VacationSelector
Santo Domingo church behind agaves, Oaxaca
OaxacaSanto Domingo church behind agaves
The pink Don CeSar hotel seen from the beach, St. Pete Beach
St. Pete BeachThe pink Don CeSar hotel seen from the beach

Photos: Oaxaca by Öskr Rck, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped; St. Pete Beach by Jeffrey Eisen, Pexels License.

Oaxaca 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 Oaxaca for

  • culture and sights
  • prices
  • food and drink

What lies behind each score is written up on Oaxaca’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.

Beaches & swimming. Oaxaca 5, St. Pete Beach 87: St. Pete Beach leads by 82 points.
Food & drink. Oaxaca 84, St. Pete Beach 40: Oaxaca leads by 44 points.
Culture & sights. Oaxaca 74, St. Pete Beach 18: Oaxaca leads by 56 points.
Nightlife. Oaxaca 40, St. Pete Beach 28: Oaxaca leads by 12 points.
Nature & outdoors. Oaxaca 62, St. Pete Beach 57: Oaxaca leads by 5 points.
Day trips. Oaxaca 65, St. Pete Beach 58: Oaxaca leads by 7 points.
Good for families. Oaxaca 40, St. Pete Beach 72: St. Pete Beach leads by 32 points.
Getting around. Oaxaca 55, St. Pete Beach 30: Oaxaca leads by 25 points.
Shopping & style. Oaxaca 62, St. Pete Beach 20: Oaxaca leads by 42 points.
Affordability. Oaxaca 77, St. Pete Beach 32: Oaxaca leads by 45 points.
Live music & performing arts. Oaxaca 38, St. Pete Beach 20: Oaxaca leads by 18 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Oaxaca 50, St. Pete Beach 42: Oaxaca leads by 8 points.
0255075100

What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Oaxaca and St. Pete Beach.

Your match

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

Oaxaca
Best match
54match

Wins on culture and sights and prices with your weighting.

St. Pete Beach
42match

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.

Oaxaca in July

28 °Cdaytime high
15 °Cnight-time low
80 mmrain in the month
7 hsunshine a day
No seasea
13 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

050100150200250JFMAMJJASOND
OaxacaSt. Pete Beach

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. Oaxaca: 1961-1990 normals, Oaxaca, Oax. (1.1 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

MeasureOaxacaSt. Pete Beach
Official languageSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec Maya-
CurrencyMexican Peso (MXN)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB127 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation1,555 m2 m
Main airportXoxocotlán International Airport (OAX)7 km from centre14 non-stop destinationsSt. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE)21 km from centre60 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureOaxacaSt. Pete Beach
City population258,9138,879
People per km²3,028173
Museums within 10 km102
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Swim season, months above 21 °C-8 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Oaxaca 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. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.