VacationSelector

Cusco or Rio de Janeiro?

Two destinations compared in twelve categories, each scored against the same fixed benchmark cities. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

The Plaza de Armas with the cathedral and La Compañía, Cusco
Cusco

Photo: Pedro Szekely, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped

Sugarloaf Mountain above the boats in Botafogo Bay, Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro

Photo: Arne Müseler, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, cropped

Your match

Cusco
49
match

Wins on day trips and culture and sights with your weighting.

Rio de Janeiro
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on beaches and families with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Our verdict on each category, scored 0 to 100 against fixed benchmark cities.

CuscoRio de Janeiro
Beaches & swimming. Rio de Janeiro leads by 89 points.89
Food & drink. Rio de Janeiro leads by 6 points.6
Culture & sights. Cusco leads by 13 points.13
Nightlife. Rio de Janeiro leads by 38 points.38
Nature & outdoors. Rio de Janeiro leads by 4 points.4
Day trips. Cusco leads by 28 points.28
Good for families. Rio de Janeiro leads by 40 points.40
Getting around. Cusco leads by 4 points.4
Shopping & style. Cusco leads by 2 points.2
Affordability. Cusco leads by 13 points.13
Live music & performing arts. Rio de Janeiro leads by 36 points.36
Wellness & relaxation. Cusco leads by 3 points.3
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What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Cusco and Rio de Janeiro.

When should you go?

Pick the month you can travel and see both cities side by side. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.

Climate figures for July
JulyCuscoRio de Janeiro
Daytime high20 °C24 °C
Night-time low1 °C18 °C
Rainfall in the month5 mm45 mm
Sea temperatureNo sea22 °C
Daylight11 hours a day11 hours a day

The whole year

Each row is shaded against that destination’s own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that figure 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
Cusco
20
19
20
20
21
21
20
21
21
21
22
20
Rio de Janeiro
28
28
28
27
25
24
24
25
25
26
26
27
Sea temperature, °C
Cusco
No coastline within reach
Rio de Janeiro
25
25
25
25
24
23
22
21
21
22
23
24
Rainfall, mm
Cusco
159
133
106
36
7
3
5
6
17
50
78
127
Rio de Janeiro
208
151
173
101
71
49
45
42
69
108
220
232
Daylight, hours per day
Cusco
13
13
12
12
12
11
11
12
12
12
13
13
Rio de Janeiro
13
13
12
12
11
11
11
11
12
13
13
14

Where the figures come from

Cusco's station stands 151 m below the city centre, so the centre is likely a little cooler than the figures say.

Rio de Janeiro 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. Cusco: 1991-2020 normals, Cuzco (3.7 km from centre). Rio de Janeiro: 2001-2020 normals, NASA POWER reanalysis grid, no weather station within 90 km.

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCuscoRio de Janeiro
LimaLIM
1 h 20 m
€95-160
CUZ · 5 km
5 h 5 m
no fares
GIG · 12 km
SantiagoSCL
3 h 15 m
no fares
CUZ · 5 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
GIG · 12 km
BogotaBOG
3 h 5 m
€424-527
1 stop
CUZ · 5 km
6 h 0 m
no fares
GIG · 12 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 2026-10 to 2026-12, 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

MeasureCuscoRio de Janeiro
Official languageSpanish, Aymara, QuechuaPortuguese
CurrencySol (PEN)Brazilian Real (BRL)
SocketsABC220 V, 60 HzCN60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5UTC-3
Emergency number111 or 911Police 190, ambulance 192, fire 193
Elevation3,399 m31 m
Main airportAlejandro Velasco Astete International Airport (CUZ)5 km from centre6 non-stop destinationsRio de Janeiro Galeão – Tom Jobim International Airport (GIG)12 km from centre54 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureCuscoRio de Janeiro
City population428,4506,211,223
People per km²-4,930
Museums within 10 km1170
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km23
Swim season, months above 21 °C-12 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cusco or Rio de Janeiro somewhere new.

Browse every destination

Sources

Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.

Category scores are our editorial verdict under rubric v3, each placed against the same fixed benchmark cities; the climate and flight figures are measured. How the scores are set. Snapshot generated 2026-10-27. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.