VacationSelector

Dubai or Lisbon?

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

Your match

Dubai
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Lisbon
✓ Best match
68
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

DubaiLisbon
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 43 points.43
DubaiLisbon
Score10057
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km5224
Coast distance0 km2 km
Water distance0 km2 km
Places to eat. Lisbon leads by 14 points.14
DubaiLisbon
Score6680
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0862,496
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2631
Museums & heritage. Lisbon leads by 32 points.32
DubaiLisbon
Score3870
Museums within 10 km26124
Museums within 2 km of centre1854
Share of museums within 2 km %6944
Unesco sites within 50 km03
Nightlife. Lisbon leads by 12 points.12
DubaiLisbon
Score5365
Drinking venues within 4 km6011,225
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306956
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5178
Nightclubs within 4 km8465
Nature & day trips. Lisbon leads by 38 points.38
DubaiLisbon
Score1856
Protected land share 50 km %411
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5254
Park area within 2 km13 hectares77 hectares
Good for families. Lisbon leads by 20 points.20
DubaiLisbon
Score4969
Tourist attractions within 2 km3782
Park area within 2 km13 hectares77 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Lisbon leads by 29 points.29
DubaiLisbon
Score3766
Notable places within 2 km33169
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lisbon leads by 5 points.5
DubaiLisbon
Score6974
Price level global63.455.9
Daily budget€109
Year-round weather. Lisbon leads by 12 points.12
DubaiLisbon
Score6678
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C14.9 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm3 mm to 121 mm
Dry months124
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
Lisbon
15
16
19
20
23
26
28
28
26
23
18
15
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Lisbon
15
15
15
15
16
18
18
19
19
18
17
16
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Lisbon
104
73
72
67
53
13
3
7
36
108
121
102
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Lisbon
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Dubai
No sunshine record
Lisbon
5
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
5
5

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). Lisbon: 1991-2020 normals, Lisboa / Geof (1.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiLisbon
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
2 h 30 m
€112-185
LIS · 7 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
6 h 50 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 25 m
€118-145
LIS · 7 km
MadridMAD
7 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 15 m
€64-74
LIS · 7 km
AmsterdamAMS
6 h 45 m
€334-439
DXB · 7 km
2 h 50 m
€167-189
LIS · 7 km
BarcelonaBCN
6 h 45 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 50 m
€74-97
LIS · 7 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
4 h 25 m
€212-255
LIS · 7 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
7 h 0 m
€621-718
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
15 h 0 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
10 h 0 m
€744-1049
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
LuandaLAD, NBJ
7 h 40 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
7 h 30 m
€567-920
LIS · 7 km
SeoulICN, GMP
8 h 35 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
12 h 55 m
no fares
LIS · 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

MeasureDubaiLisbon
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 m100 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsLisbon Humberto Delgado Airport (LIS)7 km from centre153 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiLisbon
City population3,944,751545,796
People per km²5,453
Museums within 10 km1478
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km03
Distinct cuisines in the centre52106
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 Lisbon 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.