VacationSelector

Cardiff or Dubai?

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

Your match

Cardiff
48
match

Wins on nature & day trips and sights concentration with your weighting.

Dubai
✓ Best match
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and good for families 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.

CardiffDubai
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 54 points.54
CardiffDubai
Score46100
Swim season months012
Beaches 10 km852
Coast distance2 km0 km
Water distance2 km0 km
Places to eat. Dubai leads by 6 points.6
CardiffDubai
Score6066
Restaurants within 2 km of centre5411,086
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3226
Museums & heritage. Cardiff leads by 1 points.1
CardiffDubai
Score3938
Museums within 10 km6126
Museums within 2 km of centre618
Share of museums within 2 km %1069
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Dubai leads by 5 points.5
CardiffDubai
Score4853
Drinking venues within 4 km536601
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre395306
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7451
Nightclubs within 4 km3584
Nature & day trips. Cardiff leads by 32 points.32
CardiffDubai
Score5018
Protected land share 50 km %184
Landscape blanket share 50 km %150
Land share of disc %6852
Park area within 2 km88 hectares13 hectares
Good for families. Dubai leads by 17 points.17
CardiffDubai
Score3249
Tourist attractions within 2 km437
Park area within 2 km88 hectares13 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km24
Sights concentration. Cardiff leads by 8 points.8
CardiffDubai
Score4537
Notable places within 2 km5133
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dubai leads by 15 points.15
CardiffDubai
Score5469
Price level global84.963.4
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Dubai leads by 12 points.12
CardiffDubai
Score5466
Monthly daytime high7.7 °C to 20.2 °C24.5 °C to 42.1 °C
Monthly rainfall49 mm to 87 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
Cardiff
8
8
10
13
16
18
20
20
18
14
11
9
Dubai
25
26
29
34
38
41
42
42
40
36
31
27
Sea temperature, °C
Cardiff
8
7
8
9
12
15
17
18
17
15
12
9
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Rainfall, mm
Cardiff
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Daylight, hours per day
Cardiff
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
Cardiff
2
3
4
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. Cardiff: 1991-2020 normals, Cardiff-Wales Airport (14.9 km from centre). Dubai: 1991-2020 normals, Dubai International Airport (3.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCardiffDubai
PraguePRG
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
5 h 55 m
€275-303
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
New DelhiDEL
8 h 40 m
no fares
BHX · 146 km
3 h 15 m
€247-331
DXB · 7 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
6 h 40 m
no fares
AUH · 114 km
AntalyaAYT
4 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
ZurichZRH
1 h 45 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
6 h 15 m
€237-344
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 45 m
no fares
BHX · 146 km
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
KerkyraCFU
3 h 15 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
5 h 0 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
GenevaGVA
1 h 40 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
6 h 25 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
LarnacaLCA
4 h 40 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 10 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
13 h 40 m
no fares
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

MeasureCardiffDubai
Official languageEnglishArabic
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)UAE Dirham (AED)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCG220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+4
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation41 m0 m
Main airportCardiff International Airport (CWL)15 km from centre8 non-stop destinationsDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days

By the numbers

MeasureCardiffDubai
City population383,5363,944,751
People per km²2,734
Museums within 10 km914
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre5552
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 Cardiff 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). 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. 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.