VacationSelector

Cancun or San Sebastian?

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 year-round weather with your weighting.

San Sebastian
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.

CancunSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. Cancun leads by 42 points.42
CancunSan Sebastian
Score9755
Swim season months122
Beaches 10 km2310
Coast distance3 km0 km
Water distance3 km0 km
Places to eat. San Sebastian leads by 1 points.1
CancunSan Sebastian
Score5455
Restaurants within 2 km of centre681472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1826
Museums & heritage. San Sebastian leads by 19 points.19
CancunSan Sebastian
Score2039
Museums within 10 km117
Museums within 2 km of centre17
Share of museums within 2 km %10041
Unesco sites within 50 km03
Nightlife. San Sebastian leads by 4 points.4
CancunSan Sebastian
Score3640
Drinking venues within 4 km270388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre175338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6587
Nightclubs within 4 km3312
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 2 points.2
CancunSan Sebastian
Score5456
Protected land share 50 km %911
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4552
Park area within 2 km66 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Cancun leads by 2 points.2
CancunSan Sebastian
Score3230
Tourist attractions within 2 km25
Park area within 2 km66 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. San Sebastian leads by 50 points.50
CancunSan Sebastian
Score454
Notable places within 2 km589
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cancun leads by 5 points.5
CancunSan Sebastian
Score7671
Price level global54.260.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Cancun leads by 23 points.23
CancunSan Sebastian
Score8158
Monthly daytime high26.2 °C to 30.3 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 224 mm92 mm to 203 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
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Cancun
27
26
26
27
28
28
29
29
29
29
28
27
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Cancun
63
50
38
41
92
181
89
114
166
224
124
68
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Cancun
11
11
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cancun
No sunshine record
San Sebastian
3
4
5
5
7
6
7
6
6
5
3
3

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. San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCancunSan Sebastian
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
10 h 20 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
AmsterdamAMS
10 h 25 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
10 h 45 m
€657-706
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MadridMAD
10 h 0 m
€721-977
CUN · 14 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 0 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
LisbonLIS
9 h 30 m
€740-984
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
1 h 30 m
€129-223
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
BarcelonaBCN
10 h 35 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
3 h 35 m
€328-337
CUN · 14 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
DublinDUB
9 h 30 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIQ · 40 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
12 h 55 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 75 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

MeasureCancunSan Sebastian
Official languageSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec MayaSpanish
CurrencyMexican Peso (MXN)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB127 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation5 m6 m
Main airportCancún International Airport (CUN)14 km from centre136 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCancunSan Sebastian
City population888,797189,866
People per km²3,118
Museums within 10 km114
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km03
Distinct cuisines in the centre3145
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months2 months

Where else could you go?

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