VacationSelector

Seattle or Tampa?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Seattle
✓ Best match
52
match

Wins on sights concentration and places to eat with your weighting.

Tampa
44
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

SeattleTampa
Beaches & swimming. Tampa leads by 15 points.15
SeattleTampa
Score6075
Swim season months08
Beaches 10 km10010
Coast distance1 km1 km
Water distance1 km1 km
Places to eat. Seattle leads by 21 points.21
SeattleTampa
Score7554
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,460359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3531
Museums & heritage. Seattle leads by 9 points.9
SeattleTampa
Score3627
Museums within 10 km2813
Museums within 2 km of centre1710
Share of museums within 2 km %6177
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Seattle leads by 18 points.18
SeattleTampa
Score5739
Drinking venues within 4 km873324
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre696227
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8070
Nightclubs within 4 km3426
Nature & day trips. Seattle leads by 10 points.10
SeattleTampa
Score4030
Protected land share 50 km %96
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8072
Park area within 2 km63 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Seattle leads by 16 points.16
SeattleTampa
Score4630
Tourist attractions within 2 km173
Park area within 2 km63 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km15
Sights concentration. Seattle leads by 31 points.31
SeattleTampa
Score5221
Notable places within 2 km7613
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Seattle and Tampa are level on 43.
SeattleTampa
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Tampa leads by 14 points.14
SeattleTampa
Score6175
Monthly daytime high7.8 °C to 24.9 °C21.5 °C to 32.6 °C
Monthly rainfall15 mm to 160 mm36 mm to 228 mm
Dry months31
0255075100

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.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Seattle
8
10
12
15
19
21
25
25
22
15
11
8
Tampa
22
23
25
28
31
32
32
33
32
29
26
23
Sea temperature, °C
Seattle
8
8
8
9
10
11
12
12
11
10
9
9
Tampa
18
18
20
23
26
28
30
30
29
27
23
20
Rainfall, mm
Seattle
147
96
106
81
48
37
15
25
41
99
160
147
Tampa
66
66
64
64
67
187
197
228
156
60
36
65
Daylight, hours per day
Seattle
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Tampa
11
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
12
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Seattle
No sunshine record
Tampa
7
7
9
10
11
10
9
10
8
8
7
7

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Seattle: 1991-2020 normals, Seattle-Tacoma Airport (17.3 km from centre). Tampa: 1991-2020 normals, Tampa International Airport (7.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSeattleTampa
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
2 h 30 m
€111-203
SEA · 18 km
4 h 45 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 15 m
€300-424
SEA · 18 km
2 h 35 m
€178-237
1 stop
TPA · 8 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
3 h 55 m
€257-317
1 stop
SEA · 18 km
2 h 35 m
€176-204
1 stop
TPA · 8 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
5 h 0 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
DenverDEN, APA
2 h 35 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
3 h 30 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
PhoenixPHX, AZA
2 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
TokyoHND, NRT
9 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
14 h 25 m
no fares
MCO · 125 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
9 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
14 h 40 m
€1,006-1077
2 stops
SEA · 18 km
15 h 20 m
no fares
MCO · 125 km
GuadalajaraGDL
4 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
3 h 30 m
no fares
MCO · 125 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

MeasureSeattleTampa
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
Elevation40 m30 m
Main airportSeattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)18 km from centre135 non-stop destinationsTampa International Airport (TPA)8 km from centre99 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureSeattleTampa
City population737,015384,959
People per km²1,996848
Museums within 10 km276
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre7847
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone8 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Seattle or Tampa somewhere new.

Browse every destination we have measured

Sources

© OpenStreetMap contributors, data available under the Open Database Licence. Place counts include data from Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA Permissive 2.0), assembled from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and other providers. Notable-place counts from Wikidata (CC0), weighted by Wikipedia language editions. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.