VacationSelector

Oslo 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, level with your weighting

Oslo
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

OsloSofia
Beaches & swimming. Oslo leads by 60 points.60
OsloSofia
Score600
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1630
Coast distance1 km214 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Oslo leads by 3 points.3
OsloSofia
Score6764
Restaurants within 2 km of centre853845
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3428
Museums & heritage. Sofia leads by 9 points.9
OsloSofia
Score4857
Museums within 10 km7051
Museums within 2 km of centre3740
Share of museums within 2 km %5378
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Sofia leads by 8 points.8
OsloSofia
Score5361
Drinking venues within 4 km695958
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre562608
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8163
Nightclubs within 4 km41102
Nature & day trips. Oslo leads by 10 points.10
OsloSofia
Score6151
Protected land share 50 km %2212
Landscape blanket share 50 km %14
Land share of disc %94100
Park area within 2 km88 hectares229 hectares
Good for families. Sofia leads by 7 points.7
OsloSofia
Score4855
Tourist attractions within 2 km1320
Park area within 2 km88 hectares229 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Oslo leads by 12 points.12
OsloSofia
Score6957
Notable places within 2 km207104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 45 points.45
OsloSofia
Score5499
Price level global85.121.4
Daily budget€203€77
Year-round weather. Sofia leads by 16 points.16
OsloSofia
Score4864
Monthly daytime high0.1 °C to 22.7 °C3.5 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall40 mm to 104 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
Oslo
0
1
5
11
17
20
23
21
16
10
4
1
Sofia
4
7
11
17
21
25
28
28
23
18
11
5
Sea temperature, °C
Oslo
4
3
3
6
11
15
18
18
15
12
9
6
Sofia
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Oslo
58
46
40
48
60
80
86
104
81
94
84
54
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Daylight, hours per day
Oslo
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Sofia
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Oslo
2
3
5
6
8
8
8
7
5
3
2
1
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. Oslo: 1991-2020 normals, Oslo-Blindern (4.3 km from centre). Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromOsloSofia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 5 m
€46-96
OSL · 37 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 15 m
€92-109
OSL · 37 km
2 h 35 m
€100-146
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
€163-249
1 stop
OSL · 37 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 5 m
€83-98
OSL · 37 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
INI · 139 km
MunichMUC
2 h 15 m
€187-227
1 stop
OSL · 37 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 30 m
€213-241
1 stop
OSL · 37 km
1 h 15 m
€116-123
SOF · 8 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
€162-207
OSL · 37 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 15 m
€145-204
1 stop
OSL · 37 km
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
DohaDOH
6 h 30 m
no fares
OSL · 37 km
4 h 25 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
10 h 50 m
no fares
OSL · 37 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

MeasureOsloSofia
Official languageNorwegian, Nynorsk, Bokmål, SámiBulgarian
CurrencyNorwegian Krone (NOK)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 112, ambulance 113, fire 110112
Elevation23 m560 m
Main airportOslo-Gardermoen International Airport (OSL)37 km from centre58 non-stop destinationsSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureOsloSofia
City population717,7101,213,134
People per km²2,466
Museums within 10 km6042
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre7551
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Oslo 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. 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). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.

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.