VacationSelector
The Esplanade boardwalk and its palms, Cairns
CairnsThe Esplanade boardwalk and its palms
Flinders Street Station, Melbourne
MelbourneFlinders Street Station

Photos: Cairns by Donaldytong, Public domain; Melbourne by Medelam, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped.

Cairns or Melbourne?

Our verdict in twelve categories, each scored against the same fixed benchmark cities, and the climate month by month, so you can choose for your trip.

Choose Cairns for

  • nature and the outdoors
  • beaches
  • prices

What lies behind each score is written up on Cairns’s own page.

Choose Melbourne for

  • live music and the arts
  • shopping
  • food and drink

What lies behind each score is written up on Melbourne’s own page.

Scoreboard

Twelve categories on one fixed scale from 0 to 100. The shaded stretch is the gap between the two.

Beaches & swimming. Cairns 62, Melbourne 50: Cairns leads by 12 points.
Food & drink. Cairns 40, Melbourne 75: Melbourne leads by 35 points.
Culture & sights. Cairns 22, Melbourne 57: Melbourne leads by 35 points.
Nightlife. Cairns 42, Melbourne 75: Melbourne leads by 33 points.
Nature & outdoors. Cairns 95, Melbourne 70: Cairns leads by 25 points.
Day trips. Cairns 45, Melbourne 62: Melbourne leads by 17 points.
Good for families. Cairns 66, Melbourne 73: Melbourne leads by 7 points.
Getting around. Cairns 45, Melbourne 76: Melbourne leads by 31 points.
Shopping & style. Cairns 28, Melbourne 70: Melbourne leads by 42 points.
Affordability. Cairns 35, Melbourne 31: Cairns leads by 4 points.
Live music & performing arts. Cairns 22, Melbourne 72: Melbourne leads by 50 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Cairns 45, Melbourne 54: Melbourne leads by 9 points.
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What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Cairns and Melbourne.

Your match

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders, and both match scores follow your weighting.

Cairns
46match

Wins on nature and the outdoors and beaches with your weighting.

Melbourne
Best match
64match

Wins on live music and the arts and shopping with your weighting.

What matters to you?

When should you go?

Pick your month. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.

Cairns in July

24 °Cdaytime high
20 °Cnight-time low
30 mmrain in the month
No recordsunshine a day
24 °Csea
11 hdaylight a day

Melbourne in July

14 °Cdaytime high
6 °Cnight-time low
46 mmrain in the month
4 hsunshine a day
12 °Csea
10 hdaylight a day

Daytime high, °C

0°10°20°30°40°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

0200400600JFMAMJJASOND
CairnsMelbourne

Where the figures come from

Cairns's temperatures are measured 27 km from the centre, at Green Island Aws.

Cairns has no rain gauge within 25 km of the centre, so its rainfall comes from a gridded climate dataset read at the city rather than from a gauge further away.

Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cairns: 1993-2010 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Green Island Aws (27 km from centre). Melbourne: 1991-2020 normals, Latrobe University / Kingsbury (13.1 km from centre).

Before you go

MeasureCairnsMelbourne
Official languageEnglishEnglish
CurrencyAustralian Dollar (AUD)Australian Dollar (AUD)
SocketsI230 V, 50 HzI230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC+10UTC+10, UTC+11 in summer
Emergency number000000
Elevation7 m31 m
Main airportCairns International Airport (CNS)6 km from centre32 non-stop destinationsMelbourne Airport (MEL)19 km from centre69 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCairnsMelbourne
City population146,7785,350,705
People per km²301535
Museums within 10 km143
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cairns or Melbourne somewhere new.

Browse every destination

Sources

Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Rainfall where no rain gauge is within 25 km is from the TerraClimate 1991-2020 climatology (Abatzoglou et al. 2018, Scientific Data), read at the city. 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.

Category scores are our editorial verdict under rubric v3, each placed against the same fixed benchmark cities; the climate figures are measured. How the scores are set. Snapshot generated 2026-11-01. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.