VacationSelector

Dubai or Malaga?

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.

Malaga
✓ Best match
59
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.

DubaiMalaga
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 34 points.34
DubaiMalaga
Score10066
Swim season months123
Beaches 10 km5221
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Malaga leads by 3 points.3
DubaiMalaga
Score6669
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0861,002
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2634
Museums & heritage. Malaga leads by 15 points.15
DubaiMalaga
Score3853
Museums within 10 km2640
Museums within 2 km of centre1835
Share of museums within 2 km %6988
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Malaga leads by 1 points.1
DubaiMalaga
Score5354
Drinking venues within 4 km601715
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306486
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5168
Nightclubs within 4 km8445
Nature & day trips. Malaga leads by 25 points.25
DubaiMalaga
Score1843
Protected land share 50 km %47
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5263
Park area within 2 km13 hectares85 hectares
Good for families. Malaga leads by 4 points.4
DubaiMalaga
Score4953
Tourist attractions within 2 km3733
Park area within 2 km13 hectares85 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km40
Sights concentration. Dubai and Malaga are level on 37.
DubaiMalaga
Score3737
Notable places within 2 km3333
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Malaga leads by 2 points.2
DubaiMalaga
Score6971
Price level global63.460.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Malaga leads by 16 points.16
DubaiMalaga
Score6682
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C17.2 °C to 31.5 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm0 mm to 88 mm
Dry months125
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
Malaga
17
18
20
22
25
29
31
32
28
24
20
18
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Malaga
15
15
15
16
18
20
22
23
22
20
17
16
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Malaga
62
55
66
41
23
4
0
3
25
60
78
88
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Malaga
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Dubai
No sunshine record
Malaga
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
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). Malaga: 1991-2020 normals, Malaga / Aeropuerto (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiMalaga
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
2 h 40 m
€67-129
AGP · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
6 h 45 m
€334-439
DXB · 7 km
2 h 55 m
€146-177
AGP · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
6 h 45 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 35 m
€73-109
AGP · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
4 h 5 m
€185-196
AGP · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
6 h 50 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 25 m
€92
AGP · 9 km
DublinDUB
7 h 40 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 50 m
€122-139
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
6 h 45 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 45 m
€110-142
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
RiyadhRUH
1 h 40 m
€106-123
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
6 h 35 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
ViennaVIE
5 h 40 m
€283-323
DXB · 7 km
3 h 10 m
€140-155
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
AGP · 9 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

MeasureDubaiMalaga
Official languageArabicSpanish
CurrencyUAE Dirham (AED)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCG220 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+4UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m18 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsMálaga-Costa del Sol Airport (AGP)9 km from centre165 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiMalaga
City population3,944,751599,063
People per km²1,517
Museums within 10 km1432
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre5265
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Dubai or Malaga 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.