VacationSelector

Amsterdam or Dubai?

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

Your match

Amsterdam
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on museums & heritage and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Dubai
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money 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.

AmsterdamDubai
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 60 points.60
AmsterdamDubai
Score40100
Swim season months012
Beaches 10 km3352
Coast distance24 km0 km
Water distance24 km0 km
Places to eat. Amsterdam leads by 17 points.17
AmsterdamDubai
Score8366
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,9571,086
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4426
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 42 points.42
AmsterdamDubai
Score8038
Museums within 10 km9826
Museums within 2 km of centre6918
Share of museums within 2 km %7069
Unesco sites within 50 km50
Nightlife. Amsterdam leads by 17 points.17
AmsterdamDubai
Score7053
Drinking venues within 4 km1,543601
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,078306
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7051
Nightclubs within 4 km11484
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 42 points.42
AmsterdamDubai
Score6018
Protected land share 50 km %214
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8252
Park area within 2 km49 hectares13 hectares
Good for families. Amsterdam leads by 19 points.19
AmsterdamDubai
Score6849
Tourist attractions within 2 km7437
Park area within 2 km49 hectares13 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km34
Sights concentration. Amsterdam leads by 31 points.31
AmsterdamDubai
Score6837
Notable places within 2 km19633
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dubai leads by 11 points.11
AmsterdamDubai
Score5869
Price level global79.263.4
Daily budget€181
Year-round weather. Dubai leads by 9 points.9
AmsterdamDubai
Score5766
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C24.5 °C to 42.1 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm0 mm to 21 mm
Dry months012
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
Amsterdam
6
7
11
15
18
21
23
23
20
15
10
7
Dubai
25
26
29
34
38
41
42
42
40
36
31
27
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Sunshine, hours per day
Amsterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Dubai
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Amsterdam: 1991-2020 normals, De Bilt (35.3 km from centre). Dubai: 1991-2020 normals, Dubai International Airport (3.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamDubai
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 15 m
€166-175
AMS · 12 km
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 10 m
€130-171
AMS · 12 km
6 h 45 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
RiyadhRUH
6 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
1 h 40 m
€106-123
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
PraguePRG
1 h 30 m
€139-174
AMS · 12 km
5 h 55 m
€275-303
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
2 h 0 m
€179-192
AMS · 12 km
5 h 35 m
€244-282
DXB · 7 km
ZurichZRH
1 h 25 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
6 h 15 m
€237-344
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
8 h 15 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
Buenos AiresEZE, AEP
14 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
16 h 45 m
€1,139-1335
DXB · 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 2026-08 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

MeasureAmsterdamDubai
Official languageDutchArabic
CurrencyEuro (EUR)UAE Dirham (AED)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCG220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+4
Emergency number112 or 911112
Elevation-2 m0 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamDubai
City population921,4683,944,751
People per km²4,208
Museums within 10 km10114
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km50
Distinct cuisines in the centre9852
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone12 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Amsterdam or Dubai 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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. 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.