VacationSelector

Cancun or Faro?

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

Your match

Cancun
✓ Best match
50
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nightlife with your weighting.

Faro
47
match

Wins on sights concentration and good for 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

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

CancunFaro
Beaches & swimming. Cancun leads by 36 points.36
CancunFaro
Score9761
Swim season months123
Beaches 10 km2313
Coast distance3 km0 km
Water distance3 km0 km
Places to eat. Cancun leads by 10 points.10
CancunFaro
Score5444
Restaurants within 2 km of centre681255
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1822
Museums & heritage. Faro leads by 2 points.2
CancunFaro
Score2022
Museums within 10 km19
Museums within 2 km of centre18
Share of museums within 2 km %10089
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Cancun leads by 15 points.15
CancunFaro
Score3621
Drinking venues within 4 km270143
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre175123
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6586
Nightclubs within 4 km338
Nature & day trips. Faro leads by 3 points.3
CancunFaro
Score5457
Protected land share 50 km %911
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4542
Park area within 2 km66 hectares34 hectares
Good for families. Faro leads by 4 points.4
CancunFaro
Score3236
Tourist attractions within 2 km210
Park area within 2 km66 hectares34 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km32
Sights concentration. Faro leads by 18 points.18
CancunFaro
Score422
Notable places within 2 km514
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cancun leads by 2 points.2
CancunFaro
Score7674
Price level global54.255.9
Daily budget€109
Year-round weather. Faro leads by 2 points.2
CancunFaro
Score8183
Monthly daytime high26.2 °C to 30.3 °C16.3 °C to 29 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 224 mm1 mm to 102 mm
Dry months16
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
Faro
16
17
19
21
24
27
29
29
26
23
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Cancun
27
26
26
27
28
28
29
29
29
29
28
27
Faro
17
16
16
17
18
20
21
22
21
21
19
17
Rainfall, mm
Cancun
63
50
38
41
92
181
89
114
166
224
124
68
Faro
55
39
44
40
23
6
1
5
28
57
75
102
Daylight, hours per day
Cancun
11
11
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
Faro
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Cancun
No sunshine record
Faro
6
6
8
9
10
12
12
11
9
8
6
6

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. Faro: 1991-2020 normals, Faro / Aeroporto (2.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCancunFaro
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 0 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
DublinDUB
9 h 30 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
2 h 50 m
€75-114
FAO · 3 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
3 h 45 m
€321-392
CUN · 14 km
7 h 40 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
10 h 20 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
2 h 30 m
€126-204
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
ManchesterMAN
9 h 50 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
AmsterdamAMS
10 h 25 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
3 h 0 m
€144-189
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
LisbonLIS
9 h 30 m
€740-984
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
55 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
10 h 45 m
€657-706
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
3 h 0 m
€137-201
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
MadridMAD
10 h 0 m
€721-977
CUN · 14 km
1 h 20 m
€46-52
FAO · 3 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
3 h 35 m
€328-337
CUN · 14 km
7 h 15 m
no fares
FAO · 3 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

MeasureCancunFaro
Official languageSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec MayaPortuguese
CurrencyMexican Peso (MXN)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB127 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5UTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation5 m10 m
Main airportCancún International Airport (CUN)14 km from centre136 non-stop destinationsFaro - Gago Coutinho International Airport (FAO)3 km from centre91 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureCancunFaro
City population888,79764,560
People per km²319
Museums within 10 km12
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre3134
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cancun or Faro 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.