Photos: Cape Town by Stephan Louis, Pexels License; Tulum by Bjørn Christian Tørrissen, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped.
Cape Town or Tulum?
Our verdict in twelve categories, each scored against the same fixed benchmark cities, and the climate month by month, so you can choose for your trip.
Choose Cape Town for
- prices
- live music and the arts
- culture and sights
What lies behind each score is written up on Cape Town’s own page.
Choose Tulum for
- wellness
- beaches
- families
What lies behind each score is written up on Tulum’s own page.
Scoreboard
Twelve categories on one fixed scale from 0 to 100. The shaded stretch is the gap between the two.
What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Cape Town and Tulum.
Your match
Pick a travel style or drag the sliders, and both match scores follow your weighting.
Wins on prices and live music and the arts with your weighting.
Wins on wellness and beaches with your weighting.
What matters to you?
When should you go?
Pick your month. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.
Cape Town in July
Tulum in July
Daytime high, °C
Rainfall in the month, mm
Where the figures come from
Tulum has no weather station within reach, so its figures come from a gridded climate model rather than a measured record, and read a broad area rather than the city itself.
Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cape Town: 1991-2020 normals, Cape Town Airport (17.5 km from centre). Tulum: 2001-2020 normals, NASA POWER reanalysis grid, no weather station within 90 km.
Before you go
| Measure | Cape Town | Tulum |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | English, Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans, Venda, Northern Sotho, Swazi, Tswana, Tsonga, Sesotho, Southern Ndebele, South African Sign Language | Spanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec Maya |
| Currency | Rand (ZAR) | Mexican Peso (MXN) |
| Sockets | CMN230 V, 50 Hz | AB127 V, 60 Hz |
| Driving side | Left | Right |
| Time zone | UTC+2 | UTC-5 |
| Emergency number | 112 | 911 |
| Elevation | 5 m | 5 m |
| Main airport | Cape Town International Airport (CPT)18 km from centre45 non-stop destinations | Felipe Carrillo Puerto International Airport Tulum (TQO)21 km from centre11 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 13 days | 9 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Cape Town | Tulum |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 3,776,313 | 33,374 |
| People per km² | 1,538 | - |
| Museums within 10 km | 22 | 0 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 3 | 0 |
| Swim season, months above 21 °C | None | 12 months |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cape Town or Tulum somewhere new.