VacationSelector

Sydney or Tampa?

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

Your match

Sydney
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on sights concentration and nightlife with your weighting.

Tampa
44
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

SydneyTampa
Beaches & swimming. Tampa leads by 15 points.15
SydneyTampa
Score6075
Swim season months68
Beaches 10 km16010
Coast distance7 km1 km
Water distance7 km1 km
Places to eat. Sydney leads by 24 points.24
SydneyTampa
Score7854
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,205359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3131
Museums & heritage. Sydney leads by 24 points.24
SydneyTampa
Score5127
Museums within 10 km4413
Museums within 2 km of centre2010
Share of museums within 2 km %4577
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Sydney leads by 36 points.36
SydneyTampa
Score7539
Drinking venues within 4 km2,050324
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,405227
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6970
Nightclubs within 4 km12026
Nature & day trips. Sydney leads by 28 points.28
SydneyTampa
Score5830
Protected land share 50 km %106
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5272
Park area within 2 km115 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Sydney leads by 34 points.34
SydneyTampa
Score6430
Tourist attractions within 2 km373
Park area within 2 km115 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km25
Sights concentration. Sydney leads by 39 points.39
SydneyTampa
Score6021
Notable places within 2 km12313
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sydney leads by 7 points.7
SydneyTampa
Score5043
Price level global90.2100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Sydney leads by 6 points.6
SydneyTampa
Score8175
Monthly daytime high17.7 °C to 27.7 °C21.5 °C to 32.6 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 121 mm36 mm to 228 mm
Dry months01
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
Sydney
28
27
26
23
21
18
18
19
22
24
25
26
Tampa
22
23
25
28
31
32
32
33
32
29
26
23
Sea temperature, °C
Sydney
23
23
23
22
21
20
19
18
18
19
20
21
Tampa
18
18
20
23
26
28
30
30
29
27
23
20
Rainfall, mm
Sydney
80
116
90
95
89
121
70
63
57
55
71
68
Tampa
66
66
64
64
67
187
197
228
156
60
36
65
Daylight, hours per day
Sydney
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Tampa
11
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
12
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Sydney
8
6
7
7
7
6
7
8
8
8
7
8
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. Sydney: 1991-2020 normals, Sydney Airport (3.7 km from centre). Tampa: 1991-2020 normals, Tampa International Airport (7.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSydneyTampa
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
14 h 50 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
4 h 45 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
19 h 30 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
2 h 35 m
€178-237
1 stop
TPA · 8 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
19 h 0 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
TokyoHND, NRT
9 h 50 m
€671
SYD · 9 km
14 h 25 m
no fares
MCO · 125 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
16 h 55 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
2 h 25 m
€163-176
1 stop
TPA · 8 km
HoustonIAH, HOU
16 h 55 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
20 h 40 m
€931-1073
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
SantiagoSCL
14 h 0 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
8 h 50 m
no fares
MCO · 125 km
San FranciscoSFO
14 h 45 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
5 h 10 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
14 h 50 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
15 h 20 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 2026-09 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

MeasureSydneyTampa
Official languageEnglish
CurrencyAustralian Dollar (AUD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsI230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+10, UTC+11 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number000911
Elevation6 m30 m
Main airportSydney Kingsford Smith International Airport (SYD)9 km from centre94 non-stop destinationsTampa International Airport (TPA)8 km from centre99 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureSydneyTampa
City population5,450,496384,959
People per km²449848
Museums within 10 km386
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre7947
Swim season, months above 21 °C6 months8 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Sydney 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.