VacationSelector

Rome or Sofia?

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

Your match

Rome
✓ Best match
72
match

Wins on sights concentration and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Sofia
56
match

Wins on value for money and places to eat 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.

RomeSofia
Beaches & swimming. Rome leads by 33 points.33
RomeSofia
Score330
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km30
Coast distance24 km214 km
Water distance24 km
Places to eat. Sofia leads by 4 points.4
RomeSofia
Score6064
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,241845
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1028
Museums & heritage. Rome leads by 27 points.27
RomeSofia
Score8457
Museums within 10 km16151
Museums within 2 km of centre7940
Share of museums within 2 km %4978
Unesco sites within 50 km71
Nightlife. Rome leads by 13 points.13
RomeSofia
Score7461
Drinking venues within 4 km2,022958
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre912608
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4563
Nightclubs within 4 km85102
Nature & day trips. Rome leads by 19 points.19
RomeSofia
Score7051
Protected land share 50 km %1912
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %78100
Park area within 2 km172 hectares229 hectares
Good for families. Rome leads by 31 points.31
RomeSofia
Score8655
Tourist attractions within 2 km12620
Park area within 2 km172 hectares229 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km40
Sights concentration. Rome leads by 42 points.42
RomeSofia
Score9957
Notable places within 2 km1,125104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 31 points.31
RomeSofia
Score6899
Price level global64.921.4
Daily budget€155€77
Year-round weather. Rome leads by 7 points.7
RomeSofia
Score7164
Monthly daytime high12 °C to 31.4 °C3.5 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall21 mm to 114 mm36 mm to 78 mm
Dry months33
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
Rome
12
13
16
18
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Sofia
4
7
11
17
21
25
28
28
23
18
11
5
Sea temperature, °C
Rome
15
14
14
15
18
22
25
25
24
21
19
16
Sofia
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Rome
67
69
57
75
62
33
21
38
70
97
114
103
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Daylight, hours per day
Rome
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sofia
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Rome
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
4
4
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. Rome: 1991-2020 normals, Roma / Ciampino (15.1 km from centre). Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromRomeSofia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 20 m
€76-143
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 0 m
€91-122
FCO · 23 km
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-119
FCO · 23 km
3 h 20 m
€114-128
SOF · 8 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€44-74
FCO · 23 km
2 h 45 m
€88-145
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€66-127
FCO · 23 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 8 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 15 m
€84-118
FCO · 23 km
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 8 km
CataniaCTA
1 h 20 m
€60-112
FCO · 23 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 50 m
€96-147
FCO · 23 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
3 h 20 m
€115-179
FCO · 23 km
2 h 30 m
€154-198
SOF · 8 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 5 m
no fares
FCO · 23 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

MeasureRomeSofia
Official languageItalianBulgarian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation21 m560 m
Main airportRome–Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci International Airport (FCO)23 km from centre230 non-stop destinationsSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureRomeSofia
City population2,748,1091,213,134
People per km²2,1352,466
Museums within 10 km17742
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km71
Distinct cuisines in the centre6551
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

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