Tampa or West Palm Beach?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Too close to call, 2 points apart
Wins on nightlife and places to eat with your weighting.
Wins on nature & day trips and 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.
The verdict
Choose Tampa if you want more than the beach: a wider range of kitchens, more places to drink and go out, more museums, and theme parks within reach for a family week.
Choose West Palm Beach if swimming drives the trip. The centre sits on the water, the sea stays warm enough for swimming all 12 months, and far more of the surrounding land is protected.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. West Palm Beach leads by 13 points.13
| Tampa | West Palm Beach | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 75 | 88 |
| Swim season months | 8 | 12 |
| Beaches 10 km | 10 | 10 |
| Coast distance | 1 km | 0 km |
| Water distance | 1 km | 0 km |
Places to eat. Tampa leads by 17 points.17
| Tampa | West Palm Beach | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 54 | 37 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 359 | 262 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 31 | 14 |
Museums & heritage. Tampa leads by 10 points.10
| Tampa | West Palm Beach | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 27 | 17 |
| Museums within 10 km | 13 | 5 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 10 | 3 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 77 | 60 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 0 | 0 |
Nightlife. Tampa leads by 19 points.19
| Tampa | West Palm Beach | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 39 | 20 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 324 | 132 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 227 | 90 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 70 | 68 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 26 | 10 |
Nature & day trips. West Palm Beach leads by 39 points.39
| Tampa | West Palm Beach | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 30 | 69 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 6 | 15 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 0 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 72 | 45 |
| Park area within 2 km | 39 hectares | 34 hectares |
Good for families. Tampa leads by 9 points.9
| Tampa | West Palm Beach | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 30 | 21 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 3 | 3 |
| Park area within 2 km | 39 hectares | 34 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 5 | 1 |
Sights concentration. Tampa leads by 9 points.9
| Tampa | West Palm Beach | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 21 | 12 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 13 | 8 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Tampa and West Palm Beach are level on 43.
| Tampa | West Palm Beach | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 43 | 43 |
| Price level global | 100 | 100 |
| Daily budget | — | — |
Year-round weather. Tampa and West Palm Beach are level on 75.
| Tampa | West Palm Beach | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 75 | 75 |
| Monthly daytime high | 21.5 °C to 32.6 °C | 24 °C to 32.5 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 36 mm to 228 mm | 67 mm to 217 mm |
| Dry months | 1 | 0 |
Where they differ
Tampa has the busier evening, with twice as many places to drink and three times as many nightclubs, plus a much wider range of kitchens and somewhat more restaurants near the centre. It also has three times as many museums and 5 theme parks within reach against 1.
West Palm Beach is the stronger base for water and open country: 15% of the land nearby is protected against 6%, its centre sits on the sea, and the sea stays at 21°C or more every month, where Tampa manages 8.
Where they are alike
Weather is where the two are hardest to separate. Both run warm all year, Tampa at 22-33°C and West Palm Beach at 24-33°C, both peaking in August and easing only slightly in January.
Both are also thin on city-break material: little within walking distance of the centre, a similar and modest count of tourist attractions, limited museums and no UNESCO-listed place within day-trip reach of either. Park space near the centre is much the same.
Which traveller are you?
A swimmer planning a winter trip should take West Palm Beach: the centre sits on the water and the sea stays swimmable all year, where Tampa's cools to 18°C.
Anyone travelling for restaurants and evenings out belongs in Tampa, which has the wider range of kitchens, roughly twice as many places to drink and three times as many nightclubs, most of them close to the centre.
Families lean to Tampa too, mainly for 5 theme parks within reach against 1; walkers and anyone drawn to open country should reverse that, since 15% of the land around West Palm Beach is protected against 6%.
What the numbers don't tell you
The value figure is a national price level, identical for both by construction, so it tells you nothing about which city costs less. No daily budget figure exists for either, so no cost comparison between them is possible; check real prices for your own dates.
The sunshine figure is missing for West Palm Beach, so that side of the weather comparison is unmeasured, and its monthly picture rests on temperature, rainfall and sea temperature alone. Warm sea and heavy rain also arrive together: August is the warmest swimming month in both and the wettest, at 228mm in Tampa and 217mm in West Palm Beach.
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.
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). West Palm Beach: 1991-2020 normals, Palm Beach International (5.8 km from centre).
Tampa is at its best in spring and autumn. March and April run 25-28°C with 64mm of rain, and October and November are drier still, at 60mm and 36mm, with the sea still at 27°C in October. Skip June to August, when rain reaches 187-228mm.
West Palm Beach earns its keep in winter, when Tampa cannot: January and February bring 24-25°C and sea at 25°C, against 18°C in Tampa, on 67-86mm of rain. Its wet stretch runs longer, with 199mm in September.
Getting there
| Flying from | Tampa | West Palm Beach |
|---|---|---|
| New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA | 2 h 35 m €178-237 1 stop TPA · 8 km | 2 h 35 m no fares DJT · 6 km |
| PhiladelphiaPHL, TTN | 2 h 25 m €95-125 1 stop TPA · 8 km | 2 h 30 m no fares DJT · 6 km |
| WashingtonIAD, DCA | 2 h 10 m no fares TPA · 8 km | 2 h 20 m no fares DJT · 6 km |
| ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1 | 2 h 35 m €176-204 1 stop TPA · 8 km | 2 h 50 m no fares DJT · 6 km |
| TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ | 2 h 45 m no fares TPA · 8 km | 2 h 55 m no fares DJT · 6 km |
| CincinnatiCVG, LUK | 2 h 10 m no fares TPA · 8 km | 2 h 20 m no fares DJT · 6 km |
| AtlantaATL, PDK | 1 h 25 m no fares TPA · 8 km | 1 h 40 m no fares DJT · 6 km |
| San JuanSJU, SIG | 3 h 0 m no fares TPA · 8 km | 2 h 40 m €124-126 1 stop FLL · 72 km |
| MadridMAD | 8 h 55 m no fares MCO · 125 km | 9 h 0 m €522-631 1 stop MIA · 105 km |
| DubaiDXB, DWC | 15 h 20 m no fares MCO · 125 km | 15 h 30 m €891-1074 2 stops MIA · 105 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
| Measure | Tampa | West Palm Beach |
|---|---|---|
| Currency | US Dollar (USD) | US Dollar (USD) |
| Sockets | AB120 V, 60 Hz | AB120 V, 60 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Right |
| Time zone | UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer | UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer |
| Emergency number | 911 | 911 |
| Elevation | 30 m | 6 m |
| Main airport | Tampa International Airport (TPA)8 km from centre99 non-stop destinations | President Donald J. Trump International Airport (DJT)6 km from centre37 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 11 days | 11 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Tampa | West Palm Beach |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 384,959 | 117,415 |
| People per km² | 848 | 786 |
| Museums within 10 km | 6 | 4 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 0 | 0 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 47 | 18 |
| Swim season, months above 21 °C | 8 months | 12 months |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Tampa or West Palm Beach somewhere new.