VacationSelector
Cardiff Castle, Cardiff
CardiffCardiff Castle
A boat in the swell beside El Arco, Los Cabos
Los CabosA boat in the swell beside El Arco

Photos: Cardiff by Tevfik Teker, CC BY 3.0, cropped; Los Cabos by Jules Clark, Pexels License.

Cardiff or Los Cabos?

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 Cardiff for

  • live music and the arts
  • culture and sights
  • getting around

What lies behind each score is written up on Cardiff’s own page.

Choose Los Cabos for

  • beaches
  • wellness
  • nightlife

What lies behind each score is written up on Los Cabos’s own page.

Scoreboard

Twelve categories on one fixed scale from 0 to 100. The shaded stretch is the gap between the two.

Beaches & swimming. Cardiff 30, Los Cabos 84: Los Cabos leads by 54 points.
Food & drink. Cardiff 45, Los Cabos 54: Los Cabos leads by 9 points.
Culture & sights. Cardiff 58, Los Cabos 20: Cardiff leads by 38 points.
Nightlife. Cardiff 50, Los Cabos 66: Los Cabos leads by 16 points.
Nature & outdoors. Cardiff 70, Los Cabos 78: Los Cabos leads by 8 points.
Day trips. Cardiff 72, Los Cabos 42: Cardiff leads by 30 points.
Good for families. Cardiff 58, Los Cabos 55: Cardiff leads by 3 points.
Getting around. Cardiff 66, Los Cabos 28: Cardiff leads by 38 points.
Shopping & style. Cardiff 50, Los Cabos 36: Cardiff leads by 14 points.
Affordability. Cardiff 46, Los Cabos 28: Cardiff leads by 18 points.
Live music & performing arts. Cardiff 57, Los Cabos 12: Cardiff leads by 45 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Cardiff 27, Los Cabos 58: Los Cabos leads by 31 points.
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What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Cardiff and Los Cabos.

Your match

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders, and both match scores follow your weighting.

Cardiff
Best match
52match

Wins on live music and the arts and culture and sights with your weighting.

Los Cabos
47match

Wins on beaches and wellness with your weighting.

What matters to you?

When should you go?

Pick your month. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.

Cardiff in July

20 °Cdaytime high
13 °Cnight-time low
83 mmrain in the month
7 hsunshine a day
17 °Csea
16 hdaylight a day

Los Cabos in July

30 °Cdaytime high
25 °Cnight-time low
19 mmrain in the month
No recordsunshine a day
26 °Csea
13 hdaylight a day

Daytime high, °C

0°10°20°30°40°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

050100150JFMAMJJASOND
CardiffLos Cabos

Where the figures come from

Cardiff has no rain gauge within 25 km of the centre, so its rainfall comes from a gridded climate dataset read at the city rather than from a gauge further away.

Cardiff's sunshine is measured 83 km from the centre, at Lyneham.

Los Cabos 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. Cardiff: 1991-2020 normals, Cardiff-Wales Airport (14.9 km from centre). Los Cabos: 2001-2020 normals, NASA POWER reanalysis grid, no weather station within 90 km.

Before you go

MeasureCardiffLos Cabos
Official languageEnglishSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec Maya
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Mexican Peso (MXN)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzAB127 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC-7
Emergency number112 or 999911
Elevation41 m11 m
Main airportCardiff International Airport (CWL)15 km from centre30 non-stop destinationsLos Cabos International Airport (SJD)35 km from centre54 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days9 days

By the numbers

MeasureCardiffLos Cabos
City population383,536202,694
People per km²2,734-
Museums within 10 km91
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone12 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cardiff or Los Cabos somewhere new.

Browse every destination

Sources

Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Rainfall where no rain gauge is within 25 km is from the TerraClimate 1991-2020 climatology (Abatzoglou et al. 2018, Scientific Data), read at the city. 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. Temperature and rainfall for destinations with no weather station are from the NASA POWER 2001-2020 climatology, derived from MERRA-2. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm.

Category scores are our editorial verdict under rubric v3, each placed against the same fixed benchmark cities; the climate figures are measured. How the scores are set. Snapshot generated 2026-10-31. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.