VacationSelector

Dubai or Milan?

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 year-round weather with your weighting.

Milan
✓ Best match
63
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

DubaiMilan
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 100 points.100
DubaiMilan
Score1000
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km524
Coast distance0 km120 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Milan leads by 4 points.4
DubaiMilan
Score6670
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0861,991
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2620
Museums & heritage. Milan leads by 36 points.36
DubaiMilan
Score3874
Museums within 10 km2687
Museums within 2 km of centre1855
Share of museums within 2 km %6963
Unesco sites within 50 km04
Nightlife. Milan leads by 22 points.22
DubaiMilan
Score5375
Drinking venues within 4 km6012,215
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306961
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5143
Nightclubs within 4 km8470
Nature & day trips. Milan leads by 47 points.47
DubaiMilan
Score1865
Protected land share 50 km %430
Landscape blanket share 50 km %011
Land share of disc %52100
Park area within 2 km13 hectares102 hectares
Good for families. Milan leads by 28 points.28
DubaiMilan
Score4977
Tourist attractions within 2 km3776
Park area within 2 km13 hectares102 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km45
Sights concentration. Milan leads by 37 points.37
DubaiMilan
Score3774
Notable places within 2 km33266
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dubai leads by 1 points.1
DubaiMilan
Score6968
Price level global63.464.9
Daily budget€155
Year-round weather. Dubai leads by 2 points.2
DubaiMilan
Score6664
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C7 °C to 28.6 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm44 mm to 127 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
Milan
7
10
15
17
23
26
29
28
24
18
11
7
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Milan
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Milan
54
44
50
78
102
75
57
83
116
113
127
49
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Milan
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Dubai
No sunshine record
Milan
3
4
5
6
7
7
9
8
5
4
2
2

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). Milan: 1991-2020 normals, Novara / Cameri (41.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiMilan
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
1 h 45 m
€48-103
MXP · 40 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
2 h 40 m
€140-309
MXP · 40 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
8 h 15 m
€542-635
1 stop
MXP · 40 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
6 h 50 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 20 m
€46-63
MXP · 40 km
BarcelonaBCN
6 h 45 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 30 m
€34-53
MXP · 40 km
AmsterdamAMS
6 h 45 m
€334-439
DXB · 7 km
1 h 40 m
€129-158
LIN · 7 km
RomeFCO, CIA
5 h 45 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 15 m
€116-135
LIN · 7 km
RiyadhRUH
1 h 40 m
€106-123
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
5 h 30 m
no fares
MXP · 40 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
15 h 0 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
11 h 50 m
€1,114-1167
2 stops
MXP · 40 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
7 h 35 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
10 h 10 m
€710-815
1 stop
MXP · 40 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

MeasureDubaiMilan
Official languageArabicItalian
CurrencyUAE Dirham (AED)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCG220 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+4UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m138 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsMilan Malpensa International Airport (MXP)40 km from centre203 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiMilan
City population3,944,7511,354,196
People per km²7,453
Museums within 10 km1487
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km04
Distinct cuisines in the centre5279
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months

Where else could you go?

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