VacationSelector

San Jose or Sofia?

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

Your match

San Jose
39
match

Wins on year-round weather and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Sofia
✓ Best match
56
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.

San JoseSofia
Beaches & swimming. San Jose leads by 8 points.8
San JoseSofia
Score80
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km10
Coast distance14 km214 km
Water distance14 km
Places to eat. Sofia leads by 23 points.23
San JoseSofia
Score4164
Restaurants within 2 km of centre313845
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1628
Museums & heritage. Sofia leads by 31 points.31
San JoseSofia
Score2657
Museums within 10 km2051
Museums within 2 km of centre940
Share of museums within 2 km %4578
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Sofia leads by 30 points.30
San JoseSofia
Score3161
Drinking venues within 4 km231958
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre88608
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %3863
Nightclubs within 4 km16102
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 19 points.19
San JoseSofia
Score7051
Protected land share 50 km %2612
Landscape blanket share 50 km %24
Land share of disc %91100
Park area within 2 km101 hectares229 hectares
Good for families. Sofia leads by 22 points.22
San JoseSofia
Score3355
Tourist attractions within 2 km220
Park area within 2 km101 hectares229 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Sofia leads by 43 points.43
San JoseSofia
Score1457
Notable places within 2 km9104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 56 points.56
San JoseSofia
Score4399
Price level global10021.4
Daily budget€77
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 21 points.21
San JoseSofia
Score8564
Monthly daytime high15.4 °C to 26.8 °C3.5 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 78 mm36 mm to 78 mm
Dry months83
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
San Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sofia
4
7
11
17
21
25
28
28
23
18
11
5
Sea temperature, °C
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Sofia
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Daylight, hours per day
San Jose
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sofia
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
San Jose
No sunshine record
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. San Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre). Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan JoseSofia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
MunichMUC
11 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
13 h 20 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
1 h 15 m
€116-123
SOF · 8 km
RomeFCO, CIA
12 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 8 km
BarcelonaBCN
11 h 55 m
€653-1326
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
2 h 45 m
€88-145
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
MadridMAD
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
3 h 20 m
€114-128
SOF · 8 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
4 h 45 m
€298-357
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
CopenhagenCPH
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 35 m
€100-146
1 stop
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

MeasureSan JoseSofia
Official languageBulgarian
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation25 m560 m
Main airportMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinationsSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan JoseSofia
City population1,013,2401,213,134
People per km²2,1672,466
Museums within 10 km1942
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre3051
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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