VacationSelector

Philadelphia or Sofia?

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

Your match

Philadelphia
51
match

Wins on places to eat and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Sofia
✓ Best match
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.

PhiladelphiaSofia
Beaches & swimming. Philadelphia and Sofia are level on 0.
PhiladelphiaSofia
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km10
Coast distance13 km214 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Philadelphia leads by 13 points.13
PhiladelphiaSofia
Score7764
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,714845
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3528
Museums & heritage. Philadelphia leads by 3 points.3
PhiladelphiaSofia
Score6057
Museums within 10 km8951
Museums within 2 km of centre4840
Share of museums within 2 km %5478
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Sofia leads by 2 points.2
PhiladelphiaSofia
Score5961
Drinking venues within 4 km930958
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre575608
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6263
Nightclubs within 4 km41102
Nature & day trips. Sofia leads by 2 points.2
PhiladelphiaSofia
Score4951
Protected land share 50 km %1412
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %89100
Park area within 2 km75 hectares229 hectares
Good for families. Sofia leads by 2 points.2
PhiladelphiaSofia
Score5355
Tourist attractions within 2 km1620
Park area within 2 km75 hectares229 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km40
Sights concentration. Sofia leads by 3 points.3
PhiladelphiaSofia
Score5457
Notable places within 2 km88104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 56 points.56
PhiladelphiaSofia
Score4399
Price level global10021.4
Daily budget€77
Year-round weather. Sofia leads by 4 points.4
PhiladelphiaSofia
Score6064
Monthly daytime high5.2 °C to 31 °C3.5 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall69 mm to 112 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
Philadelphia
5
7
12
18
24
28
31
30
26
20
13
8
Sofia
4
7
11
17
21
25
28
28
23
18
11
5
Rainfall, mm
Philadelphia
79
69
101
88
86
103
111
109
112
88
74
101
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Daylight, hours per day
Philadelphia
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sofia
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Philadelphia
4
5
6
7
9
9
8
9
7
7
5
5
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. Philadelphia: 1991-2020 normals, Philadelphia International Airport (11.3 km from centre). Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromPhiladelphiaSofia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 20 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
ViennaVIE
8 h 40 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
8 h 5 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
8 h 25 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 8 km
MunichMUC
8 h 20 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
10 h 10 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
1 h 15 m
€116-123
SOF · 8 km
RomeFCO, CIA
8 h 55 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 8 km
BarcelonaBCN
8 h 5 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
2 h 45 m
€88-145
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
MadridMAD
7 h 35 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
3 h 20 m
€114-128
SOF · 8 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
11 h 25 m
€622-836
1 stop
JFK · 140 km
2 h 30 m
€154-198
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

MeasurePhiladelphiaSofia
Official languageBulgarian
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation12 m560 m
Main airportPhiladelphia International Airport (PHL)11 km from centre128 non-stop destinationsSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasurePhiladelphiaSofia
City population1,603,7971,213,134
People per km²4,3392,466
Museums within 10 km5442
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre7551

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Philadelphia 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). 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.