VacationSelector

Madrid or Sofia?

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

Your match

Madrid
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on good for families and nightlife with your weighting.

Sofia
56
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.

MadridSofia
Beaches & swimming. Madrid and Sofia are level on 0.
MadridSofia
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km40
Coast distance305 km214 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 19 points.19
MadridSofia
Score8364
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,508845
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2828
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 18 points.18
MadridSofia
Score7557
Museums within 10 km9751
Museums within 2 km of centre5940
Share of museums within 2 km %6178
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 20 points.20
MadridSofia
Score8161
Drinking venues within 4 km2,414958
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,498608
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6263
Nightclubs within 4 km341102
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 12 points.12
MadridSofia
Score6351
Protected land share 50 km %1912
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km187 hectares229 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 22 points.22
MadridSofia
Score7755
Tourist attractions within 2 km6120
Park area within 2 km187 hectares229 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km30
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 18 points.18
MadridSofia
Score7557
Notable places within 2 km288104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 28 points.28
MadridSofia
Score7199
Price level global60.821.4
Daily budget€122€77
Year-round weather. Madrid leads by 8 points.8
MadridSofia
Score7264
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C3.5 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm36 mm to 78 mm
Dry months73
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
Madrid
10
12
16
19
23
29
33
32
27
20
14
10
Sofia
4
7
11
17
21
25
28
28
23
18
11
5
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sofia
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
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. Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre). Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMadridSofia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 8 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 0 m
€53-86
MAD · 14 km
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 20 m
€121-231
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
2 h 45 m
€88-145
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 45 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 8 km
MunichMUC
2 h 25 m
€193-236
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
4 h 50 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
2 h 30 m
€154-198
SOF · 8 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
12 h 40 m
no fares
MAD · 14 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 2026-08 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

MeasureMadridSofia
Official languageSpanishBulgarian
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
Elevation663 m560 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridSofia
City population3,506,7301,213,134
People per km²5,8012,466
Museums within 10 km8842
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre10651

Where else could you go?

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