VacationSelector

Cancun or Sydney?

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

Your match

Cancun
50
match

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

Sydney
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on sights concentration and nightlife 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.

CancunSydney
Beaches & swimming. Cancun leads by 37 points.37
CancunSydney
Score9760
Swim season months126
Beaches 10 km23160
Coast distance3 km7 km
Water distance3 km7 km
Places to eat. Sydney leads by 24 points.24
CancunSydney
Score5478
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6812,205
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1831
Museums & heritage. Sydney leads by 31 points.31
CancunSydney
Score2051
Museums within 10 km144
Museums within 2 km of centre120
Share of museums within 2 km %10045
Unesco sites within 50 km02
Nightlife. Sydney leads by 39 points.39
CancunSydney
Score3675
Drinking venues within 4 km2702,050
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1751,405
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6569
Nightclubs within 4 km33120
Nature & day trips. Sydney leads by 4 points.4
CancunSydney
Score5458
Protected land share 50 km %910
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4552
Park area within 2 km66 hectares115 hectares
Good for families. Sydney leads by 32 points.32
CancunSydney
Score3264
Tourist attractions within 2 km237
Park area within 2 km66 hectares115 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km32
Sights concentration. Sydney leads by 56 points.56
CancunSydney
Score460
Notable places within 2 km5123
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cancun leads by 26 points.26
CancunSydney
Score7650
Price level global54.290.2
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Cancun and Sydney are level on 81.
CancunSydney
Score8181
Monthly daytime high26.2 °C to 30.3 °C17.7 °C to 27.7 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 224 mm55 mm to 121 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
Sydney
28
27
26
23
21
18
18
19
22
24
25
26
Sea temperature, °C
Cancun
27
26
26
27
28
28
29
29
29
29
28
27
Sydney
23
23
23
22
21
20
19
18
18
19
20
21
Rainfall, mm
Cancun
63
50
38
41
92
181
89
114
166
224
124
68
Sydney
80
116
90
95
89
121
70
63
57
55
71
68
Daylight, hours per day
Cancun
11
11
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
Sydney
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Sunshine, hours per day
Cancun
No sunshine record
Sydney
8
6
7
7
7
6
7
8
8
8
7
8

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. Sydney: 1991-2020 normals, Sydney Airport (3.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCancunSydney
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
3 h 45 m
€321-392
CUN · 14 km
19 h 0 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
4 h 40 m
€319-382
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
14 h 50 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 0 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
20 h 40 m
€931-1073
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
5 h 55 m
€287-406
2 stops
CUN · 14 km
15 h 20 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
San FranciscoSFO
5 h 15 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
14 h 45 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
3 h 35 m
€328-337
CUN · 14 km
19 h 30 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 35 m
€292-400
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
16 h 55 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
HoustonIAH, HOU
2 h 10 m
€286-331
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
16 h 55 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
SantiagoSCL
8 h 5 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
14 h 0 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
10 h 20 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
20 h 35 m
no fares
SYD · 9 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

MeasureCancunSydney
Official languageSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec MayaEnglish
CurrencyMexican Peso (MXN)Australian Dollar (AUD)
SocketsAB127 V, 60 HzI230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC-5UTC+10, UTC+11 in summer
Emergency number911000
Elevation5 m6 m
Main airportCancún International Airport (CUN)14 km from centre136 non-stop destinationsSydney Kingsford Smith International Airport (SYD)9 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureCancunSydney
City population888,7975,450,496
People per km²449
Museums within 10 km138
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km02
Distinct cuisines in the centre3179
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months6 months

Where else could you go?

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