Laguna Beach vs Huntington Beach

Of the four cities this site compares with Laguna Beach, Huntington Beach has the most residents. One city counts about 191,000 residents on 27 square miles of land, the other 22,000 on nine. The facts below set the two side by side.

Side by side

	Laguna Beach	Huntington Beach
Residents, July 2025 estimate	22,391	191,451
Land area, 2020 Census	8.89 sq mi	27.00 sq mi
Shoreline, in each city’s own words	7.5 miles of coastline	3.5-mile City Beach; 8.5 miles of beach on the About page
State marine protected areas	Reserve and no-take area on the open coast	Two conservation areas, one no-take, in the Bolsa Chica wetlands
Public school districts	One	Five shown on the city’s education page
Government	Council-manager, five members at large	Council-city manager charter city, seven members
Short-term stay tax, as each city lists it	14 percent in all	10 percent TOT plus 6 percent assessment
August average high, NOAA station	81.2 F (Laguna Beach station)	80.4 F (John Wayne Airport station, 8.0 miles away)
Road miles to John Wayne Airport (OSRM)	13.5 miles	10.8 miles
Road miles to Los Angeles City Hall (OSRM)	50.3 miles	35.7 miles

Road miles come from each City Hall on the OSRM routing engine with OpenStreetMap data and are not official figures. Land area is the 2020 Census measure for both; the City of Laguna Beach itself publishes 8.84 square miles.

Scale

Huntington Beach has about 8.5 times the residents of Laguna Beach and three times the land. In people per square mile of land, the Census files give roughly 7,100 for Huntington Beach and 2,500 for Laguna Beach. That is a calculation from those files, not a rate either city publishes.

Shorelines that the cities measure differently

Huntington Beach gives two figures. Its beach information page calls the City Beach a 3.5-mile stretch with a municipal pier, a 10 p.m. beach curfew and a midnight pier curfew. Its About page says 8.5 miles of beach. Laguna Beach’s Marine Safety department says seven and a half miles of coastline. Three different yardsticks do not line up, so read each number as that city’s own description.

The marine protected areas differ in kind. Laguna Beach has the 6.72-square-mile State Marine Reserve and the 3.09-square-mile no-take conservation area along its open coast, and the state makes taking any marine resource unlawful in both, apart from take incidental to certain permitted activities in the no-take area. In Huntington Beach, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife lists the Bolsa Bay conservation area (0.07 square miles) and the Bolsa Chica Basin no-take conservation area (0.70) along Highway 1. Bolsa Bay is closed from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. and bars boating, swimming, wading and diving.

Districts and taxes

Laguna Beach has one public district, Laguna Beach Unified, with two elementary schools, a middle school and a high school. Huntington Beach’s own education page shows five district logos: Huntington Beach City, Ocean View, Fountain Valley, Westminster and the Huntington Beach Union High School District. It also counts more than 50 public and private schools and places Golden West College inside the city. For a street address, only a district can say which one applies. The schools guide lists Laguna Beach’s schools and gives the district’s phone number for boundary questions. This site neither rates nor ranks schools.

Orange County assesses and bills both cities. Proposition 13 ties the tax to 1 percent of the purchase price. The county’s tax collector says special assessments in a parcel’s taxing district can raise the bill, and the Auditor-Controller reported that for fiscal year 2025–26, 32 school and college districts and seven other agencies levied rates for voter-approved debt. Look up any parcel by its number at taxbill.octreasurer.gov.

Short-term rentals

Huntington Beach issues an annual, non-transferable permit for stays of up to 30 consecutive nights. Hosted rentals are allowed in both of its zones; rentals without the owner present are allowed only in Sunset Beach, for operators who obtained a permit by March 1, 2022. The city allows one rental per property, with up to three on ownership properties of four or more units when the community’s rules permit. It collects a 10 percent Transient Occupancy Tax and a 6 percent business improvement assessment.

In Laguna Beach short-term lodging is no longer allowed in the R-1, R-2 and R-3 residential districts, and operators collect 14 percent in taxes and assessments. The short-term rentals guide covers the permits and where to ask.

Weather, with a caveat

Huntington Beach has no NOAA 1991–2020 normals station inside its limits. The closest one with temperature data is the Santa Ana John Wayne Airport station, 8.0 miles in a straight line from the Census point for the city. That station shows an August average high of 80.4 F, a January average low of 48.6 F and 11.18 inches of precipitation in a year. The Laguna Beach station shows 81.2 F, 44.2 F and 12.68 inches. An airport station and a station in Laguna Beach measure two different places, so the gap says little about the beaches themselves.

Getting around

In Laguna Beach, free trolleys serve Coast Highway, and the city’s Laguna Local vans give free on-demand rides between neighborhoods and activity centers. For the 2026 US Open of Surfing, the City of Huntington Beach told attendees to bike, walk, rideshare or use public transportation, and it offered a free bike valet on select days.

Government and surf contests

Laguna Beach runs on the council-manager model with five members elected at large. Huntington Beach says it was incorporated as a charter city in 1909 and has a City Council and City Manager, with seven members on four-year terms; the council picks its mayor each year.

Both cities host surf events. The US Open of Surfing ran July 25 to August 2 in 2026, on the south side of the Huntington Beach Pier, and Huntington Beach’s 122nd annual 4th of July parade stepped off at 10 a.m. on July 4, 2026. Laguna Beach’s Brooks Street Surfing Classic is open only to residents, and the city sets its weekend by the surf forecast. The city’s page lists the 58th as held September 27 and 28, 2025, and says the waiting period for the 59th opened June 6, 2026. For the full calendar, see the events section.

How to choose

Questions to settle for yourself:

1. How often do you go to Los Angeles or to John Wayne Airport, and what does each trip look like from each city’s roads?
2. What do you do at the beach: swim, surf, fish, walk the pier or explore tidepools?
3. Which school district does the exact address fall in, and has the district confirmed it?
4. Would you rent the home for short stays, and which city’s rules match your plan?
5. How large a council and city government are you comfortable with?
6. Which months of the year will you be in town?

Then turn to the neighborhoods guide, the cost of living guide and the moving guide.

The same comparison for other nearby cities: Laguna Beach vs Newport Beach, Dana Point, San Clemente, Laguna Niguel and La Jolla.