VacationSelector

Sofia or Tromso?

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 nightlife and value for money with your weighting.

Tromso
27
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

SofiaTromso
Beaches & swimming. Tromso leads by 52 points.52
SofiaTromso
Score052
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km014
Coast distance214 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Sofia leads by 40 points.40
SofiaTromso
Score6424
Restaurants within 2 km of centre84585
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2816
Museums & heritage. Sofia leads by 34 points.34
SofiaTromso
Score5723
Museums within 10 km5110
Museums within 2 km of centre408
Share of museums within 2 km %7880
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Sofia leads by 54 points.54
SofiaTromso
Score617
Drinking venues within 4 km95867
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre60861
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6391
Nightclubs within 4 km1025
Nature & day trips. Sofia leads by 40 points.40
SofiaTromso
Score5111
Protected land share 50 km %129
Landscape blanket share 50 km %49
Land share of disc %10065
Park area within 2 km229 hectares7 hectares
Good for families. Sofia leads by 41 points.41
SofiaTromso
Score5514
Tourist attractions within 2 km209
Park area within 2 km229 hectares7 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Sofia leads by 29 points.29
SofiaTromso
Score5728
Notable places within 2 km10420
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 45 points.45
SofiaTromso
Score9954
Price level global21.485.1
Daily budget€77€203
Year-round weather. Sofia leads by 31 points.31
SofiaTromso
Score6433
Monthly daytime high3.5 °C to 28.4 °C-1.1 °C to 16.3 °C
Monthly rainfall36 mm to 78 mm56 mm to 128 mm
Dry months30
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
Tromso
-1
-1
1
4
9
13
16
15
11
5
2
0
Sea temperature, °C
Sofia
No coastline within reach
Tromso
5
5
4
4
6
8
10
11
10
9
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Tromso
108
95
97
71
56
57
73
90
110
128
94
110
Daylight, hours per day
Sofia
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Tromso
2
7
12
16
22
24
24
18
14
9
4
0
Sunshine, hours per day
Sofia
3
4
6
6
8
9
10
10
7
5
3
2
Tromso
0
1
3
6
8
8
8
6
3
2
0
0

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre). Tromso: 1991-2020 normals, Tromso (0.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSofiaTromso
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
CopenhagenCPH
2 h 35 m
€100-146
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
HelsinkiHEL
3 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 50 m
no fares
INI · 139 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
BerlinBER
2 h 10 m
€76-204
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
ZurichZRH
2 h 10 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
3 h 40 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 8 km
3 h 30 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 8 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
TOS · 4 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

MeasureSofiaTromso
Official languageBulgarianNorwegian, Nynorsk, Bokmål, Sámi
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Norwegian Krone (NOK)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112Police 112, ambulance 113, fire 110
Elevation560 m20 m
Main airportSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinationsTromsø Airport (TOS)4 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureSofiaTromso
City population1,213,13479,943
People per km²2,46632
Museums within 10 km428
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre5123
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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