VacationSelector

Dubai or London?

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 and value for money with your weighting.

London
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on sights concentration and nightlife 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.

DubaiLondon
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 100 points.100
DubaiLondon
Score1000
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km5247
Coast distance0 km43 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. London leads by 22 points.22
DubaiLondon
Score6688
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0863,317
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2640
Museums & heritage. London leads by 34 points.34
DubaiLondon
Score3872
Museums within 10 km26148
Museums within 2 km of centre1849
Share of museums within 2 km %6933
Unesco sites within 50 km04
Nightlife. London leads by 42 points.42
DubaiLondon
Score5395
Drinking venues within 4 km6015,327
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre3062,443
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5146
Nightclubs within 4 km84312
Nature & day trips. London leads by 22 points.22
DubaiLondon
Score1840
Protected land share 50 km %416
Landscape blanket share 50 km %014
Land share of disc %5297
Park area within 2 km13 hectares84 hectares
Good for families. London leads by 26 points.26
DubaiLondon
Score4975
Tourist attractions within 2 km3785
Park area within 2 km13 hectares84 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km43
Sights concentration. London leads by 52 points.52
DubaiLondon
Score3789
Notable places within 2 km33649
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dubai leads by 15 points.15
DubaiLondon
Score6954
Price level global63.484.9
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Dubai leads by 3 points.3
DubaiLondon
Score6663
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C8.2 °C to 23.8 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm38 mm to 67 mm
Dry months121
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
London
8
9
12
15
18
22
24
23
20
16
11
9
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
London
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
London
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Dubai
No sunshine record
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
4
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). London: 1991-2020 normals, London Heathrow Airport (22.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiLondon
RiyadhRUH
1 h 40 m
€106-123
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
6 h 30 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
7 h 10 m
€518-651
1 stop
LHR · 23 km
AmsterdamAMS
6 h 45 m
€334-439
DXB · 7 km
1 h 5 m
€146-170
LHR · 23 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
MalagaAGP
7 h 25 m
no fares
AUH · 114 km
2 h 35 m
€119-292
1 stop
LGW · 40 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 50 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
4 h 5 m
€144-189
LGW · 40 km
PalmaPMI
6 h 40 m
no fares
AUH · 114 km
2 h 10 m
€79-116
LGW · 40 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
3 h 10 m
€318-438
DXB · 7 km
4 h 55 m
no fares
LTN · 44 km
New DelhiDEL
3 h 15 m
€247-331
DXB · 7 km
8 h 35 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
Buenos AiresEZE, AEP
16 h 45 m
€1,139-1335
DXB · 7 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
LHR · 23 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

MeasureDubaiLondon
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 m4 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre220 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiLondon
City population3,944,7518,799,728
People per km²5,598
Museums within 10 km14215
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km04
Distinct cuisines in the centre52116
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 London 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 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.