VacationSelector

Dubai or Manila?

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 places to eat with your weighting.

Manila
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on value for money 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.

Scoreboard

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

DubaiManila
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 24 points.24
DubaiManila
Score10076
Swim season months1212
Beaches 10 km523
Coast distance0 km2 km
Water distance0 km2 km
Places to eat. Dubai leads by 8 points.8
DubaiManila
Score6658
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0861,015
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2617
Museums & heritage. Manila leads by 12 points.12
DubaiManila
Score3850
Museums within 10 km2677
Museums within 2 km of centre1823
Share of museums within 2 km %6930
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Manila leads by 8 points.8
DubaiManila
Score5361
Drinking venues within 4 km6011,082
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306374
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5135
Nightclubs within 4 km8436
Nature & day trips. Manila leads by 11 points.11
DubaiManila
Score1829
Protected land share 50 km %44
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5278
Park area within 2 km13 hectares54 hectares
Good for families. Manila leads by 11 points.11
DubaiManila
Score4960
Tourist attractions within 2 km3737
Park area within 2 km13 hectares54 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km43
Sights concentration. Manila leads by 15 points.15
DubaiManila
Score3752
Notable places within 2 km3379
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Manila leads by 21 points.21
DubaiManila
Score6990
Price level global63.433.7
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Dubai leads by 5 points.5
DubaiManila
Score6661
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C30.5 °C to 34.6 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm24 mm to 564 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
Manila
31
31
33
35
34
33
32
31
31
32
31
31
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Manila
27
27
28
29
30
30
29
29
29
29
28
28
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Manila
26
24
40
36
220
314
487
564
509
297
152
109
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Manila
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
12
11

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). Manila: 1991-2020 normals, Science Garden (6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiManila
RiyadhRUH
1 h 40 m
€106-123
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
9 h 50 m
€435-460
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
TokyoHND, NRT
10 h 0 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
4 h 10 m
€304-317
MNL · 11 km
SeoulICN, GMP
8 h 35 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
3 h 45 m
€191-223
MNL · 11 km
Hong KongHKG
7 h 40 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 0 m
€128-135
MNL · 11 km
Kuala LumpurKUL, SZB
7 h 10 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
3 h 35 m
€159-184
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
7 h 35 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
3 h 30 m
€154-174
MNL · 11 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
6 h 25 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
3 h 15 m
€205-213
MNL · 11 km
HanoiHAN
6 h 45 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 45 m
€182-214
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
16 h 45 m
no fares
MNL · 11 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

MeasureDubaiManila
Official languageArabicEnglish, Filipino, Taglish
CurrencyUAE Dirham (AED)Philippine Peso (PHP)
SocketsCG220 V, 50 HzABC220 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+4UTC+8
Emergency number112911
Elevation0 m9 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsNinoy Aquino International Airport (MNL)11 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year18 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiManila
City population3,944,7511,902,590
People per km²76,104
Museums within 10 km1427
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre5239
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months12 months

Where else could you go?

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