VacationSelector

Marseille or Plovdiv?

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

Your match

Marseille
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and places to eat 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.

MarseillePlovdiv
Beaches & swimming. Marseille leads by 67 points.67
MarseillePlovdiv
Score670
Swim season months20
Beaches 10 km641
Coast distance0 km130 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Marseille leads by 29 points.29
MarseillePlovdiv
Score7546
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,320369
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3919
Museums & heritage. Marseille leads by 12 points.12
MarseillePlovdiv
Score5038
Museums within 10 km3326
Museums within 2 km of centre2326
Share of museums within 2 km %70100
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Marseille leads by 6 points.6
MarseillePlovdiv
Score4842
Drinking venues within 4 km544392
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre454285
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8373
Nightclubs within 4 km3026
Nature & day trips. Marseille and Plovdiv are level on 37.
MarseillePlovdiv
Score3737
Protected land share 50 km %155
Landscape blanket share 50 km %130
Land share of disc %56100
Park area within 2 km25 hectares125 hectares
Good for families. Marseille leads by 13 points.13
MarseillePlovdiv
Score4431
Tourist attractions within 2 km175
Park area within 2 km25 hectares125 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km40
Sights concentration. Marseille leads by 17 points.17
MarseillePlovdiv
Score5841
Notable places within 2 km11141
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Plovdiv leads by 37 points.37
MarseillePlovdiv
Score6299
Price level global73.721.4
Daily budget€160€77
Year-round weather. Marseille leads by 10 points.10
MarseillePlovdiv
Score7565
Monthly daytime high11.8 °C to 30.7 °C5.4 °C to 31.1 °C
Monthly rainfall11 mm to 82 mm25 mm to 81 mm
Dry months62
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
Marseille
12
13
16
19
24
28
31
30
26
21
16
12
Plovdiv
5
9
14
19
24
28
31
31
26
19
13
7
Sea temperature, °C
Marseille
13
13
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
19
17
15
Plovdiv
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Marseille
47
30
29
51
38
28
11
26
82
72
76
41
Plovdiv
65
63
61
53
67
62
40
25
48
66
59
81
Daylight, hours per day
Marseille
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Plovdiv
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Marseille
5
6
8
8
10
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
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. Marseille: 1991-2020 normals, Marseille / Marignane (20.6 km from centre). Plovdiv: 1997-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Plovdiv (1.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMarseillePlovdiv
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 50 m
€65-134
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 25 m
€110-119
MRS · 21 km
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 55 m
€219-245
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
1 h 15 m
€116-123
SOF · 125 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 50 m
€123-230
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 125 km
MunichMUC
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 125 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
1 h 40 m
€86-123
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
2 h 40 m
€71-94
SOF · 125 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 25 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 125 km
MadridMAD
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
3 h 20 m
€114-128
SOF · 125 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
4 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 21 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 2026-09 to 2026-09, 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

MeasureMarseillePlovdiv
Official languageFrenchBulgarian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m172 m
Main airportMarseille Provence Airport (MRS)21 km from centre125 non-stop destinationsPlovdiv International Airport (PDV)12 km from centre8 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureMarseillePlovdiv
City population886,040333,994
People per km²3,6833,274
Museums within 10 km2718
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre9336
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months

Where else could you go?

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