VacationSelector

Cancun or Hanoi?

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

The coastline of the Hotel Zone, Cancun
Cancun

Photo: Tellez Erik, Pexels License

The Turtle Tower in Hoan Kiem Lake, Hanoi
Hanoi

Photo: xiquinhosilva, CC BY 2.0, cropped

Your match

Too close to call, level with your weighting

Cancun
52
match

Wins on beaches and families with your weighting.

Hanoi
52
match

Wins on culture and sights and prices 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.

CancunHanoi
Beaches & swimming. Cancun leads by 92 points.92
Food & drink. Hanoi leads by 41 points.41
Culture & sights. Hanoi leads by 57 points.57
Nightlife. Cancun leads by 20 points.20
Nature & outdoors. Cancun leads by 14 points.14
Day trips. Cancun leads by 7 points.7
Good for families. Cancun leads by 43 points.43
Getting around. Hanoi leads by 11 points.11
Shopping & style. Hanoi leads by 10 points.10
Affordability. Hanoi leads by 52 points.52
Live music & performing arts. Hanoi leads by 23 points.23
Wellness & relaxation. Cancun leads by 9 points.9
0255075100

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

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
JulyCancunHanoi
Daytime high30 °C34 °C
Night-time low26 °C27 °C
Rainfall in the month89 mm311 mm
SunshineNo figure6 hours a day
Sea temperature29 °CNo sea
Daylight13 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
Cancun
26
27
28
29
30
30
30
30
30
29
27
27
Hanoi
19
22
24
28
32
35
34
33
32
30
27
23
Sea temperature, °C
Cancun
27
26
26
27
28
28
29
29
29
29
28
27
Hanoi
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Cancun
63
50
38
41
92
181
89
114
166
224
124
68
Hanoi
23
23
52
72
204
272
311
310
179
109
73
30
Daylight, hours per day
Cancun
11
11
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
Hanoi
11
11
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
Sunshine, hours per day
Cancun
No sunshine record
Hanoi
2
2
2
2
6
6
6
5
6
5
4
4

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.

Hanoi's sunshine is measured 86 km from the centre, at Phu Lien.

Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cancun: 2001-2020 normals, NASA POWER reanalysis grid, no weather station within 90 km. Hanoi: 1991-2020 normals, Ha Noi (4.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCancunHanoi
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 0 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
11 h 30 m
no fares
HAN · 22 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
10 h 45 m
€657-706
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
10 h 55 m
no fares
HAN · 22 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
10 h 20 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
HAN · 22 km
AmsterdamAMS
10 h 25 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
11 h 5 m
no fares
HAN · 22 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 2026-09 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

MeasureCancunHanoi
Official languageSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec MayaVietnamese
CurrencyMexican Peso (MXN)Dong (VND)
SocketsAB127 V, 60 HzACFG220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5UTC+7
Emergency number911Police 113, ambulance 115, fire 114
Elevation5 m10 m
Main airportCancún International Airport (CUN)14 km from centre137 non-stop destinationsNoi Bai International Airport (HAN)22 km from centre91 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days-

By the numbers

MeasureCancunHanoi
City population888,7978,717,600
People per km²-2,595
Museums within 10 km114
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months-

Where else could you go?

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

Browse every destination

Sources

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.

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.