VacationSelector

Cancun or Thessaloniki?

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 year-round weather with your weighting.

Thessaloniki
✓ Best match
59
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.

CancunThessaloniki
Beaches & swimming. Cancun leads by 42 points.42
CancunThessaloniki
Score9755
Swim season months125
Beaches 10 km234
Coast distance3 km0 km
Water distance3 km0 km
Places to eat. Cancun leads by 4 points.4
CancunThessaloniki
Score5450
Restaurants within 2 km of centre681640
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1815
Museums & heritage. Thessaloniki leads by 29 points.29
CancunThessaloniki
Score2049
Museums within 10 km134
Museums within 2 km of centre122
Share of museums within 2 km %10065
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Thessaloniki leads by 31 points.31
CancunThessaloniki
Score3667
Drinking venues within 4 km2701,407
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre175805
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6557
Nightclubs within 4 km3361
Nature & day trips. Thessaloniki leads by 11 points.11
CancunThessaloniki
Score5465
Protected land share 50 km %925
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4583
Park area within 2 km66 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Thessaloniki leads by 9 points.9
CancunThessaloniki
Score3241
Tourist attractions within 2 km216
Park area within 2 km66 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Thessaloniki leads by 52 points.52
CancunThessaloniki
Score456
Notable places within 2 km598
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cancun leads by 2 points.2
CancunThessaloniki
Score7674
Price level global54.255.8
Daily budget€125
Year-round weather. Cancun leads by 9 points.9
CancunThessaloniki
Score8172
Monthly daytime high26.2 °C to 30.3 °C9.7 °C to 32.1 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 224 mm21 mm to 56 mm
Dry months19
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
Thessaloniki
10
11
15
19
25
30
32
32
27
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Cancun
27
26
26
27
28
28
29
29
29
29
28
27
Thessaloniki
14
13
13
15
19
23
26
27
25
21
18
15
Rainfall, mm
Cancun
63
50
38
41
92
181
89
114
166
224
124
68
Thessaloniki
35
32
38
36
44
30
23
21
33
41
38
56
Daylight, hours per day
Cancun
11
11
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
Thessaloniki
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cancun
No sunshine record
Thessaloniki
4
4
6
6
9
11
11
10
8
6
4
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. Thessaloniki: 1991-2020 normals, Thessaloniki Airport (14 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCancunThessaloniki
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 0 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
3 h 15 m
€95-156
SKG · 14 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
10 h 45 m
€657-706
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
2 h 30 m
€119-127
SKG · 14 km
AmsterdamAMS
10 h 25 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
2 h 55 m
€225-285
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
10 h 20 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
2 h 50 m
€98-154
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
12 h 55 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
1 h 15 m
€151-156
SKG · 14 km
ZurichZRH
10 h 55 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
SKG · 14 km
RomeFCO, CIA
11 h 30 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
1 h 45 m
€117-203
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
DublinDUB
9 h 30 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
3 h 45 m
no fares
SKG · 14 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
11 h 0 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
2 h 10 m
€129-217
SKG · 14 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
11 h 0 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
3 h 10 m
€138-200
1 stop
SKG · 14 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

MeasureCancunThessaloniki
Official languageSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec MayaGreek
CurrencyMexican Peso (MXN)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB127 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5UTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation5 m6 m
Main airportCancún International Airport (CUN)14 km from centre136 non-stop destinationsThessaloniki Macedonia International Airport (SKG)14 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureCancunThessaloniki
City population888,797309,617
People per km²16,042
Museums within 10 km131
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre3145
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months5 months

Where else could you go?

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