VacationSelector

Munich or Sofia?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Munich
57
match

Wins on good for families and sights concentration with your weighting.

Sofia
56
match

Wins on value for money and year-round weather 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.

MunichSofia
Beaches & swimming. Munich and Sofia are level on 0.
MunichSofia
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km60
Coast distance579 km214 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Munich leads by 9 points.9
MunichSofia
Score7364
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,280845
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3528
Museums & heritage. Munich leads by 4 points.4
MunichSofia
Score6157
Museums within 10 km7451
Museums within 2 km of centre4840
Share of museums within 2 km %6578
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Munich leads by 6 points.6
MunichSofia
Score6761
Drinking venues within 4 km1,335958
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre763608
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5763
Nightclubs within 4 km103102
Nature & day trips. Sofia leads by 3 points.3
MunichSofia
Score4851
Protected land share 50 km %1712
Landscape blanket share 50 km %154
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km199 hectares229 hectares
Good for families. Munich leads by 24 points.24
MunichSofia
Score7955
Tourist attractions within 2 km8020
Park area within 2 km199 hectares229 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Munich leads by 11 points.11
MunichSofia
Score6857
Notable places within 2 km196104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 39 points.39
MunichSofia
Score6099
Price level global75.921.4
Daily budget€163€77
Year-round weather. Sofia leads by 8 points.8
MunichSofia
Score5664
Monthly daytime high4 °C to 25 °C3.5 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall46 mm to 121 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
Munich
4
6
10
15
19
23
25
25
20
15
8
5
Sofia
4
7
11
17
21
25
28
28
23
18
11
5
Rainfall, mm
Munich
52
46
61
56
107
121
119
117
78
67
58
59
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Daylight, hours per day
Munich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sofia
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Munich
2
3
5
6
7
7
8
8
6
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. Munich: 1991-2020 normals, München (1.9 km from centre). Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMunichSofia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€116-210
MUC · 29 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
€177-210
MUC · 29 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 5 m
€183-262
1 stop
MUC · 29 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 8 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 30 m
€127-141
MUC · 29 km
1 h 15 m
€116-123
SOF · 8 km
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€227-312
1 stop
MUC · 29 km
3 h 20 m
€114-128
SOF · 8 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€166-216
MUC · 29 km
2 h 45 m
€88-145
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 30 m
€141-202
MUC · 29 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 8 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 5 m
€111-182
MUC · 29 km
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 8 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 0 m
€292-332
MUC · 29 km
4 h 45 m
€298-357
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 0 m
no fares
MUC · 29 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

MeasureMunichSofia
Official languageGermanBulgarian
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
Elevation519 m560 m
Main airportMunich Airport (MUC)29 km from centre208 non-stop destinationsSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureMunichSofia
City population1,510,3781,213,134
People per km²4,8612,466
Museums within 10 km7442
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre8951

Where else could you go?

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