VacationSelector

Dubai or Montpellier?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Dubai
✓ Best match
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nightlife with your weighting.

Montpellier
47
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.

DubaiMontpellier
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 68 points.68
DubaiMontpellier
Score10032
Swim season months122
Beaches 10 km528
Coast distance0 km9 km
Water distance0 km9 km
Places to eat. Dubai leads by 1 points.1
DubaiMontpellier
Score6665
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,086737
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2634
Museums & heritage. Dubai leads by 12 points.12
DubaiMontpellier
Score3826
Museums within 10 km2614
Museums within 2 km of centre183
Share of museums within 2 km %6921
Unesco sites within 50 km02
Nightlife. Dubai leads by 15 points.15
DubaiMontpellier
Score5338
Drinking venues within 4 km601318
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306265
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5183
Nightclubs within 4 km8425
Nature & day trips. Montpellier leads by 25 points.25
DubaiMontpellier
Score1843
Protected land share 50 km %415
Landscape blanket share 50 km %010
Land share of disc %5270
Park area within 2 km13 hectares55 hectares
Good for families. Dubai leads by 5 points.5
DubaiMontpellier
Score4944
Tourist attractions within 2 km378
Park area within 2 km13 hectares55 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km47
Sights concentration. Montpellier leads by 1 points.1
DubaiMontpellier
Score3738
Notable places within 2 km3335
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dubai leads by 7 points.7
DubaiMontpellier
Score6962
Price level global63.473.7
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. Montpellier leads by 8 points.8
DubaiMontpellier
Score6674
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C12 °C to 29.6 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm17 mm to 93 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
Montpellier
12
13
16
19
23
27
30
29
25
21
16
13
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Montpellier
12
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
20
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Montpellier
56
35
39
56
46
33
17
36
88
93
78
59
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Montpellier
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Dubai
No sunshine record
Montpellier
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
10
8
6
5
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). Montpellier: 1991-2020 normals, Montpellier (7.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiMontpellier
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
6 h 50 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
MunichMUC
6 h 0 m
€306-356
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
TunisTUN
5 h 55 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
MadridMAD
7 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
LisbonLIS
7 h 55 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 10 m
€136-184
1 stop
MRS · 109 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
6 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
3 h 5 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
13 h 10 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
SeoulICN, GMP
8 h 35 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 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

MeasureDubaiMontpellier
Official languageArabicFrench
CurrencyUAE Dirham (AED)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCG220 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+4UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m7 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsMontpellier-Méditerranée Airport (MPL)8 km from centre36 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiMontpellier
City population3,944,751310,240
People per km²5,452
Museums within 10 km1414
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km02
Distinct cuisines in the centre5265
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months2 months

Where else could you go?

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