VacationSelector

Cancun or Reykjavik?

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 year-round weather and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Reykjavik
46
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.

CancunReykjavik
Beaches & swimming. Cancun leads by 37 points.37
CancunReykjavik
Score9760
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km2333
Coast distance3 km0 km
Water distance3 km0 km
Places to eat. Cancun leads by 5 points.5
CancunReykjavik
Score5449
Restaurants within 2 km of centre681261
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1829
Museums & heritage. Reykjavik leads by 30 points.30
CancunReykjavik
Score2050
Museums within 10 km134
Museums within 2 km of centre123
Share of museums within 2 km %10068
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Cancun leads by 9 points.9
CancunReykjavik
Score3627
Drinking venues within 4 km270192
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre175166
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6586
Nightclubs within 4 km3310
Nature & day trips. Reykjavik leads by 5 points.5
CancunReykjavik
Score5459
Protected land share 50 km %916
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4556
Park area within 2 km66 hectares28 hectares
Good for families. Reykjavik leads by 10 points.10
CancunReykjavik
Score3242
Tourist attractions within 2 km221
Park area within 2 km66 hectares28 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Reykjavik leads by 44 points.44
CancunReykjavik
Score448
Notable places within 2 km561
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cancun leads by 35 points.35
CancunReykjavik
Score7641
Price level global54.2102.8
Daily budget€243
Year-round weather. Cancun leads by 44 points.44
CancunReykjavik
Score8137
Monthly daytime high26.2 °C to 30.3 °C3.2 °C to 14.9 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 224 mm41 mm to 97 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
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Cancun
27
26
26
27
28
28
29
29
29
29
28
27
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Cancun
63
50
38
41
92
181
89
114
166
224
124
68
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Daylight, hours per day
Cancun
11
11
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
Reykjavik
6
9
12
15
18
21
20
16
13
10
7
4
Sunshine, hours per day
Cancun
No sunshine record
Reykjavik
1
2
4
5
7
6
6
5
4
3
1
0

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. Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCancunReykjavik
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 0 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
3 h 45 m
€321-392
CUN · 14 km
5 h 35 m
€426-480
KEF · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
3 h 35 m
€328-337
CUN · 14 km
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
10 h 20 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
BostonBOS, PSM
3 h 55 m
€345-392
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
5 h 15 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
10 h 25 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
3 h 25 m
€313-363
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
6 h 15 m
€415-534
KEF · 37 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
10 h 45 m
€657-706
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
3 h 30 m
€313-393
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
RaleighRDU
2 h 50 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
6 h 20 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
DublinDUB
9 h 30 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
KEF · 37 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

MeasureCancunReykjavik
Official languageSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec MayaIcelandic
CurrencyMexican Peso (MXN)Iceland Krona (ISK)
SocketsAB127 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5UTC
Emergency number911112
Elevation5 m8 m
Main airportCancún International Airport (CUN)14 km from centre136 non-stop destinationsKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureCancunReykjavik
City population888,797138,772
People per km²569
Museums within 10 km123
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre3142
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

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