VacationSelector

Dubai or Las Vegas?

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 value for money with your weighting.

Las Vegas
45
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.

The verdict

Choose Dubai if the trip is built around swimming: 52 beaches nearby and a sea warm enough to use in every month of the year, plus more attractions and park space near the centre for children.

Choose Las Vegas if you would rather drive out into open country, with half the surrounding land protected, and want a centre compact enough to cover on foot.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

DubaiLas Vegas
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 100 points.100
DubaiLas Vegas
Score1000
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km520
Coast distance0 km372 km
Water distance0 km—
Places to eat. Dubai leads by 4 points.4
DubaiLas Vegas
Score6662
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,086915
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2624
Museums & heritage. Dubai leads by 19 points.19
DubaiLas Vegas
Score3819
Museums within 10 km2624
Museums within 2 km of centre184
Share of museums within 2 km %6917
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Las Vegas leads by 5 points.5
DubaiLas Vegas
Score5358
Drinking venues within 4 km601793
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306485
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5161
Nightclubs within 4 km8490
Nature & day trips. Las Vegas leads by 45 points.45
DubaiLas Vegas
Score1863
Protected land share 50 km %450
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %52100
Park area within 2 km13 hectares7 hectares
Good for families. Dubai leads by 15 points.15
DubaiLas Vegas
Score4934
Tourist attractions within 2 km3719
Park area within 2 km13 hectares7 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km44
Sights concentration. Las Vegas leads by 14 points.14
DubaiLas Vegas
Score3751
Notable places within 2 km3375
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dubai leads by 26 points.26
DubaiLas Vegas
Score6943
Price level global63.4100
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. Las Vegas leads by 6 points.6
DubaiLas Vegas
Score6672
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C13.9 °C to 40.3 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm1 mm to 21 mm
Dry months1212
0255075100

Where they differ

Dubai has 52 beaches within reach and sea above 21°C in all 12 months, where Las Vegas has no coast at all. For families it also puts roughly twice as many tourist attractions and twice as much park space near the centre, and its museums sit tightly around the middle of town.

Las Vegas is the stronger base for days out of the city: half the land around it is protected, against a small fraction around Dubai. Its centre is denser as well, with about twice as many notable places within walking distance.

Where they are alike

Eating out lands in much the same place. Dubai has somewhat more restaurants close to the centre, but the range of kitchens is similar in both, so neither city will feel narrow after a week.

Nights out are comparable too: Las Vegas has somewhat more places to drink, Dubai about the same number of nightclubs, and in both a fair share sit near the centre. Both also run all 12 months at 40mm of rain or less.

Which traveller are you?

If the holiday is mostly swimming and time by the water, Dubai is the only one of the two that works: 52 beaches nearby and a sea that stays above 21°C in every month.

If you want to spend whole days out of the city, in landscape rather than streets, Las Vegas has the ground for it, with half the land around it protected, and a walkable centre to return to.

Families with children lean to Dubai, which has roughly twice as many tourist attractions and twice as much park space near the centre. Both cities have 4 theme parks within reach.

What the numbers don't tell you

No daily budget figure exists for either city in this data, so the two cannot be compared on cost in any direction. Whatever the value ranking rests on, it is not a price you would pay, and nothing here tells you which trip works out dearer.

No weather station near either city reports sunshine hours, so that side of the weather comparison is unmeasured rather than poor: the monthly picture rests on temperature, rainfall and, for Dubai, sea temperature. And a strong beach showing is a year-round count. It says nothing about August, when Dubai's highs reach 42°C and the sea itself is 33°C.

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
Las Vegas
15
17
22
26
32
38
40
39
35
27
20
14
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Las Vegas
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Las Vegas
14
21
11
5
2
1
9
8
8
8
8
11
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Las Vegas
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10

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). Las Vegas: 1991-2020 normals, McCarran International Airport (8.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Dubai is at its best from November to March, when daytime highs run 25-31°C and the sea holds 23-28°C, warm enough to swim without hesitation. Rain barely registers, the wettest of those months bringing 21mm.

Las Vegas peaks in April and October, both around 26-27°C by day with only 5-8mm of rain, good conditions for walking and for heading out of town. Midsummer suits neither: Las Vegas climbs to 39-40°C and Dubai to 42°C.

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiLas Vegas
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
16 h 25 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 5 m
€76-164
LAS · 4 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
4 h 55 m
€242-269
LAS · 4 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
10 h 35 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
14 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
3 h 30 m
€171-225
LAS · 4 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
14 h 0 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
4 h 35 m
€230-263
1 stop
LAS · 4 km
San FranciscoSFO
16 h 0 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 25 m
€91-219
LAS · 4 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
15 h 50 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 40 m
€154-209
LAS · 4 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
14 h 40 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 20 m
€132-243
1 stop
LAS · 4 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
17 h 30 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
3 h 30 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
SeoulICN, GMP
8 h 35 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
12 h 0 m
no fares
LAS · 4 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

MeasureDubaiLas Vegas
Official languageArabic–
CurrencyUAE Dirham (AED)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCG220 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+4UTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation0 m610 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsHarry Reid International Airport (LAS)4 km from centre159 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year–11 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiLas Vegas
City population3,944,751641,903
People per km²–1,843
Museums within 10 km1421
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre5249
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 Dubai or Las Vegas 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. 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.