Photos: Cape Town by Stephan Louis, Pexels License; St. Pete Beach by Jeffrey Eisen, Pexels License.
Cape Town or St. Pete Beach?
Our verdict in twelve categories, each scored against the same fixed benchmark cities, and the climate month by month, so you can choose for your trip.
Choose Cape Town for
- culture and sights
- nature and the outdoors
- prices
What lies behind each score is written up on Cape Town’s own page.
Choose St. Pete Beach for
- beaches
- families
What lies behind each score is written up on St. Pete Beach’s own page.
Scoreboard
Twelve categories on one fixed scale from 0 to 100. The shaded stretch is the gap between the two.
What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Cape Town and St. Pete Beach.
Your match
Pick a travel style or drag the sliders, and both match scores follow your weighting.
Wins on culture and sights and nature and the outdoors with your weighting.
Wins on beaches and families with your weighting.
What matters to you?
When should you go?
Pick your month. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.
Cape Town in July
St. Pete Beach in July
Daytime high, °C
Rainfall in the month, mm
Where the figures come from
St. Pete Beach has no rain gauge within 25 km of the centre, so its rainfall comes from a gridded climate dataset read at the city rather than from a gauge further away.
St. Pete Beach's sunshine is measured 34 km from the centre, at Tampa International Airport.
Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cape Town: 1991-2020 normals, Cape Town Airport (17.5 km from centre). St. Pete Beach: 1998-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Saint Petersburg (12.2 km from centre).
Before you go
| Measure | Cape Town | St. Pete Beach |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | English, Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans, Venda, Northern Sotho, Swazi, Tswana, Tsonga, Sesotho, Southern Ndebele, South African Sign Language | - |
| Currency | Rand (ZAR) | US Dollar (USD) |
| Sockets | CMN230 V, 50 Hz | AB120 V, 60 Hz |
| Driving side | Left | Right |
| Time zone | UTC+2 | UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer |
| Emergency number | 112 | 911 |
| Elevation | 5 m | 2 m |
| Main airport | Cape Town International Airport (CPT)18 km from centre45 non-stop destinations | St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE)21 km from centre60 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 13 days | 11 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Cape Town | St. Pete Beach |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 3,776,313 | 8,879 |
| People per km² | 1,538 | 173 |
| Museums within 10 km | 22 | 2 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 3 | 0 |
| Swim season, months above 21 °C | None | 8 months |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cape Town or St. Pete Beach somewhere new.