VacationSelector

Plovdiv or San Jose?

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

Your match

Plovdiv
✓ Best match
44
match

Wins on value for money and sights concentration with your weighting.

San Jose
39
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

PlovdivSan Jose
Beaches & swimming. San Jose leads by 8 points.8
PlovdivSan Jose
Score08
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km11
Coast distance130 km14 km
Water distance14 km
Places to eat. Plovdiv leads by 5 points.5
PlovdivSan Jose
Score4641
Restaurants within 2 km of centre369313
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1916
Museums & heritage. Plovdiv leads by 12 points.12
PlovdivSan Jose
Score3826
Museums within 10 km2620
Museums within 2 km of centre269
Share of museums within 2 km %10045
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Plovdiv leads by 11 points.11
PlovdivSan Jose
Score4231
Drinking venues within 4 km392231
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre28588
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7338
Nightclubs within 4 km2616
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 33 points.33
PlovdivSan Jose
Score3770
Protected land share 50 km %526
Landscape blanket share 50 km %02
Land share of disc %10091
Park area within 2 km125 hectares101 hectares
Good for families. San Jose leads by 2 points.2
PlovdivSan Jose
Score3133
Tourist attractions within 2 km52
Park area within 2 km125 hectares101 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Plovdiv leads by 27 points.27
PlovdivSan Jose
Score4114
Notable places within 2 km419
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Plovdiv leads by 56 points.56
PlovdivSan Jose
Score9943
Price level global21.4100
Daily budget€77
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 20 points.20
PlovdivSan Jose
Score6585
Monthly daytime high5.4 °C to 31.1 °C15.4 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall25 mm to 81 mm0 mm to 78 mm
Dry months28
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
Plovdiv
5
9
14
19
24
28
31
31
26
19
13
7
San Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Plovdiv
No coastline within reach
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Rainfall, mm
Plovdiv
65
63
61
53
67
62
40
25
48
66
59
81
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Daylight, hours per day
Plovdiv
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
San Jose
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Plovdiv
3
4
5
6
8
9
10
10
7
5
3
2
San Jose
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Plovdiv: 1997-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Plovdiv (1.2 km from centre). San Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromPlovdivSan Jose
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
MunichMUC
2 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 125 km
11 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 15 m
€116-123
SOF · 125 km
13 h 20 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 125 km
12 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 45 m
€88-145
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
11 h 55 m
€653-1326
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
MadridMAD
3 h 20 m
€114-128
SOF · 125 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 45 m
€298-357
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
CopenhagenCPH
2 h 35 m
€100-146
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 57 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

MeasurePlovdivSan Jose
Official languageBulgarian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation172 m25 m
Main airportPlovdiv International Airport (PDV)12 km from centre8 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasurePlovdivSan Jose
City population333,9941,013,240
People per km²3,2742,167
Museums within 10 km1819
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre3630
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Plovdiv or San Jose 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.