VacationSelector

Los Angeles or Tampa?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Los Angeles
✓ Best match
53
match

Wins on sights concentration and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Tampa
44
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

Los AngelesTampa
Beaches & swimming. Tampa leads by 46 points.46
Los AngelesTampa
Score2975
Beaches 25 km11
Beaches 10 km010
Swim season months08
Warmest sea temp20.2 °C
Scoring variantbeachScoreWideRing
Declared2026-08-25
Registerseed/editorial-overrides.json
Coast distance1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Los Angeles leads by 12 points.12
Los AngelesTampa
Score6654
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,337359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2231
Museums & heritage. Los Angeles leads by 22 points.22
Los AngelesTampa
Score4927
Museums within 10 km6913
Museums within 2 km of centre2310
Share of museums within 2 km %3377
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Los Angeles leads by 15 points.15
Los AngelesTampa
Score5439
Drinking venues within 4 km660324
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre432227
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6570
Nightclubs within 4 km6426
Nature & day trips. Los Angeles leads by 32 points.32
Los AngelesTampa
Score6230
Protected land share 50 km %266
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8072
Park area within 2 km20 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Los Angeles leads by 3 points.3
Los AngelesTampa
Score3330
Tourist attractions within 2 km113
Park area within 2 km20 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km25
Sights concentration. Los Angeles leads by 33 points.33
Los AngelesTampa
Score5421
Notable places within 2 km8813
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Los Angeles and Tampa are level on 43.
Los AngelesTampa
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Los Angeles leads by 12 points.12
Los AngelesTampa
Score8775
Monthly daytime high18.6 °C to 24.7 °C21.5 °C to 32.6 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 76 mm36 mm to 228 mm
Dry months81
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
Los Angeles
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
24
22
19
Tampa
22
23
25
28
31
32
32
33
32
29
26
23
Sea temperature, °C
Los Angeles
15
15
15
15
17
18
20
20
20
19
17
16
Tampa
18
18
20
23
26
28
30
30
29
27
23
20
Rainfall, mm
Los Angeles
73
76
44
16
7
2
1
0
3
13
21
57
Tampa
66
66
64
64
67
187
197
228
156
60
36
65
Daylight, hours per day
Los Angeles
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
10
10
Tampa
11
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
12
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Los Angeles
No sunshine record
Tampa
7
7
9
10
11
10
9
10
8
8
7
7

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Los Angeles: 1991-2020 normals, Los Angeles Airport (18.5 km from centre). Tampa: 1991-2020 normals, Tampa International Airport (7.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLos AngelesTampa
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
2 h 35 m
€178-237
1 stop
TPA · 8 km
PhoenixPHX, AZA
1 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
4 h 0 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
2 h 35 m
€176-204
1 stop
TPA · 8 km
Salt Lake CitySLC
1 h 45 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
4 h 15 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
5 h 0 m
€196-293
1 stop
LAX · 19 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
DenverDEN, APA
2 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
3 h 30 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 0 m
€785-892
1 stop
LAX · 19 km
14 h 25 m
no fares
MCO · 125 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
3 h 35 m
€261-303
1 stop
LAX · 19 km
3 h 5 m
no fares
MCO · 125 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 25 m
€600-640
1 stop
LAX · 19 km
9 h 10 m
no fares
MCO · 125 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
16 h 25 m
€964-1015
LAX · 19 km
15 h 20 m
no fares
MCO · 125 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 2026-09 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

MeasureLos AngelesTampa
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation106 m30 m
Main airportLos Angeles International Airport (LAX)19 km from centre180 non-stop destinationsTampa International Airport (TPA)8 km from centre99 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureLos AngelesTampa
City population3,898,747384,959
People per km²2,994848
Museums within 10 km386
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre4647
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone8 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Los Angeles or Tampa 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. 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. 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.