VacationSelector

Dubai or Los Angeles?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Dubai
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Los Angeles
53
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.

DubaiLos Angeles
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 71 points.71
DubaiLos Angeles
Score10029
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km520
Coast distance0 km
Water distance0 km
Beaches 25 km11
Warmest sea temp20.2 °C
Scoring variantbeachScoreWideRing
Declared2026-08-25
Registerseed/editorial-overrides.json
Places to eat. Dubai and Los Angeles are level on 66.
DubaiLos Angeles
Score6666
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0861,337
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2622
Museums & heritage. Los Angeles leads by 11 points.11
DubaiLos Angeles
Score3849
Museums within 10 km2669
Museums within 2 km of centre1823
Share of museums within 2 km %6933
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Los Angeles leads by 1 points.1
DubaiLos Angeles
Score5354
Drinking venues within 4 km601660
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306432
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5165
Nightclubs within 4 km8464
Nature & day trips. Los Angeles leads by 44 points.44
DubaiLos Angeles
Score1862
Protected land share 50 km %426
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5280
Park area within 2 km13 hectares20 hectares
Good for families. Dubai leads by 16 points.16
DubaiLos Angeles
Score4933
Tourist attractions within 2 km3711
Park area within 2 km13 hectares20 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km42
Sights concentration. Los Angeles leads by 17 points.17
DubaiLos Angeles
Score3754
Notable places within 2 km3388
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dubai leads by 26 points.26
DubaiLos Angeles
Score6943
Price level global63.4100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Los Angeles leads by 21 points.21
DubaiLos Angeles
Score6687
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C18.6 °C to 24.7 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm0 mm to 76 mm
Dry months128
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
Los Angeles
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
24
22
19
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Los Angeles
15
15
15
15
17
18
20
20
20
19
17
16
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Los Angeles
73
76
44
16
7
2
1
0
3
13
21
57
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Los Angeles
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
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). Los Angeles: 1991-2020 normals, Los Angeles Airport (18.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiLos Angeles
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
5 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
San FranciscoSFO
16 h 0 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
TokyoHND, NRT
10 h 0 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
11 h 0 m
€785-892
1 stop
LAX · 19 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
13 h 35 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
14 h 40 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
3 h 10 m
€318-438
DXB · 7 km
15 h 0 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
14 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
4 h 0 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
5 h 35 m
€244-282
DXB · 7 km
12 h 0 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
17 h 30 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
3 h 35 m
€261-303
1 stop
LAX · 19 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 2026-09 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

MeasureDubaiLos Angeles
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 m106 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsLos Angeles International Airport (LAX)19 km from centre180 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiLos Angeles
City population3,944,7513,898,747
People per km²2,994
Museums within 10 km1438
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre5246
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 Los Angeles 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.