VacationSelector

Tampa or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Tampa
44
match

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

Washington DC
✓ Best match
52
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage 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.

TampaWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Tampa leads by 57 points.57
TampaWashington DC
Score7518
Swim season months83
Beaches 10 km101
Coast distance1 km34 km
Water distance1 km34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 23 points.23
TampaWashington DC
Score5477
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3591,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3136
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 28 points.28
TampaWashington DC
Score2755
Museums within 10 km1383
Museums within 2 km of centre1055
Share of museums within 2 km %7766
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Washington DC leads by 22 points.22
TampaWashington DC
Score3961
Drinking venues within 4 km3241,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre227593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7058
Nightclubs within 4 km2654
Nature & day trips. Washington DC leads by 12 points.12
TampaWashington DC
Score3042
Protected land share 50 km %610
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %7294
Park area within 2 km39 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Washington DC leads by 8 points.8
TampaWashington DC
Score3038
Tourist attractions within 2 km37
Park area within 2 km39 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km51
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 55 points.55
TampaWashington DC
Score2176
Notable places within 2 km13305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Tampa and Washington DC are level on 43.
TampaWashington DC
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Tampa leads by 13 points.13
TampaWashington DC
Score7562
Monthly daytime high21.5 °C to 32.6 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall36 mm to 228 mm65 mm to 108 mm
Dry months10
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
Tampa
22
23
25
28
31
32
32
33
32
29
26
23
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Tampa
18
18
20
23
26
28
30
30
29
27
23
20
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Tampa
66
66
64
64
67
187
197
228
156
60
36
65
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Tampa
11
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
12
11
10
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Tampa
7
7
9
10
11
10
9
10
8
8
7
7
Washington DC
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Tampa: 1991-2020 normals, Tampa International Airport (7.6 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromTampaWashington DC
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 35 m
€178-237
1 stop
TPA · 8 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 35 m
€176-204
1 stop
TPA · 8 km
1 h 50 m
€199-215
DCA · 5 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
1 h 25 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
1 h 40 m
€267-307
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
2 h 45 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
RaleighRDU
1 h 45 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
1 h 5 m
€230
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
4 h 45 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
5 h 0 m
€226-372
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
Punta CanaPUJ
2 h 45 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
3 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
9 h 0 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
TokyoHND, NRT
14 h 25 m
no fares
MCO · 125 km
13 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
15 h 20 m
no fares
MCO · 125 km
14 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 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

MeasureTampaWashington DC
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation30 m72 m
Main airportTampa International Airport (TPA)8 km from centre99 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureTampaWashington DC
City population384,959689,545
People per km²8483,896
Museums within 10 km699
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre4782
Swim season, months above 21 °C8 months3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Tampa or Washington DC 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.