VacationSelector

Dubai or Dublin?

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

Your match

Too close to call, level with your weighting

Dubai
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Dublin
55
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage 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.

DubaiDublin
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 51 points.51
DubaiDublin
Score10049
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km5211
Coast distance0 km3 km
Water distance0 km3 km
Places to eat. Dublin leads by 4 points.4
DubaiDublin
Score6670
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,086920
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2637
Museums & heritage. Dublin leads by 17 points.17
DubaiDublin
Score3855
Museums within 10 km2647
Museums within 2 km of centre1837
Share of museums within 2 km %6979
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Dublin leads by 11 points.11
DubaiDublin
Score5364
Drinking venues within 4 km6011,239
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306934
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5175
Nightclubs within 4 km8440
Nature & day trips. Dublin leads by 8 points.8
DubaiDublin
Score1826
Protected land share 50 km %43
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5262
Park area within 2 km13 hectares43 hectares
Good for families. Dublin leads by 5 points.5
DubaiDublin
Score4954
Tourist attractions within 2 km3741
Park area within 2 km13 hectares43 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Dublin leads by 25 points.25
DubaiDublin
Score3762
Notable places within 2 km33141
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dubai leads by 12 points.12
DubaiDublin
Score6957
Price level global63.480.2
Daily budget€187
Year-round weather. Dubai leads by 12 points.12
DubaiDublin
Score6654
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C8.2 °C to 19.5 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm52 mm to 83 mm
Dry months120
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
Dubai
25
26
29
34
38
41
42
42
40
36
31
27
Dublin
8
9
10
12
15
18
20
19
17
14
10
8
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Dublin
9
8
8
9
11
13
15
15
15
13
12
11
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Dublin
62
52
52
55
58
65
62
74
61
78
83
72
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Dublin
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Dubai
No sunshine record
Dublin
2
3
4
5
6
6
5
5
4
3
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Dubai: 1991-2020 normals, Dubai International Airport (3.3 km from centre). Dublin: 1991-2020 normals, Dublin Airport (9.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiDublin
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
1 h 10 m
€33-43
DUB · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
6 h 45 m
€334-439
DXB · 7 km
1 h 35 m
€80-139
DUB · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
6 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
6 h 50 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 35 m
€43-47
DUB · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
4 h 5 m
€183-239
DUB · 9 km
ManchesterMAN
7 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
MunichMUC
6 h 0 m
€306-356
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
2 h 15 m
€200-272
1 stop
DUB · 9 km
MalagaAGP
7 h 25 m
no fares
AUH · 114 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
ZurichZRH
6 h 15 m
€237-344
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
2 h 5 m
€188-230
1 stop
DUB · 9 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
7 h 35 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
DUB · 9 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

MeasureDubaiDublin
Official languageArabicEnglish, Irish
CurrencyUAE Dirham (AED)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCG220 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+4UTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m20 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsDublin Airport (DUB)9 km from centre201 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiDublin
City population3,944,751592,713
People per km²5,154
Museums within 10 km1440
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre5274
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Dubai or Dublin 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). 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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.