VacationSelector

Sofia or Warsaw?

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 year-round weather with your weighting.

Warsaw
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on sights concentration and good for families 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.

SofiaWarsaw
Beaches & swimming. Sofia and Warsaw are level on 0.
SofiaWarsaw
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km026
Coast distance214 km238 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Warsaw leads by 8 points.8
SofiaWarsaw
Score6472
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8451,222
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2834
Museums & heritage. Warsaw leads by 6 points.6
SofiaWarsaw
Score5763
Museums within 10 km51107
Museums within 2 km of centre4060
Share of museums within 2 km %7856
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Warsaw leads by 1 points.1
SofiaWarsaw
Score6162
Drinking venues within 4 km9581,005
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre608648
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6364
Nightclubs within 4 km102104
Nature & day trips. Warsaw leads by 4 points.4
SofiaWarsaw
Score5155
Protected land share 50 km %1227
Landscape blanket share 50 km %419
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km229 hectares107 hectares
Good for families. Warsaw leads by 15 points.15
SofiaWarsaw
Score5570
Tourist attractions within 2 km2042
Park area within 2 km229 hectares107 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km05
Sights concentration. Warsaw leads by 19 points.19
SofiaWarsaw
Score5776
Notable places within 2 km104299
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 20 points.20
SofiaWarsaw
Score9979
Price level global21.449
Daily budget€77€133
Year-round weather. Sofia leads by 5 points.5
SofiaWarsaw
Score6459
Monthly daytime high3.5 °C to 28.4 °C0.9 °C to 25.2 °C
Monthly rainfall36 mm to 78 mm29 mm to 83 mm
Dry months36
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
Warsaw
1
3
7
15
20
23
25
25
19
13
7
2
Rainfall, mm
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Warsaw
31
29
29
36
56
63
83
63
50
40
36
37
Daylight, hours per day
Sofia
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Warsaw
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Sofia
3
4
6
6
8
9
10
10
7
5
3
2
Warsaw
1
2
5
8
9
11
11
10
8
5
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre). Warsaw: 1991-2020 normals, Warszawa-Okecie (7.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSofiaWarsaw
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 8 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 8 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 8 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
MunichMUC
2 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 15 m
€116-123
SOF · 8 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 30 m
€154-198
SOF · 8 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
10 h 0 m
€614-660
2 stops
SOF · 8 km
10 h 15 m
no fares
WAW · 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

MeasureSofiaWarsaw
Official languageBulgarianPolish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Zloty (PLN)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCE50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation560 m118 m
Main airportSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinationsWarsaw Chopin Airport (WAW)8 km from centre170 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureSofiaWarsaw
City population1,213,1341,862,402
People per km²2,4663,601
Museums within 10 km42117
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre5176

Where else could you go?

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