VacationSelector

Cancun or Fort Lauderdale?

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 value for money and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Fort Lauderdale
45
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

CancunFort Lauderdale
Beaches & swimming. Cancun leads by 13 points.13
CancunFort Lauderdale
Score9784
Swim season months1212
Beaches 10 km237
Coast distance3 km0 km
Water distance3 km0 km
Places to eat. Cancun leads by 9 points.9
CancunFort Lauderdale
Score5445
Restaurants within 2 km of centre681371
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1818
Museums & heritage. Cancun and Fort Lauderdale are level on 20.
CancunFort Lauderdale
Score2020
Museums within 10 km114
Museums within 2 km of centre16
Share of museums within 2 km %10043
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Cancun leads by 2 points.2
CancunFort Lauderdale
Score3634
Drinking venues within 4 km270259
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre175144
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6556
Nightclubs within 4 km3318
Nature & day trips. Fort Lauderdale leads by 27 points.27
CancunFort Lauderdale
Score5481
Protected land share 50 km %920
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4551
Park area within 2 km66 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. Cancun leads by 13 points.13
CancunFort Lauderdale
Score3219
Tourist attractions within 2 km22
Park area within 2 km66 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km30
Sights concentration. Cancun leads by 4 points.4
CancunFort Lauderdale
Score40
Notable places within 2 km52
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cancun leads by 33 points.33
CancunFort Lauderdale
Score7643
Price level global54.2100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Cancun leads by 5 points.5
CancunFort Lauderdale
Score8176
Monthly daytime high26.2 °C to 30.3 °C24.2 °C to 32.3 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 224 mm55 mm to 219 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
Fort Lauderdale
24
26
27
29
30
31
32
32
31
30
27
26
Sea temperature, °C
Cancun
27
26
26
27
28
28
29
29
29
29
28
27
Fort Lauderdale
25
25
25
26
27
28
29
30
29
28
27
26
Rainfall, mm
Cancun
63
50
38
41
92
181
89
114
166
224
124
68
Fort Lauderdale
55
59
57
72
159
219
166
198
202
144
91
73
Daylight, hours per day
Cancun
11
11
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
Fort Lauderdale
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11

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. Fort Lauderdale: 1991-2020 normals, Fort Lauderdale (7.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCancunFort Lauderdale
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
3 h 45 m
€321-392
CUN · 14 km
3 h 0 m
€167-168
FLL · 7 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
3 h 35 m
€328-337
CUN · 14 km
2 h 40 m
€140-271
1 stop
FLL · 7 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
3 h 25 m
€313-363
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
2 h 55 m
€119-159
FLL · 7 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
2 h 10 m
€110-128
CUN · 14 km
3 h 5 m
€278-290
MIA · 41 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
4 h 10 m
€361-445
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
FLL · 7 km
CincinnatiCVG, LUK
3 h 0 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
FLL · 7 km
RaleighRDU
2 h 50 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
FLL · 7 km
OttawaYOW, YND
4 h 5 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
FLL · 7 km
PhiladelphiaPHL, TTN
3 h 25 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
2 h 35 m
€125-184
FLL · 7 km
MadridMAD
10 h 0 m
€721-977
CUN · 14 km
9 h 0 m
€522-631
1 stop
MIA · 41 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

MeasureCancunFort Lauderdale
Official languageSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec Maya
CurrencyMexican Peso (MXN)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB127 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation5 m11 m
Main airportCancún International Airport (CUN)14 km from centre136 non-stop destinationsFort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL)7 km from centre125 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureCancunFort Lauderdale
City population888,797182,760
People per km²1,829
Museums within 10 km16
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre3125
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months12 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cancun or Fort Lauderdale 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.