VacationSelector

Sofia or York?

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 value for money and nightlife with your weighting.

York
41
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

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.

SofiaYork
Beaches & swimming. Sofia and York are level on 0.
SofiaYork
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km02
Coast distance214 km50 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Sofia leads by 10 points.10
SofiaYork
Score6454
Restaurants within 2 km of centre845361
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2831
Museums & heritage. Sofia leads by 11 points.11
SofiaYork
Score5746
Museums within 10 km5118
Museums within 2 km of centre4016
Share of museums within 2 km %7889
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Sofia leads by 18 points.18
SofiaYork
Score6143
Drinking venues within 4 km958450
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre608353
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6378
Nightclubs within 4 km10214
Nature & day trips. Sofia leads by 18 points.18
SofiaYork
Score5133
Protected land share 50 km %1217
Landscape blanket share 50 km %416
Land share of disc %10095
Park area within 2 km229 hectares42 hectares
Good for families. Sofia leads by 12 points.12
SofiaYork
Score5543
Tourist attractions within 2 km2013
Park area within 2 km229 hectares42 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km03
Sights concentration. Sofia leads by 18 points.18
SofiaYork
Score5739
Notable places within 2 km10437
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 45 points.45
SofiaYork
Score9954
Price level global21.484.9
Daily budget€77
Year-round weather. Sofia leads by 8 points.8
SofiaYork
Score6456
Monthly daytime high3.5 °C to 28.4 °C6.7 °C to 20.9 °C
Monthly rainfall36 mm to 78 mm39 mm to 66 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
York
7
8
10
13
16
19
21
20
18
14
10
7
Rainfall, mm
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
York
53
44
39
48
43
61
56
65
58
66
62
60
Daylight, hours per day
Sofia
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
York
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Sofia
3
4
6
6
8
9
10
10
7
5
3
2
York
2
3
4
5
6
5
6
5
4
3
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). York: 1991-2020 normals, Leeming (47.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSofiaYork
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
55 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 8 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 45 m
€88-145
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
MalagaAGP
3 h 35 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 8 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
1 h 55 m
€41-70
SOF · 8 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 8 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
AlicanteALC
3 h 5 m
€109-169
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
10 h 0 m
€614-660
2 stops
SOF · 8 km
12 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 104 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

MeasureSofiaYork
Official languageBulgarianEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 999
Elevation560 m25 m
Main airportSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinationsLeeds Bradford Airport (LBA)39 km from centre73 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureSofiaYork
City population1,213,134208,400
People per km²2,466766
Museums within 10 km4224
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre5154

Where else could you go?

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