VacationSelector

Milan or Sofia?

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

Your match

Milan
✓ Best match
63
match

Wins on good for families and museums & heritage 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.

MilanSofia
Beaches & swimming. Milan and Sofia are level on 0.
MilanSofia
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km40
Coast distance120 km214 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Milan leads by 6 points.6
MilanSofia
Score7064
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,991845
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2028
Museums & heritage. Milan leads by 17 points.17
MilanSofia
Score7457
Museums within 10 km8751
Museums within 2 km of centre5540
Share of museums within 2 km %6378
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Milan leads by 14 points.14
MilanSofia
Score7561
Drinking venues within 4 km2,215958
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre961608
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4363
Nightclubs within 4 km70102
Nature & day trips. Milan leads by 14 points.14
MilanSofia
Score6551
Protected land share 50 km %3012
Landscape blanket share 50 km %114
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km102 hectares229 hectares
Good for families. Milan leads by 22 points.22
MilanSofia
Score7755
Tourist attractions within 2 km7620
Park area within 2 km102 hectares229 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km50
Sights concentration. Milan leads by 17 points.17
MilanSofia
Score7457
Notable places within 2 km266104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 31 points.31
MilanSofia
Score6899
Price level global64.921.4
Daily budget€155€77
Year-round weather. Milan and Sofia are level on 64.
MilanSofia
Score6464
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 28.6 °C3.5 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall44 mm to 127 mm36 mm to 78 mm
Dry months03
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
Milan
7
10
15
17
23
26
29
28
24
18
11
7
Sofia
4
7
11
17
21
25
28
28
23
18
11
5
Rainfall, mm
Milan
54
44
50
78
102
75
57
83
116
113
127
49
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Daylight, hours per day
Milan
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sofia
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Milan
3
4
5
6
7
7
9
8
5
4
2
2
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. Milan: 1991-2020 normals, Novara / Cameri (41.2 km from centre). Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMilanSofia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€48-103
MXP · 40 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 30 m
€34-53
MXP · 40 km
2 h 45 m
€88-145
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 15 m
€116-135
LIN · 7 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 8 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 20 m
€46-63
MXP · 40 km
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 15 m
€67-76
LIN · 7 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 25 m
€65-131
MXP · 40 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 8 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 40 m
€140-309
MXP · 40 km
1 h 15 m
€116-123
SOF · 8 km
MadridMAD
2 h 0 m
€63-91
MXP · 40 km
3 h 20 m
€114-128
SOF · 8 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
3 h 50 m
€119-204
MXP · 40 km
2 h 30 m
€154-198
SOF · 8 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 20 m
no fares
MXP · 40 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

MeasureMilanSofia
Official languageItalianBulgarian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation138 m560 m
Main airportMilan Malpensa International Airport (MXP)40 km from centre203 non-stop destinationsSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureMilanSofia
City population1,354,1961,213,134
People per km²7,4532,466
Museums within 10 km8742
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre7951

Where else could you go?

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