VacationSelector

Mexico City or San Diego?

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

Your match

Mexico City
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on museums & heritage and value for money with your weighting.

San Diego
58
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and good for 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

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

Mexico CitySan Diego
Beaches & swimming. San Diego leads by 63 points.63
Mexico CitySan Diego
Score063
Swim season months01
Beaches 10 km442
Coast distance247 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Mexico City leads by 3 points.3
Mexico CitySan Diego
Score6663
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,179823
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1527
Museums & heritage. Mexico City leads by 35 points.35
Mexico CitySan Diego
Score7944
Museums within 10 km13859
Museums within 2 km of centre6530
Share of museums within 2 km %4751
Unesco sites within 50 km60
Nightlife. Mexico City leads by 28 points.28
Mexico CitySan Diego
Score7850
Drinking venues within 4 km2,156615
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre926408
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4366
Nightclubs within 4 km19831
Nature & day trips. Mexico City leads by 8 points.8
Mexico CitySan Diego
Score6355
Protected land share 50 km %306
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10052
Park area within 2 km32 hectares308 hectares
Good for families. San Diego leads by 25 points.25
Mexico CitySan Diego
Score5075
Tourist attractions within 2 km2340
Park area within 2 km32 hectares308 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km43
Sights concentration. Mexico City leads by 14 points.14
Mexico CitySan Diego
Score5440
Notable places within 2 km8840
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Mexico City leads by 33 points.33
Mexico CitySan Diego
Score7643
Price level global54.2100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Mexico City leads by 2 points.2
Mexico CitySan Diego
Score9088
Monthly daytime high22.2 °C to 27.9 °C18.6 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 186 mm0 mm to 56 mm
Dry months69
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
Mexico City
22
25
26
28
27
26
25
25
24
23
23
22
San Diego
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
23
21
19
Sea temperature, °C
Mexico City
No coastline within reach
San Diego
15
15
16
16
17
19
20
21
21
19
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Mexico City
7
3
19
27
53
127
176
186
144
79
10
9
San Diego
50
56
37
17
7
1
2
0
3
13
20
42
Daylight, hours per day
Mexico City
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
San Diego
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Mexico City
8
8
9
8
8
6
6
6
5
6
7
7
San Diego
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Mexico City: 1991-2020 normals, Mexico Central, D. F. (7.9 km from centre). San Diego: 1991-2020 normals, San Diego International Airport (2.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMexico CitySan Diego
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
4 h 40 m
€335-379
MEX · 7 km
5 h 15 m
€299-455
1 stop
SAN · 3 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
3 h 50 m
€259-271
MEX · 7 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
Las VegasLAS
3 h 30 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
DenverDEN, APA
3 h 25 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
2 h 15 m
€64-224
SAN · 3 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 25 m
€203-306
1 stop
MEX · 7 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
San Jose Del CaboSJD
2 h 5 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
Puerto VallartaPVR
1 h 25 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
3 h 35 m
€248-282
1 stop
MEX · 7 km
50 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
TokyoHND, NRT
14 h 0 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
MunichMUC
12 h 15 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
12 h 5 m
no fares
SAN · 3 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

MeasureMexico CitySan Diego
Official languageSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec Maya
CurrencyMexican Peso (MXN)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB127 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6UTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation2,240 m129 m
Main airportMexico City Benito Juárez International Airport (MEX)7 km from centre95 non-stop destinationsSan Diego International Airport (SAN)3 km from centre87 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureMexico CitySan Diego
City population9,209,9441,386,932
People per km²6,2021,438
Museums within 10 km10826
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km60
Distinct cuisines in the centre5044
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Mexico City or San Diego 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. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.