VacationSelector

Sao Paulo 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, level with your weighting

Sao Paulo
56
match

Wins on year-round weather and nightlife with your weighting.

Sofia
56
match

Wins on value for money and museums & heritage 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.

Sao PauloSofia
Beaches & swimming. Sao Paulo and Sofia are level on 0.
Sao PauloSofia
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km00
Coast distance51 km214 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Sao Paulo leads by 9 points.9
Sao PauloSofia
Score7364
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,735845
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2728
Museums & heritage. Sofia leads by 14 points.14
Sao PauloSofia
Score4357
Museums within 10 km8251
Museums within 2 km of centre2640
Share of museums within 2 km %3278
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Sao Paulo leads by 11 points.11
Sao PauloSofia
Score7261
Drinking venues within 4 km1,747958
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre896608
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5163
Nightclubs within 4 km118102
Nature & day trips. Sao Paulo and Sofia are level on 51.
Sao PauloSofia
Score5151
Protected land share 50 km %2612
Landscape blanket share 50 km %154
Land share of disc %95100
Park area within 2 km52 hectares229 hectares
Good for families. Sao Paulo and Sofia are level on 55.
Sao PauloSofia
Score5555
Tourist attractions within 2 km3820
Park area within 2 km52 hectares229 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Sofia leads by 7 points.7
Sao PauloSofia
Score5057
Notable places within 2 km68104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 18 points.18
Sao PauloSofia
Score8199
Price level global46.121.4
Daily budget€77
Year-round weather. Sao Paulo leads by 19 points.19
Sao PauloSofia
Score8364
Monthly daytime high22.8 °C to 29.2 °C3.5 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall26 mm to 297 mm36 mm to 78 mm
Dry months13
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
Sao Paulo
28
29
28
27
24
23
23
25
25
27
27
28
Sofia
4
7
11
17
21
25
28
28
23
18
11
5
Rainfall, mm
Sao Paulo
297
259
206
89
64
55
53
26
82
128
146
234
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Daylight, hours per day
Sao Paulo
13
13
12
12
11
11
11
11
12
13
13
14
Sofia
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Sao Paulo
4
6
6
5
5
5
6
6
5
6
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. Sao Paulo: 1991-2020 normals, Sao Paulo (5.9 km from centre). Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSao PauloSofia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 50 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
12 h 10 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
MadridMAD
10 h 30 m
€739-741
GRU · 21 km
3 h 20 m
€114-128
SOF · 8 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
11 h 50 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 8 km
MunichMUC
12 h 15 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
13 h 5 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
1 h 15 m
€116-123
SOF · 8 km
RomeFCO, CIA
11 h 45 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 8 km
BarcelonaBCN
11 h 0 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
2 h 45 m
€88-145
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
12 h 0 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
2 h 40 m
€71-94
SOF · 8 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 45 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
2 h 45 m
€99-135
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 2026-09 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

MeasureSao PauloSofia
Official languagePortugueseBulgarian
CurrencyBrazilian Real (BRL)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCN60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-3UTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 190, ambulance 192, fire 193112
Elevation760 m560 m
Main airportSão Paulo/Guarulhos–Governor André Franco Montoro International Airport (GRU)21 km from centre102 non-stop destinationsSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureSao PauloSofia
City population11,451,9991,213,134
People per km²7,5192,466
Museums within 10 km9042
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre5951

Where else could you go?

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