VacationSelector

Sofia or Tampa?

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

Your match

Sofia
✓ Best match
56
match

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

Tampa
44
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

SofiaTampa
Beaches & swimming. Tampa leads by 75 points.75
SofiaTampa
Score075
Swim season months08
Beaches 10 km010
Coast distance214 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Sofia leads by 10 points.10
SofiaTampa
Score6454
Restaurants within 2 km of centre845359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2831
Museums & heritage. Sofia leads by 30 points.30
SofiaTampa
Score5727
Museums within 10 km5113
Museums within 2 km of centre4010
Share of museums within 2 km %7877
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Sofia leads by 22 points.22
SofiaTampa
Score6139
Drinking venues within 4 km958324
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre608227
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6370
Nightclubs within 4 km10226
Nature & day trips. Sofia leads by 21 points.21
SofiaTampa
Score5130
Protected land share 50 km %126
Landscape blanket share 50 km %40
Land share of disc %10072
Park area within 2 km229 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Sofia leads by 25 points.25
SofiaTampa
Score5530
Tourist attractions within 2 km203
Park area within 2 km229 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km05
Sights concentration. Sofia leads by 36 points.36
SofiaTampa
Score5721
Notable places within 2 km10413
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 56 points.56
SofiaTampa
Score9943
Price level global21.4100
Daily budget€77
Year-round weather. Tampa leads by 11 points.11
SofiaTampa
Score6475
Monthly daytime high3.5 °C to 28.4 °C21.5 °C to 32.6 °C
Monthly rainfall36 mm to 78 mm36 mm to 228 mm
Dry months31
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
Sofia
4
7
11
17
21
25
28
28
23
18
11
5
Tampa
22
23
25
28
31
32
32
33
32
29
26
23
Sea temperature, °C
Sofia
No coastline within reach
Tampa
18
18
20
23
26
28
30
30
29
27
23
20
Rainfall, mm
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Tampa
66
66
64
64
67
187
197
228
156
60
36
65
Daylight, hours per day
Sofia
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Tampa
11
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
12
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Sofia
3
4
6
6
8
9
10
10
7
5
3
2
Tampa
7
7
9
10
11
10
9
10
8
8
7
7

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre). Tampa: 1991-2020 normals, Tampa International Airport (7.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSofiaTampa
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
MunichMUC
2 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
MCO · 125 km
MadridMAD
3 h 20 m
€114-128
SOF · 8 km
8 h 55 m
no fares
MCO · 125 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
9 h 10 m
no fares
MCO · 125 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 45 m
€298-357
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
15 h 20 m
no fares
MCO · 125 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 45 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
9 h 25 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
DublinDUB
3 h 35 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
MCO · 125 km
ZurichZRH
2 h 10 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
9 h 55 m
no fares
TPA · 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

MeasureSofiaTampa
Official languageBulgarian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation560 m30 m
Main airportSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinationsTampa International Airport (TPA)8 km from centre99 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureSofiaTampa
City population1,213,134384,959
People per km²2,466848
Museums within 10 km426
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre5147
Swim season, months above 21 °C8 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Sofia or Tampa 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.