VacationSelector

Dubai or Glasgow?

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 year-round weather with your weighting.

Glasgow
48
match

Wins on nature & day trips and sights concentration 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.

DubaiGlasgow
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 64 points.64
DubaiGlasgow
Score10036
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km523
Coast distance0 km3 km
Water distance0 km3 km
Places to eat. Dubai leads by 3 points.3
DubaiGlasgow
Score6663
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,086740
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2629
Museums & heritage. Glasgow leads by 7 points.7
DubaiGlasgow
Score3845
Museums within 10 km2632
Museums within 2 km of centre1813
Share of museums within 2 km %6941
Unesco sites within 50 km02
Nightlife. Glasgow leads by 10 points.10
DubaiGlasgow
Score5363
Drinking venues within 4 km6011,078
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306654
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5161
Nightclubs within 4 km8473
Nature & day trips. Glasgow leads by 20 points.20
DubaiGlasgow
Score1838
Protected land share 50 km %416
Landscape blanket share 50 km %012
Land share of disc %5291
Park area within 2 km13 hectares56 hectares
Good for families. Dubai leads by 8 points.8
DubaiGlasgow
Score4941
Tourist attractions within 2 km3713
Park area within 2 km13 hectares56 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Glasgow leads by 16 points.16
DubaiGlasgow
Score3753
Notable places within 2 km3380
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dubai leads by 15 points.15
DubaiGlasgow
Score6954
Price level global63.484.9
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Dubai leads by 23 points.23
DubaiGlasgow
Score6643
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C6.6 °C to 18.9 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm102 mm to 207 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
Glasgow
7
7
9
12
15
18
19
19
16
13
9
7
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Glasgow
8
7
7
8
10
13
15
15
14
12
11
9
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Glasgow
207
170
147
102
103
111
129
145
132
185
190
205
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Glasgow
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Dubai
No sunshine record
Glasgow
1
2
3
4
5
4
4
4
3
2
2
1

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). Glasgow: 1991-2020 normals, Glasgow Airport (11.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiGlasgow
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
1 h 20 m
€38-45
GLA · 11 km
MalagaAGP
7 h 25 m
no fares
AUH · 114 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
PalmaPMI
6 h 40 m
no fares
AUH · 114 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
PraguePRG
5 h 55 m
€275-303
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
4 h 0 m
€201-242
1 stop
EDI · 56 km
AmsterdamAMS
6 h 45 m
€334-439
DXB · 7 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 50 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
4 h 40 m
€171-239
1 stop
GLA · 11 km
MaltaMLA
5 h 25 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
3 h 45 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
5 h 35 m
€244-282
DXB · 7 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
6 h 45 m
no fares
GLA · 11 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

MeasureDubaiGlasgow
Official languageArabicEnglish
CurrencyUAE Dirham (AED)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsCG220 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+4UTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 999
Elevation0 m21 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsGlasgow Airport (GLA)11 km from centre95 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiGlasgow
City population3,944,751626,410
People per km²190
Museums within 10 km1429
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km02
Distinct cuisines in the centre5254
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 Glasgow 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.