VacationSelector

Malaga or Plovdiv?

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

Your match

Malaga
✓ Best match
59
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and places to eat with your weighting.

Plovdiv
44
match

Wins on value for money and sights concentration 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.

MalagaPlovdiv
Beaches & swimming. Malaga leads by 66 points.66
MalagaPlovdiv
Score660
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km211
Coast distance0 km130 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Malaga leads by 23 points.23
MalagaPlovdiv
Score6946
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,002369
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3419
Museums & heritage. Malaga leads by 15 points.15
MalagaPlovdiv
Score5338
Museums within 10 km4026
Museums within 2 km of centre3526
Share of museums within 2 km %88100
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Malaga leads by 12 points.12
MalagaPlovdiv
Score5442
Drinking venues within 4 km715392
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre486285
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6873
Nightclubs within 4 km4526
Nature & day trips. Malaga leads by 6 points.6
MalagaPlovdiv
Score4337
Protected land share 50 km %75
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %63100
Park area within 2 km85 hectares125 hectares
Good for families. Malaga leads by 22 points.22
MalagaPlovdiv
Score5331
Tourist attractions within 2 km335
Park area within 2 km85 hectares125 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Plovdiv leads by 4 points.4
MalagaPlovdiv
Score3741
Notable places within 2 km3341
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Plovdiv leads by 28 points.28
MalagaPlovdiv
Score7199
Price level global60.821.4
Daily budget€122€77
Year-round weather. Malaga leads by 17 points.17
MalagaPlovdiv
Score8265
Monthly daytime high17.2 °C to 31.5 °C5.4 °C to 31.1 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 88 mm25 mm to 81 mm
Dry months52
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
Malaga
17
18
20
22
25
29
31
32
28
24
20
18
Plovdiv
5
9
14
19
24
28
31
31
26
19
13
7
Sea temperature, °C
Malaga
15
15
15
16
18
20
22
23
22
20
17
16
Plovdiv
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Malaga
62
55
66
41
23
4
0
3
25
60
78
88
Plovdiv
65
63
61
53
67
62
40
25
48
66
59
81
Daylight, hours per day
Malaga
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Plovdiv
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Malaga
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
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. Malaga: 1991-2020 normals, Malaga / Aeropuerto (8.2 km from centre). Plovdiv: 1997-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Plovdiv (1.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMalagaPlovdiv
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 40 m
€67-129
AGP · 9 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 35 m
€73-109
AGP · 9 km
2 h 45 m
€88-145
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
ViennaVIE
3 h 10 m
€140-155
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 125 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€124-199
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 25 m
€61-88
AGP · 9 km
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 125 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 25 m
€92
AGP · 9 km
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 45 m
€110-142
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
2 h 40 m
€71-94
SOF · 125 km
MadridMAD
1 h 10 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
3 h 20 m
€114-128
SOF · 125 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 30 m
€59-73
AGP · 9 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 125 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
4 h 55 m
no fares
AGP · 9 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

MeasureMalagaPlovdiv
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
Elevation18 m172 m
Main airportMálaga-Costa del Sol Airport (AGP)9 km from centre165 non-stop destinationsPlovdiv International Airport (PDV)12 km from centre8 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureMalagaPlovdiv
City population599,063333,994
People per km²1,5173,274
Museums within 10 km3218
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre6536
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months

Where else could you go?

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