VacationSelector
Clearwater Beach in evening light, with its hotels and pier, Clearwater
ClearwaterClearwater Beach in evening light, with its hotels and pier
A boat in the swell beside El Arco, Los Cabos
Los CabosA boat in the swell beside El Arco

Photos: Clearwater by ajay_suresh, CC BY 2.0, cropped; Los Cabos by Jules Clark, Pexels License.

Clearwater or Los Cabos?

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 Clearwater for

  • live music and the arts
  • families
  • day trips

What lies behind each score is written up on Clearwater’s own page.

Choose Los Cabos for

  • nightlife
  • nature and the outdoors
  • wellness

What lies behind each score is written up on Los Cabos’s own page.

Scoreboard

Twelve categories on one fixed scale from 0 to 100. The shaded stretch is the gap between the two.

Beaches & swimming. Clearwater 90, Los Cabos 84: Clearwater leads by 6 points.
Food & drink. Clearwater 38, Los Cabos 54: Los Cabos leads by 16 points.
Culture & sights. Clearwater 18, Los Cabos 20: Los Cabos leads by 2 points.
Nightlife. Clearwater 34, Los Cabos 66: Los Cabos leads by 32 points.
Nature & outdoors. Clearwater 55, Los Cabos 78: Los Cabos leads by 23 points.
Day trips. Clearwater 58, Los Cabos 42: Clearwater leads by 16 points.
Good for families. Clearwater 78, Los Cabos 55: Clearwater leads by 23 points.
Getting around. Clearwater and Los Cabos are level on 28.
Shopping & style. Clearwater 27, Los Cabos 36: Los Cabos leads by 9 points.
Affordability. Clearwater 35, Los Cabos 28: Clearwater leads by 7 points.
Live music & performing arts. Clearwater 36, Los Cabos 12: Clearwater leads by 24 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Clearwater 40, Los Cabos 58: Los Cabos leads by 18 points.
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What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Clearwater and Los Cabos.

Your match

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders, and both match scores follow your weighting.

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Clearwater
45match

Wins on live music and the arts and families with your weighting.

Los Cabos
47match

Wins on nightlife and nature and the outdoors with your weighting.

What matters to you?

When should you go?

Pick your month. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.

Clearwater in July

32 °Cdaytime high
25 °Cnight-time low
188 mmrain in the month
9 hsunshine a day
30 °Csea
14 hdaylight a day

Los Cabos in July

30 °Cdaytime high
25 °Cnight-time low
19 mmrain in the month
No recordsunshine a day
26 °Csea
13 hdaylight a day

Daytime high, °C

0°10°20°30°40°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

050100150200250JFMAMJJASOND
ClearwaterLos Cabos

Where the figures come from

Clearwater 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.

Clearwater's sunshine is measured 26 km from the centre, at Tampa International Airport.

Los Cabos has no weather station within reach, so its figures come from a gridded climate model rather than a measured record, and read a broad area rather than the city itself.

Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Clearwater: 2006-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Saint Petersburg / High Point (12.7 km from centre). Los Cabos: 2001-2020 normals, NASA POWER reanalysis grid, no weather station within 90 km.

Before you go

MeasureClearwaterLos Cabos
Official language-Spanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec Maya
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Mexican Peso (MXN)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB127 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC-7
Emergency number911911
Elevation9 m11 m
Main airportSt. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE)13 km from centre60 non-stop destinationsLos Cabos International Airport (SJD)35 km from centre54 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days9 days

By the numbers

MeasureClearwaterLos Cabos
City population117,292202,694
People per km²1,154-
Museums within 10 km41
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Swim season, months above 21 °C8 months12 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Clearwater or Los Cabos somewhere new.

Browse every destination

Sources

Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Rainfall where no rain gauge is within 25 km is from the TerraClimate 1991-2020 climatology (Abatzoglou et al. 2018, Scientific Data), read at the city. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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. Temperature and rainfall for destinations with no weather station are from the NASA POWER 2001-2020 climatology, derived from MERRA-2. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm.

Category scores are our editorial verdict under rubric v3, each placed against the same fixed benchmark cities; the climate figures are measured. How the scores are set. Snapshot generated 2026-11-02. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.