VacationSelector

Dubai or Faro?

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

Your match

Dubai
✓ Best match
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nightlife with your weighting.

Faro
47
match

Wins on nature & day trips and year-round weather 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.

DubaiFaro
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 39 points.39
DubaiFaro
Score10061
Swim season months123
Beaches 10 km5213
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Dubai leads by 22 points.22
DubaiFaro
Score6644
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,086255
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2622
Museums & heritage. Dubai leads by 16 points.16
DubaiFaro
Score3822
Museums within 10 km269
Museums within 2 km of centre188
Share of museums within 2 km %6989
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Dubai leads by 32 points.32
DubaiFaro
Score5321
Drinking venues within 4 km601143
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306123
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5186
Nightclubs within 4 km848
Nature & day trips. Faro leads by 39 points.39
DubaiFaro
Score1857
Protected land share 50 km %411
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5242
Park area within 2 km13 hectares34 hectares
Good for families. Dubai leads by 13 points.13
DubaiFaro
Score4936
Tourist attractions within 2 km3710
Park area within 2 km13 hectares34 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km42
Sights concentration. Dubai leads by 15 points.15
DubaiFaro
Score3722
Notable places within 2 km3314
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Faro leads by 5 points.5
DubaiFaro
Score6974
Price level global63.455.9
Daily budget€109
Year-round weather. Faro leads by 17 points.17
DubaiFaro
Score6683
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C16.3 °C to 29 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm1 mm to 102 mm
Dry months126
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
Faro
16
17
19
21
24
27
29
29
26
23
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Faro
17
16
16
17
18
20
21
22
21
21
19
17
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Faro
55
39
44
40
23
6
1
5
28
57
75
102
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Faro
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Dubai
No sunshine record
Faro
6
6
8
9
10
12
12
11
9
8
6
6

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). Faro: 1991-2020 normals, Faro / Aeroporto (2.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiFaro
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
DublinDUB
7 h 40 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 50 m
€75-114
FAO · 3 km
ManchesterMAN
7 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
AmsterdamAMS
6 h 45 m
€334-439
DXB · 7 km
3 h 0 m
€144-189
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
6 h 50 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 30 m
€126-204
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
6 h 45 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
MunichMUC
6 h 0 m
€306-356
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
3 h 5 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
LisbonLIS
7 h 55 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
55 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
BirminghamBHX
7 h 15 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
7 h 15 m
no fares
FAO · 3 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

MeasureDubaiFaro
Official languageArabicPortuguese
CurrencyUAE Dirham (AED)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCG220 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+4UTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m10 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsFaro - Gago Coutinho International Airport (FAO)3 km from centre91 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiFaro
City population3,944,75164,560
People per km²319
Museums within 10 km142
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre5234
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Dubai or Faro 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.