Orlando or West Palm Beach?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Too close to call, 2 points apart
Wins on good for families and nightlife with your weighting.
Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.
What matters to you?
Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.
The verdict
Choose Orlando if you are travelling with children. It has 20 theme parks within reach, more park space near the centre, and a wider choice of kitchens and late openings than West Palm Beach.
Choose West Palm Beach if the sea is the point. It has 10 beaches close by and water above 21°C in every month of the year, with less on offer after dark.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. West Palm Beach leads by 88 points.88
| Orlando | West Palm Beach | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 88 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 12 |
| Beaches 10 km | 1 | 10 |
| Coast distance | 68 km | 0 km |
| Water distance | — | 0 km |
Places to eat. Orlando leads by 11 points.11
| Orlando | West Palm Beach | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 48 | 37 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 365 | 262 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 21 | 14 |
Museums & heritage. West Palm Beach leads by 9 points.9
| Orlando | West Palm Beach | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 8 | 17 |
| Museums within 10 km | 11 | 5 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 2 | 3 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 18 | 60 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 0 | 0 |
Nightlife. Orlando leads by 21 points.21
| Orlando | West Palm Beach | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 41 | 20 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 344 | 132 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 216 | 90 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 63 | 68 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 39 | 10 |
Nature & day trips. West Palm Beach leads by 25 points.25
| Orlando | West Palm Beach | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 44 | 69 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 15 | 15 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 0 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 45 |
| Park area within 2 km | 52 hectares | 34 hectares |
Good for families. Orlando leads by 68 points.68
| Orlando | West Palm Beach | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 89 | 21 |
| Theme park ground ha 30 km | 8,853 | — |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 20 | 1 |
| Zoo aquarium 15 km | 2 | — |
| Park area within 2 km | 52 hectares | 34 hectares |
| Scoring variant | familyScoreThemeGroundLed | — |
| Declared | 2026-08-25 | — |
| Register | seed/editorial-overrides.json | — |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | — | 3 |
Sights concentration. Orlando leads by 4 points.4
| Orlando | West Palm Beach | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 16 | 12 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 10 | 8 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Orlando and West Palm Beach are level on 43.
| Orlando | West Palm Beach | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 43 | 43 |
| Price level global | 100 | 100 |
| Daily budget | — | — |
Year-round weather. West Palm Beach leads by 1 points.1
| Orlando | West Palm Beach | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 74 | 75 |
| Monthly daytime high | 22.1 °C to 33.3 °C | 24 °C to 32.5 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 46 mm to 203 mm | 67 mm to 217 mm |
| Dry months | 0 | 0 |
Where they differ
Orlando is the family trip: 20 theme parks within reach against West Palm Beach's one, and more park space near the centre. It also has the broader evening, with about three times as many bars and clubs, and a wider range of kitchens.
West Palm Beach is the swimming trip: 10 beaches nearby and, unlike Orlando, sea warm enough to swim in all year, above 21°C in every month and up to 30°C in August. It also rates higher for nature and day trips.
Where they are alike
Neither city has a cold season. Orlando runs 22-33°C across the year and West Palm Beach 24-33°C, so the question is heat and rain rather than warmth, and neither has a month at 40mm of rain or less.
Both are thin on heritage. Walkable clusters of notable places are small in each, museums are few, and neither has a UNESCO-listed site within day-trip reach, though West Palm Beach's museums sit more tightly around its centre.
Which traveller are you?
Travelling with children: Orlando. It has 20 theme parks within reach where West Palm Beach has one, more park space near the centre, and warm winter days for the time between park visits.
Here to swim: West Palm Beach. It has 10 beaches close by, the sea holds above 21°C in every month, and it does better on nature and day trips, though 15% of the land around both is protected.
Out for dinner and a late night: Orlando, with about three times as many bars and clubs and a wider range of kitchens. Museums are thin in both, so neither suits a culture-first trip.
What the numbers don't tell you
Neither city carries a daily budget figure here, and the value figure they share is a national price level, identical for both by construction. It carries no information about how these two compare, so no cost comparison between them is possible.
No weather station near either city records sunshine hours, so that series is missing rather than low, and the monthly picture rests on temperature, rainfall and sea temperature alone. The gap shows in summer: West Palm Beach's warmest sea, 30°C in August, arrives in the same month as 217mm of rain, and Orlando's family draw is strongest in the months when its rainfall peaks.
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.
Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Orlando: 1991-2020 normals, Orlando Airport (14.2 km from centre). West Palm Beach: 1991-2020 normals, Palm Beach International (5.8 km from centre).
Orlando is at its best from November to April, when rain is light: November alone gets 46mm, the driest month in either city. June to August is its weak stretch, 33°C with 189-203mm, heat and downpours arriving together.
West Palm Beach peaks in the same winter window, 24-26°C from January to March with sea at 25°C, and it stays more usable through summer because the water reaches 30°C, though August brings 217mm and the wet season runs long.
Getting there
| Flying from | Orlando | West Palm Beach |
|---|---|---|
| New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA | 2 h 25 m €158-197 MCO · 14 km | 2 h 35 m no fares DJT · 6 km |
| WashingtonIAD, DCA | 2 h 5 m no fares MCO · 14 km | 2 h 20 m no fares DJT · 6 km |
| PhiladelphiaPHL, TTN | 2 h 20 m €126-198 MCO · 14 km | 2 h 30 m no fares DJT · 6 km |
| TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ | 2 h 40 m no fares MCO · 14 km | 2 h 55 m no fares DJT · 6 km |
| NassauNAS | 1 h 20 m no fares MCO · 14 km | 1 h 0 m no fares FLL · 72 km |
| BostonBOS, PSM | 2 h 45 m €176-244 MCO · 14 km | 2 h 55 m no fares DJT · 6 km |
| ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1 | 2 h 35 m €157-165 MCO · 14 km | 2 h 50 m no fares DJT · 6 km |
| Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY | 4 h 50 m no fares MCO · 14 km | 5 h 5 m no fares DJT · 6 km |
| MadridMAD | 8 h 55 m no fares MCO · 14 km | 9 h 0 m €522-631 1 stop MIA · 105 km |
| DubaiDXB, DWC | 15 h 20 m no fares MCO · 14 km | 15 h 30 m €891-1074 2 stops MIA · 105 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
| Measure | Orlando | West Palm Beach |
|---|---|---|
| Currency | US Dollar (USD) | US Dollar (USD) |
| Sockets | AB120 V, 60 Hz | AB120 V, 60 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Right |
| Time zone | UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer | UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer |
| Emergency number | 911 | 911 |
| Elevation | 34 m | 6 m |
| Main airport | Orlando International Airport (MCO)14 km from centre169 non-stop destinations | President Donald J. Trump International Airport (DJT)6 km from centre37 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 11 days | 11 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Orlando | West Palm Beach |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 334,854 | 117,415 |
| People per km² | 1,086 | 786 |
| Museums within 10 km | 11 | 4 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 0 | 0 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 30 | 18 |
| Swim season, months above 21 °C | – | 12 months |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Orlando or West Palm Beach somewhere new.