VacationSelector

Antwerp or Dubai?

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

Your match

Antwerp
51
match

Wins on museums & heritage and sights concentration with your weighting.

Dubai
✓ Best match
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.

AntwerpDubai
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 100 points.100
AntwerpDubai
Score0100
Swim season months012
Beaches 10 km152
Coast distance21 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Antwerp leads by 9 points.9
AntwerpDubai
Score7566
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1641,086
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4226
Museums & heritage. Antwerp leads by 31 points.31
AntwerpDubai
Score6938
Museums within 10 km4126
Museums within 2 km of centre2718
Share of museums within 2 km %6669
Unesco sites within 50 km90
Nightlife. Antwerp leads by 6 points.6
AntwerpDubai
Score5953
Drinking venues within 4 km866601
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre657306
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7651
Nightclubs within 4 km7384
Nature & day trips. Antwerp leads by 16 points.16
AntwerpDubai
Score3418
Protected land share 50 km %74
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8052
Park area within 2 km53 hectares13 hectares
Good for families. Dubai leads by 3 points.3
AntwerpDubai
Score4649
Tourist attractions within 2 km1437
Park area within 2 km53 hectares13 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km34
Sights concentration. Antwerp leads by 17 points.17
AntwerpDubai
Score5437
Notable places within 2 km8833
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dubai leads by 9 points.9
AntwerpDubai
Score6069
Price level global76.263.4
Daily budget€180
Year-round weather. Dubai leads by 8 points.8
AntwerpDubai
Score5866
Monthly daytime high6.5 °C to 23.2 °C24.5 °C to 42.1 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 90 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
Antwerp
7
8
11
15
19
21
23
23
20
15
10
7
Dubai
25
26
29
34
38
41
42
42
40
36
31
27
Sea temperature, °C
Antwerp
No coastline within reach
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Rainfall, mm
Antwerp
77
67
59
47
61
72
80
90
67
71
75
89
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Daylight, hours per day
Antwerp
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
Antwerp
2
2
4
6
6
7
7
6
5
4
2
1
Dubai
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Antwerp: 1991-2020 normals, Antwerpen / Deurne (5.2 km from centre). Dubai: 1991-2020 normals, Dubai International Airport (3.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAntwerpDubai
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 36 km
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 36 km
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 36 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 36 km
6 h 45 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 36 km
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 45 m
€93-156
BRU · 36 km
5 h 40 m
€283-323
DXB · 7 km
MunichMUC
1 h 20 m
no fares
BRU · 36 km
6 h 0 m
€306-356
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
RiyadhRUH
6 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 123 km
1 h 40 m
€106-123
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 36 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
Buenos AiresEZE, AEP
14 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 123 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

MeasureAntwerpDubai
Official languageFrench, German, DutchArabic
CurrencyEuro (EUR)UAE Dirham (AED)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCG220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+4
Emergency number112112
Elevation7 m0 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)36 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days

By the numbers

MeasureAntwerpDubai
City population529,2473,944,751
People per km²2,542
Museums within 10 km3814
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km90
Distinct cuisines in the centre8052
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Antwerp 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. 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. 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. 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.