VacationSelector

Dubai or Melbourne?

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.

Melbourne
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

DubaiMelbourne
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 45 points.45
DubaiMelbourne
Score10055
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km5219
Coast distance0 km4 km
Water distance0 km4 km
Places to eat. Melbourne leads by 9 points.9
DubaiMelbourne
Score6675
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0861,888
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2629
Museums & heritage. Melbourne leads by 11 points.11
DubaiMelbourne
Score3849
Museums within 10 km2642
Museums within 2 km of centre1824
Share of museums within 2 km %6957
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Melbourne leads by 21 points.21
DubaiMelbourne
Score5374
Drinking venues within 4 km6011,921
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre3061,200
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5162
Nightclubs within 4 km84124
Nature & day trips. Melbourne leads by 25 points.25
DubaiMelbourne
Score1843
Protected land share 50 km %46
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5281
Park area within 2 km13 hectares166 hectares
Good for families. Melbourne leads by 11 points.11
DubaiMelbourne
Score4960
Tourist attractions within 2 km3726
Park area within 2 km13 hectares166 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Melbourne leads by 20 points.20
DubaiMelbourne
Score3757
Notable places within 2 km33103
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dubai leads by 19 points.19
DubaiMelbourne
Score6950
Price level global63.490.2
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Melbourne leads by 10 points.10
DubaiMelbourne
Score6676
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C13.6 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm45 mm to 69 mm
Dry months120
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
Melbourne
27
27
24
20
17
14
14
15
17
20
22
25
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Melbourne
20
21
20
18
15
13
12
11
12
14
17
19
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Melbourne
46
48
45
58
50
58
46
52
60
56
69
65
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Melbourne
15
14
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
15
Sunshine, hours per day
Dubai
No sunshine record
Melbourne
9
7
7
6
5
4
4
6
6
7
7
9

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). Melbourne: 1991-2020 normals, Latrobe University / Kingsbury (13.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiMelbourne
Denpasar (Bali)DPS
9 h 30 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
5 h 50 m
€420-587
MEL · 19 km
New DelhiDEL
3 h 15 m
€247-331
DXB · 7 km
12 h 40 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
17 h 55 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
7 h 35 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
BrisbaneBNE
14 h 45 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
AdelaideADL
13 h 35 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
ColomboCMB
4 h 30 m
€273-387
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
SydneySYD, WSI
14 h 50 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 30 m
€119-126
MEL · 19 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
16 h 25 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
15 h 40 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
DohaDOH
1 h 5 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
14 h 45 m
no fares
MEL · 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 2026-08 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

MeasureDubaiMelbourne
Official languageArabicEnglish
CurrencyUAE Dirham (AED)Australian Dollar (AUD)
SocketsCG220 V, 50 HzI230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+4UTC+10, UTC+11 in summer
Emergency number112000
Elevation0 m31 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsMelbourne Airport (MEL)19 km from centre66 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiMelbourne
City population3,944,7515,350,705
People per km²535
Museums within 10 km1442
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre5286
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 Melbourne 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.