VacationSelector

Cancun or Philadelphia?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Cancun
50
match

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

Philadelphia
51
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage 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.

CancunPhiladelphia
Beaches & swimming. Cancun leads by 97 points.97
CancunPhiladelphia
Score970
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km231
Coast distance3 km13 km
Water distance3 km
Places to eat. Philadelphia leads by 23 points.23
CancunPhiladelphia
Score5477
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6811,714
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1835
Museums & heritage. Philadelphia leads by 40 points.40
CancunPhiladelphia
Score2060
Museums within 10 km189
Museums within 2 km of centre148
Share of museums within 2 km %10054
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Philadelphia leads by 23 points.23
CancunPhiladelphia
Score3659
Drinking venues within 4 km270930
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre175575
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6562
Nightclubs within 4 km3341
Nature & day trips. Cancun leads by 5 points.5
CancunPhiladelphia
Score5449
Protected land share 50 km %914
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4589
Park area within 2 km66 hectares75 hectares
Good for families. Philadelphia leads by 21 points.21
CancunPhiladelphia
Score3253
Tourist attractions within 2 km216
Park area within 2 km66 hectares75 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km34
Sights concentration. Philadelphia leads by 50 points.50
CancunPhiladelphia
Score454
Notable places within 2 km588
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cancun leads by 33 points.33
CancunPhiladelphia
Score7643
Price level global54.2100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Cancun leads by 21 points.21
CancunPhiladelphia
Score8160
Monthly daytime high26.2 °C to 30.3 °C5.2 °C to 31 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 224 mm69 mm to 112 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
Philadelphia
5
7
12
18
24
28
31
30
26
20
13
8
Sea temperature, °C
Cancun
27
26
26
27
28
28
29
29
29
29
28
27
Philadelphia
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Cancun
63
50
38
41
92
181
89
114
166
224
124
68
Philadelphia
79
69
101
88
86
103
111
109
112
88
74
101
Daylight, hours per day
Cancun
11
11
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
Philadelphia
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cancun
No sunshine record
Philadelphia
4
5
6
7
9
9
8
9
7
7
5
5

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. Philadelphia: 1991-2020 normals, Philadelphia International Airport (11.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCancunPhiladelphia
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
3 h 45 m
€321-392
CUN · 14 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
3 h 25 m
€313-363
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
HoustonIAH, HOU
2 h 10 m
€286-331
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
2 h 10 m
€110-128
CUN · 14 km
4 h 25 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
BostonBOS, PSM
3 h 55 m
€345-392
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
DenverDEN, APA
3 h 50 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
NashvilleBNA
2 h 40 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
4 h 10 m
€361-445
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
RaleighRDU
2 h 50 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
DublinDUB
9 h 30 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
6 h 50 m
no fares
PHL · 11 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

MeasureCancunPhiladelphia
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 m12 m
Main airportCancún International Airport (CUN)14 km from centre136 non-stop destinationsPhiladelphia International Airport (PHL)11 km from centre128 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureCancunPhiladelphia
City population888,7971,603,797
People per km²4,339
Museums within 10 km154
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre3175
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 Philadelphia 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.