VacationSelector

Malaga or Tampa?

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

Your match

Malaga
✓ Best match
59
match

Wins on value for money and museums & heritage 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.

MalagaTampa
Beaches & swimming. Tampa leads by 9 points.9
MalagaTampa
Score6675
Swim season months38
Beaches 10 km2110
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. Malaga leads by 15 points.15
MalagaTampa
Score6954
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,002359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3431
Museums & heritage. Malaga leads by 26 points.26
MalagaTampa
Score5327
Museums within 10 km4013
Museums within 2 km of centre3510
Share of museums within 2 km %8877
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Malaga leads by 15 points.15
MalagaTampa
Score5439
Drinking venues within 4 km715324
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre486227
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6870
Nightclubs within 4 km4526
Nature & day trips. Malaga leads by 13 points.13
MalagaTampa
Score4330
Protected land share 50 km %76
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %6372
Park area within 2 km85 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Malaga leads by 23 points.23
MalagaTampa
Score5330
Tourist attractions within 2 km333
Park area within 2 km85 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km05
Sights concentration. Malaga leads by 16 points.16
MalagaTampa
Score3721
Notable places within 2 km3313
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Malaga leads by 28 points.28
MalagaTampa
Score7143
Price level global60.8100
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Malaga leads by 7 points.7
MalagaTampa
Score8275
Monthly daytime high17.2 °C to 31.5 °C21.5 °C to 32.6 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 88 mm36 mm to 228 mm
Dry months51
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
Malaga
17
18
20
22
25
29
31
32
28
24
20
18
Tampa
22
23
25
28
31
32
32
33
32
29
26
23
Sea temperature, °C
Malaga
15
15
15
16
18
20
22
23
22
20
17
16
Tampa
18
18
20
23
26
28
30
30
29
27
23
20
Rainfall, mm
Malaga
62
55
66
41
23
4
0
3
25
60
78
88
Tampa
66
66
64
64
67
187
197
228
156
60
36
65
Daylight, hours per day
Malaga
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Tampa
11
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
12
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Malaga
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
5
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. Malaga: 1991-2020 normals, Malaga / Aeropuerto (8.2 km from centre). Tampa: 1991-2020 normals, Tampa International Airport (7.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMalagaTampa
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 40 m
€67-129
AGP · 9 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 55 m
€146-177
AGP · 9 km
9 h 25 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 25 m
€92
AGP · 9 km
9 h 10 m
no fares
MCO · 125 km
DublinDUB
2 h 50 m
€122-139
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
MCO · 125 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
2 h 35 m
€178-237
1 stop
TPA · 8 km
MadridMAD
1 h 10 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
8 h 55 m
no fares
MCO · 125 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 50 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
8 h 40 m
no fares
MCO · 125 km
ZurichZRH
2 h 35 m
€147-204
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
9 h 55 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€124-199
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 25 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
TPA · 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

MeasureMalagaTampa
Official languageSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation18 m30 m
Main airportMálaga-Costa del Sol Airport (AGP)9 km from centre165 non-stop destinationsTampa International Airport (TPA)8 km from centre99 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureMalagaTampa
City population599,063384,959
People per km²1,517848
Museums within 10 km326
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre6547
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months8 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Malaga 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). 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.