VacationSelector

Cairo or Cancun?

Two destinations compared in twelve categories, each scored against the same fixed benchmark cities. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

The pyramids of Giza, Cairo
Cairo

Photo: Ricardo Liberato, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped

The coastline of the Hotel Zone, Cancun
Cancun

Photo: Tellez Erik, Pexels License

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Cairo
50
match

Wins on culture and sights and prices with your weighting.

Cancun
52
match

Wins on beaches and families with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Our verdict on each category, scored 0 to 100 against fixed benchmark cities.

CairoCancun
Beaches & swimming. Cancun leads by 88 points.88
Food & drink. Cairo leads by 16 points.16
Culture & sights. Cairo leads by 81 points.81
Nightlife. Cancun leads by 22 points.22
Nature & outdoors. Cancun leads by 36 points.36
Day trips. Cairo leads by 1 points.1
Good for families. Cancun leads by 46 points.46
Getting around. Cairo leads by 10 points.10
Shopping & style. Cairo leads by 18 points.18
Affordability. Cairo leads by 49 points.49
Live music & performing arts. Cairo leads by 33 points.33
Wellness & relaxation. Cancun leads by 40 points.40
0255075100

What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Cairo and Cancun.

When should you go?

Pick the month you can travel and see both cities side by side. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.

Climate figures for July
JulyCairoCancun
Daytime high36 °C30 °C
Night-time low23 °C26 °C
Rainfall in the month0 mm89 mm
Sunshine12 hours a dayNo figure
Sea temperatureNo sea29 °C
Daylight14 hours a day13 hours a day

The whole year

Each row is shaded against that destination’s own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that figure 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
Cairo
19
21
24
29
33
35
36
36
34
30
26
21
Cancun
26
27
28
29
30
30
30
30
30
29
27
27
Sea temperature, °C
Cairo
No coastline within reach
Cancun
27
26
26
27
28
28
29
29
29
29
28
27
Rainfall, mm
Cairo
6
5
10
1
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
7
Cancun
63
50
38
41
92
181
89
114
166
224
124
68
Daylight, hours per day
Cairo
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
12
11
10
Cancun
11
11
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
Sunshine, hours per day
Cairo
7
7
9
9
11
11
12
11
10
10
9
7
Cancun
No sunshine record

Where the figures come from

Cancun has no weather station within reach, so its figures come from a gridded climate model rather than a measured record, and read a broad area rather than the city itself.

Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cairo: 1991-2020 normals, Helwan (21.9 km from centre). Cancun: 2001-2020 normals, NASA POWER reanalysis grid, no weather station within 90 km.

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCairoCancun
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
11 h 30 m
no fares
CAI · 17 km
3 h 45 m
€321-392
CUN · 14 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
3 h 45 m
€147-173
CAI · 17 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
4 h 50 m
€240-288
CAI · 17 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 10 m
€154-167
CAI · 17 km
12 h 55 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
11 h 15 m
€624-1013
1 stop
CAI · 17 km
3 h 35 m
€328-337
CUN · 14 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
4 h 25 m
€249-480
CAI · 17 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
12 h 15 m
no fares
CAI · 17 km
3 h 25 m
€313-363
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
MadridMAD
4 h 35 m
€274-412
1 stop
CAI · 17 km
10 h 0 m
€721-977
CUN · 14 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
4 h 5 m
€245-328
1 stop
CAI · 17 km
10 h 45 m
€657-706
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
RomeFCO, CIA
3 h 10 m
€280-302
CAI · 17 km
11 h 30 m
no fares
CUN · 14 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

MeasureCairoCancun
Official languageArabicSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec Maya
CurrencyEgyptian Pound (EGP)Mexican Peso (MXN)
SocketsCF220 V, 50 HzAB127 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC-5
Emergency numberPolice 122, ambulance 123, fire 180911
Elevation23 m5 m
Main airportCairo International Airport (CAI)17 km from centre127 non-stop destinationsCancún International Airport (CUN)14 km from centre137 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days9 days

By the numbers

MeasureCairoCancun
City population9,801,536888,797
People per km²18,564-
Museums within 10 km481
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Swim season, months above 21 °C-12 months

Where else could you go?

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

Browse every destination

Sources

Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Temperature and rainfall for destinations with no weather station are from the NASA POWER 2001-2020 climatology, derived from MERRA-2. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.

Category scores are our editorial verdict under rubric v3, each placed against the same fixed benchmark cities; the climate and flight figures are measured. How the scores are set. Snapshot generated 2026-10-27. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.