MySQL: What's the difference between float and double?

They both represent floating point numbers. A FLOAT is for single-precision, while a DOUBLE is for double-precision numbers.

MySQL uses four bytes for single-precision values and eight bytes for double-precision values.

There is a big difference from floating point numbers and decimal (numeric) numbers, which you can use with the DECIMAL data type. This is used to store exact numeric data values, unlike floating point numbers, where it is important to preserve exact precision, for example with monetary data.

Perhaps this example could explain.

CREATE TABLE `test`(`fla` FLOAT,`flb` FLOAT,`dba` DOUBLE(10,2),`dbb` DOUBLE(10,2)); 

We have a table like this:

+-------+-------------+
| Field | Type        |
+-------+-------------+
| fla   | float       |
| flb   | float       |
| dba   | double(10,2)|
| dbb   | double(10,2)|
+-------+-------------+

For first difference, we try to insert a record with '1.2' to each field:

INSERT INTO `test` values (1.2,1.2,1.2,1.2);

The table showing like this:

SELECT * FROM `test`;

+------+------+------+------+
| fla  | flb  | dba  | dbb  |
+------+------+------+------+
|  1.2 |  1.2 | 1.20 | 1.20 |
+------+------+------+------+

See the difference?

We try to next example:

SELECT fla+flb, dba+dbb FROM `test`;

Hola! We can find the difference like this:

+--------------------+---------+
| fla+flb            | dba+dbb |
+--------------------+---------+
| 2.4000000953674316 |    2.40 |
+--------------------+---------+

Doubles are just like floats, except for the fact that they are twice as large. This allows for a greater accuracy.