VacationSelector
Palm Springs
Palms at CityPlace on Rosemary Avenue, West Palm Beach
West Palm BeachPalms at CityPlace on Rosemary Avenue

Photos: West Palm Beach by Michael Rivera, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped.

Palm Springs or West Palm 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
  • nature and the outdoors
  • prices

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

Choose West Palm Beach for

  • beaches
  • families
  • shopping

What lies behind each score is written up on West Palm 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, West Palm Beach 80: West Palm Beach leads by 73 points.
Food & drink. Palm Springs 40, West Palm Beach 52: West Palm Beach leads by 12 points.
Culture & sights. Palm Springs and West Palm Beach are level on 42.
Nightlife. Palm Springs and West Palm Beach are level on 36.
Nature & outdoors. Palm Springs 78, West Palm Beach 58: Palm Springs leads by 20 points.
Day trips. Palm Springs 38, West Palm Beach 55: West Palm Beach leads by 17 points.
Good for families. Palm Springs 40, West Palm Beach 66: West Palm Beach leads by 26 points.
Getting around. Palm Springs 22, West Palm Beach 38: West Palm Beach leads by 16 points.
Shopping & style. Palm Springs 44, West Palm Beach 64: West Palm Beach leads by 20 points.
Affordability. Palm Springs 32, West Palm Beach 23: Palm Springs leads by 9 points.
Live music & performing arts. Palm Springs 40, West Palm Beach 47: West Palm Beach leads by 7 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Palm Springs 80, West Palm Beach 44: Palm Springs leads by 36 points.
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What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Palm Springs and West Palm Beach.

Your match

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

Palm Springs
42match

Wins on wellness and nature and the outdoors with your weighting.

West Palm Beach
Best match
50match

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 seasea
14 hdaylight a day

West Palm Beach in July

32 °Cdaytime high
25 °Cnight-time low
145 mmrain in the month
29 °Csea
14 hdaylight a day

Daytime high, °C

0°10°20°30°40°50°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

050100150200250JFMAMJJASOND
Palm SpringsWest Palm 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.

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). West Palm Beach: 1991-2020 normals, Palm Beach International (5.8 km from centre).

Before you go

MeasurePalm SpringsWest Palm 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 m6 m
Main airportPalm Springs International Airport (PSP)2 km from centre29 non-stop destinationsPresident Donald J. Trump International Airport (DJT)6 km from centre42 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasurePalm SpringsWest Palm Beach
City population44,575117,415
People per km²181786
Museums within 10 km34
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
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 Palm Springs or West Palm 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 2026-11-01. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.