VacationSelector

Dubai or Miami?

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, 1 point apart

Dubai
55
match

Wins on value for money and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Miami
56
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.

DubaiMiami
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 5 points.5
DubaiMiami
Score10095
Swim season months1212
Beaches 10 km5220
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. Dubai leads by 1 points.1
DubaiMiami
Score6665
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,086898
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2629
Museums & heritage. Dubai leads by 15 points.15
DubaiMiami
Score3823
Museums within 10 km2628
Museums within 2 km of centre186
Share of museums within 2 km %6921
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Dubai leads by 3 points.3
DubaiMiami
Score5350
Drinking venues within 4 km601538
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306287
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5153
Nightclubs within 4 km8463
Nature & day trips. Miami leads by 54 points.54
DubaiMiami
Score1872
Protected land share 50 km %416
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5248
Park area within 2 km13 hectares50 hectares
Good for families. Dubai leads by 5 points.5
DubaiMiami
Score4944
Tourist attractions within 2 km3714
Park area within 2 km13 hectares50 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km42
Sights concentration. Miami leads by 5 points.5
DubaiMiami
Score3742
Notable places within 2 km3345
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dubai leads by 26 points.26
DubaiMiami
Score6943
Price level global63.4100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Miami leads by 8 points.8
DubaiMiami
Score6674
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C24.7 °C to 32.7 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm47 mm to 267 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
Miami
25
26
27
29
31
32
33
33
32
30
28
26
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Miami
25
25
25
26
27
28
29
30
29
28
27
26
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Miami
47
55
63
85
157
267
186
242
259
193
90
62
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Miami
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
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). Miami: 1991-2020 normals, Miami International Airport (10 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiMiami
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
2 h 45 m
€205-247
MIA · 7 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
9 h 0 m
€550-628
1 stop
MIA · 7 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
11 h 55 m
no fares
MIA · 7 km
BogotaBOG
16 h 40 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
3 h 30 m
no fares
MIA · 7 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
14 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 55 m
€143-193
MIA · 7 km
HoustonIAH, HOU
16 h 5 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 30 m
€103-188
1 stop
MIA · 7 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
3 h 10 m
€318-438
DXB · 7 km
13 h 10 m
no fares
MIA · 7 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
13 h 40 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
3 h 0 m
€202-362
MIA · 7 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
15 h 5 m
no fares
AUH · 114 km
1 h 50 m
€97-175
MIA · 7 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
14 h 0 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 25 m
€127-180
MIA · 7 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

MeasureDubaiMiami
Official languageArabic
CurrencyUAE Dirham (AED)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCG220 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+4UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation0 m2 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsMiami International Airport (MIA)7 km from centre199 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiMiami
City population3,944,751442,241
People per km²3,046
Museums within 10 km1417
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
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 Miami 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.