VacationSelector

Lima or Mexico City?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Lima
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and good for families with your weighting.

Mexico City
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on nature & day trips and nightlife with your weighting.

What matters to you?

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

The verdict

Choose Lima if you want the coast: 12 beaches nearby and a sea that reaches 21°C in February, plus more park space near the centre for children.

Choose Mexico City if you want museums, places to eat and late nights, with protected land all around for day trips and far more sun over the year.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

LimaMexico City
Beaches & swimming. Lima leads by 37 points.37
LimaMexico City
Score370
Swim season months20
Beaches 10 km124
Coast distance6 km247 km
Water distance6 km—
Places to eat. Mexico City leads by 14 points.14
LimaMexico City
Score5266
Restaurants within 2 km of centre7962,179
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1415
Museums & heritage. Mexico City leads by 15 points.15
LimaMexico City
Score6479
Museums within 10 km89138
Museums within 2 km of centre4765
Share of museums within 2 km %5347
Unesco sites within 50 km26
Nightlife. Mexico City leads by 33 points.33
LimaMexico City
Score4578
Drinking venues within 4 km4092,156
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre177926
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4343
Nightclubs within 4 km63198
Nature & day trips. Mexico City leads by 36 points.36
LimaMexico City
Score2763
Protected land share 50 km %230
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %51100
Park area within 2 km54 hectares32 hectares
Good for families. Lima leads by 6 points.6
LimaMexico City
Score5650
Tourist attractions within 2 km2523
Park area within 2 km54 hectares32 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km44
Sights concentration. Mexico City leads by 8 points.8
LimaMexico City
Score4654
Notable places within 2 km5488
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lima leads by 4 points.4
LimaMexico City
Score8076
Price level global47.754.2
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. Lima leads by 2 points.2
LimaMexico City
Score9290
Monthly daytime high18.6 °C to 27.4 °C22.2 °C to 27.9 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 1 mm3 mm to 186 mm
Dry months126
0255075100

Where they differ

Lima is the one with a coastline: 12 beaches within reach against Mexico City's 4, and a sea that warms to 21°C at the height of summer, which Mexico City has nothing to match. It also has twice as much park space near the centre.

Mexico City has roughly three times as many restaurants near the centre, twice as many museums, and 6 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Lima's 2. Its nightlife is far larger, and 30% of the surrounding land is protected against 2% around Lima.

Where they are alike

Neither city has a season to avoid on temperature alone. Lima's daytime highs run 19-27°C across the year and Mexico City's 22-28°C, so both stay comfortable in winter and neither turns uncomfortably hot in summer.

For families the two are close: a similar count of attractions near the centre and 4 theme parks within reach of each. Both put a good share of their notable places within walking distance of the centre, Mexico City a little more tightly than Lima.

Which traveller are you?

If swimming matters, Lima is the only real option: 12 beaches within reach and a sea at 21°C or more at the peak of summer, against 4 inland spots and no coast in Mexico City.

Museum-goers and anyone who wants a long evening should take Mexico City, with twice as many museums, 6 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach and a far larger spread of bars and clubs.

Families are more evenly matched. Lima has more park space near the centre, while Mexico City offers more protected countryside within day-trip range. Each has 4 theme parks.

What the numbers don't tell you

No daily cost figure exists for either city in this data, so the two cannot be compared on price at all. The value ranking here rests on a different measure, and nothing on this page should be read as saying one trip is cheaper than the other.

Lima's weather looks unbroken because rain barely registers, at 1mm or less every month. Dry is not the same as bright: Lima receives well under half the yearly sunshine Mexico City does, and its coolest months sit at 19°C under persistent cloud, with the sea no warmer than 22°C even in February.

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
Lima
26
27
27
25
22
20
19
19
19
20
22
24
Mexico City
22
25
26
28
27
26
25
25
24
23
23
22
Sea temperature, °C
Lima
21
22
21
20
19
18
18
17
17
17
18
19
Mexico City
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Lima
1
1
0
0
1
1
1
1
1
1
0
1
Mexico City
7
3
19
27
53
127
176
186
144
79
10
9
Daylight, hours per day
Lima
13
13
12
12
12
11
12
12
12
12
13
13
Mexico City
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
Sunshine, hours per day
Lima
5
5
6
6
3
1
1
1
1
2
3
4
Mexico City
8
8
9
8
8
6
6
6
5
6
7
7

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Lima: 1991-2020 normals, Lima-Callao / Aerop. Internacional Jorgechavez (10.9 km from centre). Mexico City: 1991-2020 normals, Mexico Central, D. F. (7.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Lima is at its best from January to April, when highs sit at 25-27°C and the sea reaches 20-22°C. Rain is never a factor: every month brings 1mm or less. From June to September it cools to 19-20°C under cloud.

Mexico City suits February to May, warm at 25-28°C with under 30mm of rain. Its summer is the wet half of the year, 127-186mm a month, while November and December stay dry but cooler.

Getting there

Flying fromLimaMexico City
Buenos AiresEZE, AEP
4 h 25 m
€256
LIM · 9 km
9 h 20 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
SantiagoSCL
3 h 35 m
€181-198
LIM · 9 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
4 h 40 m
€335-379
MEX · 7 km
BogotaBOG
2 h 55 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
4 h 25 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
8 h 35 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
3 h 35 m
€248-282
1 stop
MEX · 7 km
MiamiMIA, OPF
5 h 40 m
€403-426
1 stop
LIM · 9 km
3 h 5 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
CancunCUN
5 h 10 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
2 h 10 m
€123-162
MEX · 7 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
8 h 0 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
4 h 30 m
€367-420
1 stop
MEX · 7 km
MedellinMDE, EOH
3 h 5 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
4 h 10 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
MadridMAD
11 h 50 m
€895-903
LIM · 9 km
11 h 20 m
no fares
MEX · 7 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 2026-09 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

MeasureLimaMexico City
Official languageSpanish, Aymara, QuechuaSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec Maya
CurrencySol (PEN)Mexican Peso (MXN)
SocketsABC220 V, 60 HzAB127 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5UTC-6
Emergency number111 or 911911
Elevation154 m2,240 m
Main airportJorge Chávez International Airport (LIM)9 km from centre63 non-stop destinationsMexico City Benito Juárez International Airport (MEX)7 km from centre95 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days9 days

By the numbers

MeasureLimaMexico City
City population9,943,8009,209,944
People per km²3,7216,202
Museums within 10 km46108
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km26
Distinct cuisines in the centre3350
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months–

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Lima or Mexico City 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). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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. 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.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.