VacationSelector

Cancun or Washington DC?

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, 2 points apart

Cancun
50
match

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

Washington DC
52
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.

CancunWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Cancun leads by 79 points.79
CancunWashington DC
Score9718
Swim season months123
Beaches 10 km231
Coast distance3 km34 km
Water distance3 km34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 23 points.23
CancunWashington DC
Score5477
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6811,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1836
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 35 points.35
CancunWashington DC
Score2055
Museums within 10 km183
Museums within 2 km of centre155
Share of museums within 2 km %10066
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Washington DC leads by 25 points.25
CancunWashington DC
Score3661
Drinking venues within 4 km2701,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre175593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6558
Nightclubs within 4 km3354
Nature & day trips. Cancun leads by 12 points.12
CancunWashington DC
Score5442
Protected land share 50 km %910
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %4594
Park area within 2 km66 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Washington DC leads by 6 points.6
CancunWashington DC
Score3238
Tourist attractions within 2 km27
Park area within 2 km66 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 72 points.72
CancunWashington DC
Score476
Notable places within 2 km5305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cancun leads by 33 points.33
CancunWashington DC
Score7643
Price level global54.2100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Cancun leads by 19 points.19
CancunWashington DC
Score8162
Monthly daytime high26.2 °C to 30.3 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 224 mm65 mm to 108 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
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Cancun
27
26
26
27
28
28
29
29
29
29
28
27
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Cancun
63
50
38
41
92
181
89
114
166
224
124
68
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Cancun
11
11
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10

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. Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCancunWashington DC
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
3 h 45 m
€321-392
CUN · 14 km
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
3 h 35 m
€328-337
CUN · 14 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
3 h 25 m
€313-363
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
1 h 50 m
€199-215
DCA · 5 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
2 h 10 m
€110-128
CUN · 14 km
4 h 10 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
2 h 20 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
1 h 40 m
€267-307
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
RaleighRDU
2 h 50 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
1 h 5 m
€230
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
4 h 40 m
€319-382
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
5 h 0 m
€226-372
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
OrlandoMCO, SFB, ORL
1 h 50 m
€216-378
1 stop
CUN · 14 km
2 h 5 m
€189-295
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
Kansas CityMCI, MKC
3 h 15 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
DCA · 5 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 0 m
no fares
CUN · 14 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 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

MeasureCancunWashington DC
Official languageSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec Maya
CurrencyMexican Peso (MXN)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB127 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation5 m72 m
Main airportCancún International Airport (CUN)14 km from centre136 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureCancunWashington DC
City population888,797689,545
People per km²3,896
Museums within 10 km199
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre3182
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months3 months

Where else could you go?

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