VacationSelector
Santo Domingo church behind agaves, Oaxaca
OaxacaSanto Domingo church behind agaves
A painted funicular on the hillside, Valparaiso
ValparaisoA painted funicular on the hillside

Photos: Oaxaca by Öskr Rck, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped; Valparaiso by Maclemo, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped.

Oaxaca or Valparaiso?

Our verdict in twelve categories, each scored against the same fixed benchmark cities, and the climate month by month, so you can choose for your trip.

Choose Oaxaca for

  • food and drink
  • shopping
  • wellness

What lies behind each score is written up on Oaxaca’s own page.

Choose Valparaiso for

  • beaches
  • nightlife

What lies behind each score is written up on Valparaiso’s own page.

Scoreboard

Twelve categories on one fixed scale from 0 to 100. The shaded stretch is the gap between the two.

Beaches & swimming. Oaxaca 5, Valparaiso 36: Valparaiso leads by 31 points.
Food & drink. Oaxaca 84, Valparaiso 50: Oaxaca leads by 34 points.
Culture & sights. Oaxaca 74, Valparaiso 62: Oaxaca leads by 12 points.
Nightlife. Oaxaca 40, Valparaiso 56: Valparaiso leads by 16 points.
Nature & outdoors. Oaxaca 62, Valparaiso 60: Oaxaca leads by 2 points.
Day trips. Oaxaca 65, Valparaiso 63: Oaxaca leads by 2 points.
Good for families. Oaxaca 40, Valparaiso 33: Oaxaca leads by 7 points.
Getting around. Oaxaca 55, Valparaiso 44: Oaxaca leads by 11 points.
Shopping & style. Oaxaca 62, Valparaiso 30: Oaxaca leads by 32 points.
Affordability. Oaxaca 77, Valparaiso 60: Oaxaca leads by 17 points.
Live music & performing arts. Oaxaca and Valparaiso are level on 38.
Wellness & relaxation. Oaxaca 50, Valparaiso 18: Oaxaca leads by 32 points.
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What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Oaxaca and Valparaiso.

Your match

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders, and both match scores follow your weighting.

Oaxaca
Best match
54match

Wins on food and drink and shopping with your weighting.

Valparaiso
46match

Wins on beaches and nightlife with your weighting.

What matters to you?

When should you go?

Pick your month. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.

Oaxaca in July

28 °Cdaytime high
15 °Cnight-time low
80 mmrain in the month
7 hsunshine a day
No seasea
13 hdaylight a day

Valparaiso in July

15 °Cdaytime high
7 °Cnight-time low
71 mmrain in the month
No recordsunshine a day
13 °Csea
10 hdaylight a day

Daytime high, °C

0°10°20°30°40°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

050100150JFMAMJJASOND
OaxacaValparaiso

Where the figures come from

Valparaiso has no rain gauge within 25 km of the centre, so its rainfall comes from a gridded climate dataset read at the city rather than from a gauge further away.

Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Oaxaca: 1961-1990 normals, Oaxaca, Oax. (1.1 km from centre). Valparaiso: 2010-2025 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Viña Del Mar / Montemar (17 km from centre).

Before you go

MeasureOaxacaValparaiso
Official languageSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec MayaSpanish
CurrencyMexican Peso (MXN)Chilean Peso (CLP)
SocketsAB127 V, 60 HzCL220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6UTC-4, UTC-3 in summer
Emergency number911Police 133/134, ambulance 131, fire 132
Elevation1,555 m21 m
Main airportXoxocotlán International Airport (OAX)7 km from centre14 non-stop destinationsComodoro Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport (SCL)87 km from centre67 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureOaxacaValparaiso
City population258,913296,655
People per km²3,0286,180
Museums within 10 km1017
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Swim season, months above 21 °C-None

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Oaxaca or Valparaiso somewhere new.

Browse every destination

Sources

Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Rainfall where no rain gauge is within 25 km is from the TerraClimate 1991-2020 climatology (Abatzoglou et al. 2018, Scientific Data), read at the city. 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.

Category scores are our editorial verdict under rubric v3, each placed against the same fixed benchmark cities; the climate figures are measured. How the scores are set. Snapshot generated 2026-11-01. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.