VacationSelector

Sofia or Venice?

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, 1 point apart

Sofia
56
match

Wins on nature & day trips and value for money with your weighting.

Venice
57
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

SofiaVenice
Beaches & swimming. Venice leads by 69 points.69
SofiaVenice
Score069
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km020
Coast distance214 km4 km
Water distance4 km
Places to eat. Sofia leads by 19 points.19
SofiaVenice
Score6445
Restaurants within 2 km of centre845750
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2810
Museums & heritage. Venice leads by 15 points.15
SofiaVenice
Score5772
Museums within 10 km5157
Museums within 2 km of centre4045
Share of museums within 2 km %7879
Unesco sites within 50 km15
Nightlife. Sofia leads by 26 points.26
SofiaVenice
Score6135
Drinking venues within 4 km958342
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre608306
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6389
Nightclubs within 4 km1023
Nature & day trips. Sofia leads by 34 points.34
SofiaVenice
Score5117
Protected land share 50 km %124
Landscape blanket share 50 km %40
Land share of disc %10070
Park area within 2 km229 hectares15 hectares
Good for families. Venice leads by 2 points.2
SofiaVenice
Score5557
Tourist attractions within 2 km2072
Park area within 2 km229 hectares15 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km03
Sights concentration. Venice leads by 26 points.26
SofiaVenice
Score5783
Notable places within 2 km104464
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 31 points.31
SofiaVenice
Score9968
Price level global21.464.9
Daily budget€77€155
Year-round weather. Venice leads by 2 points.2
SofiaVenice
Score6466
Monthly daytime high3.5 °C to 28.4 °C8 °C to 30.4 °C
Monthly rainfall36 mm to 78 mm36 mm to 106 mm
Dry months32
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
Venice
8
10
15
19
24
28
30
30
25
19
13
8
Sea temperature, °C
Sofia
No coastline within reach
Venice
10
9
10
14
18
23
25
26
23
19
16
13
Rainfall, mm
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Venice
38
36
54
78
91
75
65
74
106
89
95
60
Daylight, hours per day
Sofia
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Venice
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Sofia
3
4
6
6
8
9
10
10
7
5
3
2
Venice
3
4
5
6
7
8
10
9
6
4
3
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre). Venice: 1991-2020 normals, Treviso / S. Angelo (26.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSofiaVenice
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
2 h 0 m
€46-119
1 stop
VCE · 7 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
1 h 40 m
€68-109
VCE · 7 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 8 km
1 h 10 m
€65-121
VCE · 7 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
1 h 20 m
€136-186
1 stop
VCE · 7 km
MadridMAD
3 h 20 m
€114-128
SOF · 8 km
2 h 20 m
€102-159
VCE · 7 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 45 m
€88-145
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
1 h 45 m
€41-56
VCE · 7 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 8 km
1 h 10 m
€81-119
VCE · 7 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 15 m
€116-123
SOF · 8 km
2 h 20 m
€148-150
VCE · 7 km
MunichMUC
2 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
1 h 5 m
€268-289
VCE · 7 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 45 m
€298-357
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
5 h 55 m
€366-421
2 stops
VCE · 7 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

MeasureSofiaVenice
Official languageBulgarianItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation560 m2 m
Main airportSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinationsVenice Marco Polo Airport (VCE)7 km from centre98 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureSofiaVenice
City population1,213,134250,369
People per km²2,466602
Museums within 10 km4252
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km15
Distinct cuisines in the centre5146
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months

Where else could you go?

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