VacationSelector
Palm Canyon Drive, lined with tall palms, Palm Springs
Palm SpringsPalm Canyon Drive, lined with tall palms
The pink Don CeSar hotel seen from the beach, St. Pete Beach
St. Pete BeachThe pink Don CeSar hotel seen from the beach

Photos: Palm Springs by Domenico Convertini, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped; St. Pete Beach by Jeffrey Eisen, Pexels License.

Palm Springs 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 Palm Springs for

  • wellness
  • culture and sights
  • shopping

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

Choose St. Pete Beach for

  • beaches
  • families
  • day trips

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. Palm Springs 7, St. Pete Beach 87: St. Pete Beach leads by 80 points.
Food & drink. Palm Springs and St. Pete Beach are level on 40.
Culture & sights. Palm Springs 42, St. Pete Beach 18: Palm Springs leads by 24 points.
Nightlife. Palm Springs 36, St. Pete Beach 28: Palm Springs leads by 8 points.
Nature & outdoors. Palm Springs 78, St. Pete Beach 57: Palm Springs leads by 21 points.
Day trips. Palm Springs 38, St. Pete Beach 58: St. Pete Beach leads by 20 points.
Good for families. Palm Springs 40, St. Pete Beach 72: St. Pete Beach leads by 32 points.
Getting around. Palm Springs 22, St. Pete Beach 30: St. Pete Beach leads by 8 points.
Shopping & style. Palm Springs 44, St. Pete Beach 20: Palm Springs leads by 24 points.
Affordability. Palm Springs and St. Pete Beach are level on 32.
Live music & performing arts. Palm Springs 40, St. Pete Beach 20: Palm Springs leads by 20 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Palm Springs 80, St. Pete Beach 42: Palm Springs leads by 38 points.
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What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Palm Springs and St. Pete Beach.

Your match

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

Too close to call, level with your weighting

Palm Springs
42match

Wins on wellness and culture and sights 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.

Palm Springs in July

42 °Cdaytime high
28 °Cnight-time low
5 mmrain in the month
No recordsunshine a day
No seasea
14 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°50°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

050100150200250JFMAMJJASOND
Palm SpringsSt. Pete Beach

Where the figures come from

Palm Springs 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. Palm Springs: 2006-2020 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Palm Springs (2.3 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

MeasurePalm SpringsSt. Pete Beach
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
Elevation146 m2 m
Main airportPalm Springs International Airport (PSP)2 km from centre29 non-stop destinationsSt. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE)21 km from centre60 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasurePalm SpringsSt. Pete Beach
City population44,5758,879
People per km²181173
Museums within 10 km32
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
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 Palm Springs 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.