VacationSelector

Cancun or Chicago?

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

Your match

Cancun
50
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Chicago
✓ Best match
56
match

Wins on sights concentration and places to eat with your weighting.

What matters to you?

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

Scoreboard

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

CancunChicago
Beaches & swimming. Cancun leads by 44 points.44
CancunChicago
Score9753
Swim season months121
Beaches 10 km2312
Coast distance3 km10,000 km
Water distance3 km1 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 27 points.27
CancunChicago
Score5481
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6812,147
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1837
Museums & heritage. Chicago leads by 26 points.26
CancunChicago
Score2046
Museums within 10 km145
Museums within 2 km of centre120
Share of museums within 2 km %10044
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 26 points.26
CancunChicago
Score3662
Drinking venues within 4 km2701,123
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre175728
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6565
Nightclubs within 4 km3351
Nature & day trips. Cancun leads by 16 points.16
CancunChicago
Score5438
Protected land share 50 km %96
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %45100
Park area within 2 km66 hectares118 hectares
Good for families. Chicago leads by 23 points.23
CancunChicago
Score3255
Tourist attractions within 2 km218
Park area within 2 km66 hectares118 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km32
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 66 points.66
CancunChicago
Score470
Notable places within 2 km5217
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cancun leads by 33 points.33
CancunChicago
Score7643
Price level global54.2100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Cancun leads by 24 points.24
CancunChicago
Score8157
Monthly daytime high26.2 °C to 30.3 °C0.2 °C to 29.4 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 224 mm54 mm to 121 mm
Dry months10
0255075100

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
Cancun
26
27
28
29
30
30
30
30
30
29
27
27
Chicago
0
3
9
15
22
27
29
28
25
17
10
3
Sea temperature, °C
Cancun
27
26
26
27
28
28
29
29
29
29
28
27
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Cancun
63
50
38
41
92
181
89
114
166
224
124
68
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Daylight, hours per day
Cancun
11
11
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cancun: 2001-2020 normals, NASA POWER reanalysis grid, no weather station within 90 km. Chicago: 1991-2020 normals, Chicago Midway Airport (14.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCancunChicago
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
3 h 45 m
€321-392
CUN · 14 km
1 h 30 m
€189-423
ORD · 25 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
2 h 10 m
€110-128
CUN · 14 km
3 h 50 m
€253
ORD · 25 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
3 h 35 m
€328-337
CUN · 14 km
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
4 h 10 m
€361-445
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
BostonBOS, PSM
3 h 55 m
€345-392
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
2 h 20 m
€220-252
ORD · 25 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
4 h 40 m
€319-382
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
4 h 0 m
€195-265
1 stop
ORD · 25 km
DenverDEN, APA
3 h 50 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
2 h 20 m
€113-184
ORD · 25 km
RaleighRDU
2 h 50 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
2 h 20 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
1 h 50 m
€141-200
ORD · 25 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
10 h 20 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 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

MeasureCancunChicago
Official languageSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec Maya
CurrencyMexican Peso (MXN)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB127 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5UTC-6, UTC-5 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation5 m179 m
Main airportCancún International Airport (CUN)14 km from centre136 non-stop destinationsChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCancunChicago
City population888,7972,746,388
People per km²4,529
Museums within 10 km143
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre3187
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months1 month

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cancun or Chicago 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). 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. 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. Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. 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 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.