VacationSelector

Mexico City or Washington DC?

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 value for money and year-round weather with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on sights concentration and beaches & swimming 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 CityWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Washington DC leads by 18 points.18
Mexico CityWashington DC
Score018
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km41
Coast distance247 km34 km
Water distance34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 11 points.11
Mexico CityWashington DC
Score6677
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,1791,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1536
Museums & heritage. Mexico City leads by 24 points.24
Mexico CityWashington DC
Score7955
Museums within 10 km13883
Museums within 2 km of centre6555
Share of museums within 2 km %4766
Unesco sites within 50 km60
Nightlife. Mexico City leads by 17 points.17
Mexico CityWashington DC
Score7861
Drinking venues within 4 km2,1561,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre926593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4358
Nightclubs within 4 km19854
Nature & day trips. Mexico City leads by 21 points.21
Mexico CityWashington DC
Score6342
Protected land share 50 km %3010
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %10094
Park area within 2 km32 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Mexico City leads by 12 points.12
Mexico CityWashington DC
Score5038
Tourist attractions within 2 km237
Park area within 2 km32 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 22 points.22
Mexico CityWashington DC
Score5476
Notable places within 2 km88305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Mexico City leads by 33 points.33
Mexico CityWashington DC
Score7643
Price level global54.2100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Mexico City leads by 28 points.28
Mexico CityWashington DC
Score9062
Monthly daytime high22.2 °C to 27.9 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 186 mm65 mm to 108 mm
Dry months60
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
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Mexico City
No coastline within reach
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Mexico City
7
3
19
27
53
127
176
186
144
79
10
9
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Mexico City
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
Washington DC
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
Washington DC
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). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMexico CityWashington DC
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
4 h 40 m
€335-379
MEX · 7 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
3 h 35 m
€248-282
1 stop
MEX · 7 km
5 h 0 m
€226-372
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
3 h 50 m
€259-271
MEX · 7 km
1 h 50 m
€199-215
DCA · 5 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 25 m
€203-306
1 stop
MEX · 7 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
4 h 30 m
€367-420
1 stop
MEX · 7 km
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
HoustonIAH, HOU
2 h 5 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
DCA · 5 km
CancunCUN
2 h 10 m
€123-162
MEX · 7 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 10 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
SeoulICN, GMP
14 h 55 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
13 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
17 h 30 m
€1,075-1211
2 stops
MEX · 7 km
14 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 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 CityWashington DC
Official languageSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec Maya
CurrencyMexican Peso (MXN)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB127 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation2,240 m72 m
Main airportMexico City Benito Juárez International Airport (MEX)7 km from centre95 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureMexico CityWashington DC
City population9,209,944689,545
People per km²6,2023,896
Museums within 10 km10899
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km60
Distinct cuisines in the centre5082
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months

Where else could you go?

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