km
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
13 h 35 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
1 h 15 m
€116-123
SOF · 8 km
RomeFCO, CIA
12 h 40 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 8 km
BarcelonaBCN
12 h 5 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
2 h 45 m
€88-145
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
15 h 0 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
2 h 30 m
€154-198
SOF · 8 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
16 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
10 h 0 m
€614-660
2 stops
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 2026-09 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

MeasureLos AngelesSofia
Official languageBulgarian
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation106 m560 m
Main airportLos Angeles International Airport (LAX)19 km from centre180 non-stop destinationsSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureLos AngelesSofia
City population3,898,7471,213,134
People per km²2,9942,466
Museums within 10 km3842
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre4651
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Los Angeles 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). 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.