VacationSelector

Sofia or Valencia?

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

Your match

Sofia
56
match

Wins on value for money and good for families with your weighting.

Valencia
✓ Best match
64
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.

SofiaValencia
Beaches & swimming. Valencia leads by 67 points.67
SofiaValencia
Score067
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km012
Coast distance214 km3 km
Water distance3 km
Places to eat. Valencia leads by 14 points.14
SofiaValencia
Score6478
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8451,995
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2833
Museums & heritage. Sofia leads by 2 points.2
SofiaValencia
Score5755
Museums within 10 km5159
Museums within 2 km of centre4026
Share of museums within 2 km %7844
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Valencia leads by 9 points.9
SofiaValencia
Score6170
Drinking venues within 4 km9581,513
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre608957
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6363
Nightclubs within 4 km102108
Nature & day trips. Valencia leads by 2 points.2
SofiaValencia
Score5153
Protected land share 50 km %1210
Landscape blanket share 50 km %40
Land share of disc %10064
Park area within 2 km229 hectares119 hectares
Good for families. Sofia leads by 13 points.13
SofiaValencia
Score5542
Tourist attractions within 2 km2012
Park area within 2 km229 hectares119 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Sofia leads by 5 points.5
SofiaValencia
Score5752
Notable places within 2 km10478
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 28 points.28
SofiaValencia
Score9971
Price level global21.460.8
Daily budget€77€122
Year-round weather. Valencia leads by 20 points.20
SofiaValencia
Score6484
Monthly daytime high3.5 °C to 28.4 °C16.8 °C to 30.6 °C
Monthly rainfall36 mm to 78 mm7 mm to 70 mm
Dry months38
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
Valencia
17
17
19
21
24
28
30
31
28
25
20
17
Sea temperature, °C
Sofia
No coastline within reach
Valencia
14
14
14
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Valencia
38
30
40
33
36
26
7
15
70
66
52
48
Daylight, hours per day
Sofia
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Valencia
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Sofia
3
4
6
6
8
9
10
10
7
5
3
2
Valencia
6
6
7
8
9
9
10
10
8
7
6
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre). Valencia: 1991-2020 normals, Valencia (1.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSofiaValencia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
2 h 15 m
€80-167
VLC · 9 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 8 km
1 h 50 m
€51-87
VLC · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
1 h 55 m
€103-131
VLC · 9 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 8 km
2 h 0 m
€70-117
VLC · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
2 h 15 m
€128-199
1 stop
VLC · 9 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 45 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
1 h 0 m
€32-53
VLC · 9 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 8 km
2 h 40 m
€155-215
1 stop
VLC · 9 km
MadridMAD
3 h 20 m
€114-128
SOF · 8 km
1 h 0 m
€69-81
VLC · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 45 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
2 h 25 m
€155-178
VLC · 9 km
MarrakechRAK
4 h 15 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
2 h 0 m
€72-115
VLC · 9 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

MeasureSofiaValencia
Official languageBulgarianSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation560 m15 m
Main airportSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinationsValencia Airport (VLC)9 km from centre107 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureSofiaValencia
City population1,213,134840,792
People per km²2,4666,242
Museums within 10 km4246
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre5192
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

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