VacationSelector

Paphos or Plovdiv?

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, 2 points apart

Paphos
46
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather 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.

PaphosPlovdiv
Beaches & swimming. Paphos leads by 79 points.79
PaphosPlovdiv
Score790
Swim season months60
Beaches 10 km271
Coast distance1 km130 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Plovdiv leads by 2 points.2
PaphosPlovdiv
Score4446
Restaurants within 2 km of centre251369
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2219
Museums & heritage. Plovdiv leads by 16 points.16
PaphosPlovdiv
Score2238
Museums within 10 km826
Museums within 2 km of centre326
Share of museums within 2 km %38100
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Plovdiv leads by 12 points.12
PaphosPlovdiv
Score3042
Drinking venues within 4 km224392
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre161285
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7273
Nightclubs within 4 km1126
Nature & day trips. Plovdiv leads by 14 points.14
PaphosPlovdiv
Score2337
Protected land share 50 km %25
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %33100
Park area within 2 km27 hectares125 hectares
Good for families. Paphos leads by 11 points.11
PaphosPlovdiv
Score4231
Tourist attractions within 2 km305
Park area within 2 km27 hectares125 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Plovdiv leads by 22 points.22
PaphosPlovdiv
Score1941
Notable places within 2 km1241
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Plovdiv leads by 29 points.29
PaphosPlovdiv
Score7099
Price level global61.421.4
Daily budget€129€77
Year-round weather. Paphos leads by 21 points.21
PaphosPlovdiv
Score8665
Monthly daytime high17 °C to 30.8 °C5.4 °C to 31.1 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 98 mm25 mm to 81 mm
Dry months82
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
Paphos
17
17
19
21
25
28
30
31
29
27
23
19
Plovdiv
5
9
14
19
24
28
31
31
26
19
13
7
Sea temperature, °C
Paphos
17
17
17
18
21
24
27
28
27
25
22
19
Plovdiv
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Paphos
81
47
29
17
10
2
1
0
5
14
42
98
Plovdiv
65
63
61
53
67
62
40
25
48
66
59
81
Daylight, hours per day
Paphos
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
14
12
11
10
10
Plovdiv
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Paphos
No sunshine record
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. Paphos: 1991-2020 normals, Paphos Airport (8.4 km from centre). Plovdiv: 1997-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Plovdiv (1.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromPaphosPlovdiv
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
4 h 25 m
€125-167
PFO · 8 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
1 h 5 m
€149-173
PFO · 8 km
2 h 30 m
€154-198
SOF · 125 km
ManchesterMAN
4 h 40 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
SOF · 125 km
ViennaVIE
3 h 0 m
€206-323
1 stop
PFO · 8 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 125 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
3 h 45 m
no fares
LCA · 110 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
3 h 25 m
€125-152
1 stop
PFO · 8 km
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 125 km
AthensATH
1 h 40 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
1 h 15 m
€113-165
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 55 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 125 km
MunichMUC
3 h 25 m
no fares
LCA · 110 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 125 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 35 m
no fares
ECN · 107 km
1 h 15 m
€116-123
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

MeasurePaphosPlovdiv
Official languageTurkish, Greek, Modern GreekBulgarian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG240 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation72 m172 m
Main airportPaphos International Airport (PFO)8 km from centre57 non-stop destinationsPlovdiv International Airport (PDV)12 km from centre8 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year17 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasurePaphosPlovdiv
City population35,961333,994
People per km²1,9873,274
Museums within 10 km418
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre3636
Swim season, months above 21 °C6 months

Where else could you go?

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