VacationSelector
The tusks over Moi Avenue, Mombasa
MombasaThe tusks over Moi Avenue
The pink Don CeSar hotel seen from the beach, St. Pete Beach
St. Pete BeachThe pink Don CeSar hotel seen from the beach

Photos: Mombasa by Rob Oo, CC BY 2.0, cropped; St. Pete Beach by Jeffrey Eisen, Pexels License.

Mombasa 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 Mombasa for

  • prices
  • culture and sights
  • food and drink

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

Choose St. Pete Beach for

  • families
  • day trips
  • beaches

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.

Beaches & swimming. Mombasa 82, St. Pete Beach 87: St. Pete Beach leads by 5 points.
Food & drink. Mombasa 60, St. Pete Beach 40: Mombasa leads by 20 points.
Culture & sights. Mombasa 55, St. Pete Beach 18: Mombasa leads by 37 points.
Nightlife. Mombasa 46, St. Pete Beach 28: Mombasa leads by 18 points.
Nature & outdoors. Mombasa 74, St. Pete Beach 57: Mombasa leads by 17 points.
Day trips. Mombasa 45, St. Pete Beach 58: St. Pete Beach leads by 13 points.
Good for families. Mombasa 45, St. Pete Beach 72: St. Pete Beach leads by 27 points.
Getting around. Mombasa and St. Pete Beach are level on 30.
Shopping & style. Mombasa 35, St. Pete Beach 20: Mombasa leads by 15 points.
Affordability. Mombasa 70, St. Pete Beach 32: Mombasa leads by 38 points.
Live music & performing arts. Mombasa 22, St. Pete Beach 20: Mombasa leads by 2 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Mombasa 40, St. Pete Beach 42: St. Pete Beach leads by 2 points.
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What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Mombasa and St. Pete Beach.

Your match

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

Mombasa
Best match
50match

Wins on prices and culture and sights with your weighting.

St. Pete Beach
42match

Wins on families and day trips with your weighting.

What matters to you?

When should you go?

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

Mombasa in July

28 °Cdaytime high
20 °Cnight-time low
63 mmrain in the month
No recordsunshine a day
26 °Csea
12 hdaylight a day

St. Pete Beach in July

32 °Cdaytime high
26 °Cnight-time low
185 mmrain in the month
9 hsunshine a day
30 °Csea
14 hdaylight a day

Daytime high, °C

0°10°20°30°40°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

0100200300JFMAMJJASOND
MombasaSt. Pete Beach

Where the figures come from

Mombasa 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 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. Mombasa: 1991-2020 normals, Mombasa (5.8 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

MeasureMombasaSt. Pete Beach
Official languageEnglish, Swahili-
CurrencyKenyan Shilling (KES)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsG240 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+3UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 112/999, ambulance 112/999, fire 112/999911
Elevation50 m2 m
Main airportMoi International Airport (MBA)8 km from centre22 non-stop destinationsSt. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE)21 km from centre60 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureMombasaSt. Pete Beach
City population1,208,3338,879
People per km²4,100173
Museums within 10 km02
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months8 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Mombasa or St. Pete Beach 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). 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.

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.