VacationSelector

West Palm Beach or Miami?

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

Your match

West Palm Beach
42
match

Wins on year-round weather with your weighting.

Miami
✓ Best match
56
match

Wins on nightlife and sights concentration 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 Miami if you want a city wrapped around the beach: a wider range of restaurants, many more bars and clubs, more to walk to from the centre, 20 beaches nearby and two theme parks within reach.

Choose West Palm Beach if you want the quieter version of the same coast: the sea is 0km from the centre, and the museums and bars it does have sit close together.

Scoreboard

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

West Palm BeachMiami
Beaches & swimming. Miami leads by 7 points.7
West Palm BeachMiami
Score8895
Swim season months1212
Beaches 10 km1020
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. Miami leads by 28 points.28
West Palm BeachMiami
Score3765
Restaurants within 2 km of centre262898
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1429
Museums & heritage. Miami leads by 6 points.6
West Palm BeachMiami
Score1723
Museums within 10 km528
Museums within 2 km of centre36
Share of museums within 2 km %6021
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Miami leads by 30 points.30
West Palm BeachMiami
Score2050
Drinking venues within 4 km132538
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre90287
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6853
Nightclubs within 4 km1063
Nature & day trips. Miami leads by 3 points.3
West Palm BeachMiami
Score6972
Protected land share 50 km %1516
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4548
Park area within 2 km34 hectares50 hectares
Good for families. Miami leads by 23 points.23
West Palm BeachMiami
Score2144
Tourist attractions within 2 km314
Park area within 2 km34 hectares50 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Miami leads by 30 points.30
West Palm BeachMiami
Score1242
Notable places within 2 km845
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. West Palm Beach and Miami are level on 43.
West Palm BeachMiami
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. West Palm Beach leads by 1 points.1
West Palm BeachMiami
Score7574
Monthly daytime high24 °C to 32.5 °C24.7 °C to 32.7 °C
Monthly rainfall67 mm to 217 mm47 mm to 267 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Miami has about three times as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider range of kitchens, many times as many bars and nightclubs, and many times as many notable places within walking distance. For families it adds many more attractions near the centre and 2 theme parks within reach against 1.

West Palm Beach is the more compact trip: the sea is 0km from the centre against 1km, and its museums and drinking spots sit mostly near the centre, though the choice in each is much smaller.

Where they are alike

Weather is where the two are hardest to tell apart. Both run daytime highs of about 25-33°C across the year, and neither has a month at 40mm of rain or less, so some rain is likely in any month.

The coast and the land behind it are much the same: identical sea temperatures, warm enough for swimming in all 12 months, and protected land of about 15-16% around each. Neither has a UNESCO-listed place within day-trip reach.

Which traveller are you?

If you are travelling for food and nights out, Miami is the clearer choice: about three times as many restaurants near the centre, a much wider range of kitchens, and many times as many bars and clubs.

For a beach-led week with little to organise, West Palm Beach works: the sea is 0km from the centre, 10 beaches sit nearby, and the water is swimmable in all 12 months.

Families needing things to do between beach days will find more in Miami: many times as many attractions near the centre, 2 theme parks within reach, and more beaches to spread across.

What the numbers don't tell you

No cost comparison is possible for these two. The dataset carries no daily budget figure for either, and the value rating they share is a national price level, identical by construction, so it carries no information about which trip costs less.

Sunshine is unmeasured: no weather station near either city reports it, so the monthly picture rests on temperature, rainfall and sea temperature alone. And the warmest sea, 30°C in August, arrives with the heaviest rain, 242mm in Miami and 217mm in West Palm Beach, so the strong beach showing and the best months do not line up.

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
West Palm Beach
24
25
26
28
30
32
32
33
31
30
27
25
Miami
25
26
27
29
31
32
33
33
32
30
28
26
Sea temperature, °C
West Palm Beach
25
25
25
26
27
28
29
30
29
28
27
26
Miami
25
25
25
26
27
28
29
30
29
28
27
26
Rainfall, mm
West Palm Beach
86
67
84
92
126
214
145
217
199
147
88
78
Miami
47
55
63
85
157
267
186
242
259
193
90
62
Daylight, hours per day
West Palm Beach
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Miami
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. West Palm Beach: 1991-2020 normals, Palm Beach International (5.8 km from centre). Miami: 1991-2020 normals, Miami International Airport (10 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Miami's best window runs from December to March, with highs of 25-27°C and monthly rain of 47-63mm, the driest stretch of the year for either city; January is noticeably drier here than in West Palm Beach.

West Palm Beach holds up better in April and May, at 28-30°C with less rain than Miami, and it stays the drier of the two through the wet season, 214mm in June against 267mm, when both are hot and humid.

Getting there

Flying fromWest Palm BeachMiami
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 35 m
no fares
DJT · 6 km
2 h 45 m
€205-247
MIA · 7 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
2 h 20 m
no fares
DJT · 6 km
2 h 25 m
€127-180
MIA · 7 km
MadridMAD
9 h 0 m
€522-631
1 stop
MIA · 105 km
9 h 0 m
€522-631
1 stop
MIA · 7 km
NassauNAS
1 h 0 m
no fares
FLL · 72 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
MIA · 7 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 50 m
no fares
DJT · 6 km
2 h 55 m
€143-193
MIA · 7 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
2 h 55 m
no fares
DJT · 6 km
3 h 0 m
€202-362
MIA · 7 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
1 h 40 m
no fares
DJT · 6 km
1 h 50 m
€97-175
MIA · 7 km
BostonBOS, PSM
2 h 55 m
no fares
DJT · 6 km
3 h 5 m
€274-342
1 stop
MIA · 7 km
HoustonIAH, HOU
2 h 30 m
no fares
DJT · 6 km
2 h 30 m
€103-188
1 stop
MIA · 7 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
15 h 30 m
€891-1074
2 stops
MIA · 105 km
15 h 30 m
€891-1074
2 stops
MIA · 7 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

MeasureWest Palm BeachMiami
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
Elevation6 m2 m
Main airportPresident Donald J. Trump International Airport (DJT)6 km from centre37 non-stop destinationsMiami International Airport (MIA)7 km from centre199 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureWest Palm BeachMiami
City population117,415442,241
People per km²7863,046
Museums within 10 km417
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre1839
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months12 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow West Palm Beach or Miami 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.