VacationSelector

Cancun or Tokyo?

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.

Tokyo
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nightlife and sights concentration 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.

CancunTokyo
Beaches & swimming. Cancun leads by 76 points.76
CancunTokyo
Score9721
Swim season months124
Beaches 10 km231
Coast distance3 km5 km
Water distance3 km5 km
Places to eat. Tokyo leads by 36 points.36
CancunTokyo
Score5490
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6816,936
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1825
Museums & heritage. Tokyo leads by 46 points.46
CancunTokyo
Score2066
Museums within 10 km1302
Museums within 2 km of centre152
Share of museums within 2 km %10017
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Tokyo leads by 59 points.59
CancunTokyo
Score3695
Drinking venues within 4 km2706,895
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1753,033
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6544
Nightclubs within 4 km3358
Nature & day trips. Tokyo leads by 4 points.4
CancunTokyo
Score5458
Protected land share 50 km %9—
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4585
Park area within 2 km66 hectares85 hectares
Good for families. Tokyo leads by 39 points.39
CancunTokyo
Score3271
Tourist attractions within 2 km240
Park area within 2 km66 hectares85 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km39
Sights concentration. Tokyo leads by 56 points.56
CancunTokyo
Score460
Notable places within 2 km5121
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cancun leads by 6 points.6
CancunTokyo
Score7670
Price level global54.262.4
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. Cancun leads by 17 points.17
CancunTokyo
Score8164
Monthly daytime high26.2 °C to 30.3 °C10 °C to 31.5 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 224 mm57 mm to 237 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
Tokyo
10
11
14
19
24
26
30
32
28
22
17
12
Sea temperature, °C
Cancun
27
26
26
27
28
28
29
29
29
29
28
27
Tokyo
14
13
13
15
18
21
23
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Cancun
63
50
38
41
92
181
89
114
166
224
124
68
Tokyo
60
57
117
134
140
168
157
155
221
237
97
58
Daylight, hours per day
Cancun
11
11
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
Tokyo
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Cancun
No sunshine record
Tokyo
6
6
6
6
6
4
5
6
4
4
5
6

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. Tokyo: 1991-2020 normals, Tokyo (3.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCancunTokyo
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
2 h 10 m
€110-128
CUN · 14 km
13 h 55 m
no fares
NRT · 56 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
3 h 45 m
€321-392
CUN · 14 km
12 h 50 m
no fares
HND · 18 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
4 h 40 m
€319-382
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
11 h 0 m
€789-943
HND · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
3 h 35 m
€328-337
CUN · 14 km
13 h 30 m
€813-1004
HND · 18 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
3 h 25 m
€313-363
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
12 h 35 m
no fares
HND · 18 km
San FranciscoSFO
5 h 15 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
10 h 25 m
€755-991
1 stop
HND · 18 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
5 h 55 m
€287-406
2 stops
CUN · 14 km
9 h 30 m
€595-735
1 stop
NRT · 56 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 0 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
11 h 55 m
€820-907
1 stop
HND · 18 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 35 m
€292-400
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
12 h 55 m
€966-988
1 stop
HND · 18 km
HoustonIAH, HOU
2 h 10 m
€286-331
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
13 h 15 m
no fares
NRT · 56 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

MeasureCancunTokyo
Official languageSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec MayaJapanese
CurrencyMexican Peso (MXN)Yen (JPY)
SocketsAB127 V, 60 HzAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC-5UTC+9
Emergency number911Police 110, fire 119
Elevation5 m6 m
Main airportCancún International Airport (CUN)14 km from centre136 non-stop destinationsTokyo Haneda International Airport (HND)18 km from centre97 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureCancunTokyo
City population888,79714,264,798
People per km²–6,501
Museums within 10 km1191
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre31125
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months4 months

Where else could you go?

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