VacationSelector

Dubai or Nice?

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 beaches & swimming and good for families with your weighting.

Nice
56
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.

DubaiNice
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 27 points.27
DubaiNice
Score10073
Swim season months124
Beaches 10 km5270
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. Nice leads by 3 points.3
DubaiNice
Score6669
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0861,231
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2628
Museums & heritage. Nice leads by 8 points.8
DubaiNice
Score3846
Museums within 10 km2627
Museums within 2 km of centre1814
Share of museums within 2 km %6952
Unesco sites within 50 km02
Nightlife. Dubai leads by 9 points.9
DubaiNice
Score5344
Drinking venues within 4 km601428
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306388
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5191
Nightclubs within 4 km8426
Nature & day trips. Nice leads by 39 points.39
DubaiNice
Score1857
Protected land share 50 km %424
Landscape blanket share 50 km %020
Land share of disc %5262
Park area within 2 km13 hectares56 hectares
Good for families. Dubai leads by 19 points.19
DubaiNice
Score4930
Tourist attractions within 2 km374
Park area within 2 km13 hectares56 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km43
Sights concentration. Nice leads by 10 points.10
DubaiNice
Score3747
Notable places within 2 km3360
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dubai leads by 7 points.7
DubaiNice
Score6962
Price level global63.473.7
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. Nice leads by 8 points.8
DubaiNice
Score6674
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C13.3 °C to 27.9 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm13 mm to 138 mm
Dry months123
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
Nice
13
14
15
17
21
25
28
28
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Nice
14
13
14
15
18
21
24
25
22
20
17
15
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Nice
74
53
51
69
42
34
13
18
84
124
138
91
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Nice
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Dubai
No sunshine record
Nice
5
6
7
7
9
10
11
11
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). Nice: 1991-2020 normals, Nice (8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiNice
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
6 h 50 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 30 m
€78-111
NCE · 6 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
1 h 55 m
€76-223
NCE · 6 km
AmsterdamAMS
6 h 45 m
€334-439
DXB · 7 km
1 h 50 m
€170-248
NCE · 6 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
2 h 45 m
€202-329
NCE · 6 km
RiyadhRUH
1 h 40 m
€106-123
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
5 h 30 m
no fares
NCE · 6 km
MunichMUC
6 h 0 m
€306-356
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
1 h 25 m
€198-243
1 stop
NCE · 6 km
ViennaVIE
5 h 40 m
€283-323
DXB · 7 km
1 h 40 m
€175-231
NCE · 6 km
RomeFCO, CIA
5 h 45 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 10 m
€69-133
NCE · 6 km
GenevaGVA
6 h 25 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 0 m
€65-145
NCE · 6 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
8 h 10 m
€666-799
1 stop
NCE · 6 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

MeasureDubaiNice
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 m0 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsNice-Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE)6 km from centre129 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiNice
City population3,944,751357,737
People per km²4,975
Museums within 10 km1416
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km02
Distinct cuisines in the centre5265
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months4 months

Where else could you go?

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