VacationSelector

Sofia or Vienna?

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 nature & day trips with your weighting.

Vienna
✓ Best match
59
match

Wins on museums & heritage 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.

SofiaVienna
Beaches & swimming. Sofia and Vienna are level on 0.
SofiaVienna
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km022
Coast distance214 km10,000 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Vienna leads by 13 points.13
SofiaVienna
Score6477
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8451,617
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2837
Museums & heritage. Vienna leads by 24 points.24
SofiaVienna
Score5781
Museums within 10 km51192
Museums within 2 km of centre40110
Share of museums within 2 km %7857
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Vienna leads by 13 points.13
SofiaVienna
Score6174
Drinking venues within 4 km9581,948
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre6081,089
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6356
Nightclubs within 4 km102108
Nature & day trips. Sofia leads by 19 points.19
SofiaVienna
Score5132
Protected land share 50 km %124
Landscape blanket share 50 km %40
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km229 hectares93 hectares
Good for families. Vienna leads by 14 points.14
SofiaVienna
Score5569
Tourist attractions within 2 km2046
Park area within 2 km229 hectares93 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km04
Sights concentration. Vienna leads by 18 points.18
SofiaVienna
Score5775
Notable places within 2 km104287
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 40 points.40
SofiaVienna
Score9959
Price level global21.476.9
Daily budget€77€160
Year-round weather. Sofia leads by 3 points.3
SofiaVienna
Score6461
Monthly daytime high3.5 °C to 28.4 °C3.3 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall36 mm to 78 mm38 mm to 80 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
Vienna
3
6
11
17
21
25
27
27
21
15
9
4
Rainfall, mm
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Vienna
42
38
52
42
80
70
78
71
64
47
46
46
Daylight, hours per day
Sofia
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Vienna
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Sofia
3
4
6
6
8
9
10
10
7
5
3
2
Vienna
2
4
5
7
8
8
9
9
6
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre). Vienna: 1991-2020 normals, Wien / Hohe Warte (4.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSofiaVienna
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
2 h 10 m
€105-189
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
1 h 25 m
€143-152
VIE · 18 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 15 m
€116-123
SOF · 8 km
2 h 5 m
€121-285
VIE · 18 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 8 km
1 h 25 m
€49-71
VIE · 18 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 8 km
1 h 35 m
€84-160
VIE · 18 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 45 m
€88-145
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
2 h 15 m
€117-169
VIE · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
1 h 55 m
€112-162
VIE · 18 km
MunichMUC
2 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
1 h 5 m
€230-294
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 30 m
€154-198
SOF · 8 km
3 h 25 m
€283-311
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
10 h 0 m
€614-660
2 stops
SOF · 8 km
10 h 35 m
no fares
VIE · 18 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

MeasureSofiaVienna
Official languageBulgarianGerman, Austrian Sign Language
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 m151 m
Main airportSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinationsVienna International Airport (VIE)18 km from centre204 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureSofiaVienna
City population1,213,1342,028,289
People per km²2,4664,890
Museums within 10 km42152
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre51113

Where else could you go?

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