VacationSelector

Rotterdam 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, 2 points apart

Rotterdam
54
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and places to eat with your weighting.

Sofia
56
match

Wins on value for money and nightlife 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.

RotterdamSofia
Beaches & swimming. Rotterdam leads by 37 points.37
RotterdamSofia
Score370
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km220
Coast distance24 km214 km
Water distance24 km—
Places to eat. Rotterdam leads by 8 points.8
RotterdamSofia
Score7264
Restaurants within 2 km of centre862845
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4628
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 3 points.3
RotterdamSofia
Score6057
Museums within 10 km4151
Museums within 2 km of centre2040
Share of museums within 2 km %4978
Unesco sites within 50 km51
Nightlife. Sofia leads by 12 points.12
RotterdamSofia
Score4961
Drinking venues within 4 km542958
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre378608
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7063
Nightclubs within 4 km40102
Nature & day trips. Sofia leads by 9 points.9
RotterdamSofia
Score4251
Protected land share 50 km %1012
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %79100
Park area within 2 km61 hectares229 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 7 points.7
RotterdamSofia
Score6255
Tourist attractions within 2 km2720
Park area within 2 km61 hectares229 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km80
Sights concentration. Sofia leads by 6 points.6
RotterdamSofia
Score5157
Notable places within 2 km74104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 41 points.41
RotterdamSofia
Score5899
Price level global79.221.4
Daily budget€181€77
Year-round weather. Sofia leads by 8 points.8
RotterdamSofia
Score5664
Monthly daytime high6.2 °C to 22.1 °C3.5 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 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
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sofia
4
7
11
17
21
25
28
28
23
18
11
5
Sea temperature, °C
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Sofia
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Daylight, hours per day
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sofia
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Rotterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
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. Rotterdam: 1993-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Rotterdam Airport Zestienhoven (3.9 km from centre). Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromRotterdamSofia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€159-284
RTM · 5 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
3 h 20 m
€114-128
SOF · 8 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
DublinDUB
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
2 h 35 m
€100-146
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
4 h 45 m
€298-357
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 47 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 0 m
€156-208
AMS · 47 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
INI · 139 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 50 m
€209-257
AMS · 47 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 8 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 30 m
no fares
AMS · 47 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

MeasureRotterdamSofia
Official languageDutchBulgarian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112 or 911112
Elevation10 m560 m
Main airportRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinationsSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureRotterdamSofia
City population664,3111,213,134
People per km²2,0802,466
Museums within 10 km4042
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km51
Distinct cuisines in the centre7751
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone–

Where else could you go?

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