VacationSelector

Mexico City or San Jose?

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 nightlife with your weighting.

San Jose
39
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips 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 Jose
Beaches & swimming. San Jose leads by 8 points.8
Mexico CitySan Jose
Score08
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km41
Coast distance247 km14 km
Water distance14 km
Places to eat. Mexico City leads by 25 points.25
Mexico CitySan Jose
Score6641
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,179313
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1516
Museums & heritage. Mexico City leads by 53 points.53
Mexico CitySan Jose
Score7926
Museums within 10 km13820
Museums within 2 km of centre659
Share of museums within 2 km %4745
Unesco sites within 50 km60
Nightlife. Mexico City leads by 47 points.47
Mexico CitySan Jose
Score7831
Drinking venues within 4 km2,156231
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre92688
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4338
Nightclubs within 4 km19816
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 7 points.7
Mexico CitySan Jose
Score6370
Protected land share 50 km %3026
Landscape blanket share 50 km %02
Land share of disc %10091
Park area within 2 km32 hectares101 hectares
Good for families. Mexico City leads by 17 points.17
Mexico CitySan Jose
Score5033
Tourist attractions within 2 km232
Park area within 2 km32 hectares101 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km42
Sights concentration. Mexico City leads by 40 points.40
Mexico CitySan Jose
Score5414
Notable places within 2 km889
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Mexico City leads by 33 points.33
Mexico CitySan Jose
Score7643
Price level global54.2100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Mexico City leads by 5 points.5
Mexico CitySan Jose
Score9085
Monthly daytime high22.2 °C to 27.9 °C15.4 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 186 mm0 mm to 78 mm
Dry months68
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 Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Mexico City
No coastline within reach
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Rainfall, mm
Mexico City
7
3
19
27
53
127
176
186
144
79
10
9
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Daylight, hours per day
Mexico City
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
San Jose
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Mexico City
8
8
9
8
8
6
6
6
5
6
7
7
San Jose
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 Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMexico CitySan Jose
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
4 h 40 m
€335-379
MEX · 7 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
TokyoHND, NRT
14 h 0 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 25 m
€203-306
1 stop
MEX · 7 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
5 h 20 m
€321-367
1 stop
MEX · 7 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
3 h 35 m
€248-282
1 stop
MEX · 7 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
SJC · 8 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
4 h 30 m
€367-420
1 stop
MEX · 7 km
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
GuadalajaraGDL
1 h 10 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
3 h 45 m
no fares
SJC · 8 km
SeoulICN, GMP
14 h 55 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 57 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 55 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
17 h 30 m
€1,075-1211
2 stops
MEX · 7 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 57 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 Jose
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 m25 m
Main airportMexico City Benito Juárez International Airport (MEX)7 km from centre95 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureMexico CitySan Jose
City population9,209,9441,013,240
People per km²6,2022,167
Museums within 10 km10819
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km60
Distinct cuisines in the centre5030
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Mexico City or San Jose 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.