VacationSelector

Dubai or Osaka?

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.

Osaka
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on nightlife and museums & heritage 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.

DubaiOsaka
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 45 points.45
DubaiOsaka
Score10055
Swim season months125
Beaches 10 km5225
Coast distance0 km7 km
Water distance0 km7 km
Places to eat. Osaka leads by 24 points.24
DubaiOsaka
Score6690
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0869,134
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2625
Museums & heritage. Osaka leads by 26 points.26
DubaiOsaka
Score3864
Museums within 10 km2678
Museums within 2 km of centre1822
Share of museums within 2 km %6928
Unesco sites within 50 km06
Nightlife. Osaka leads by 44 points.44
DubaiOsaka
Score5397
Drinking venues within 4 km6018,473
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre3064,492
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5153
Nightclubs within 4 km8497
Nature & day trips. Osaka leads by 10 points.10
DubaiOsaka
Score1828
Protected land share 50 km %41
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %5284
Park area within 2 km13 hectares88 hectares
Good for families. Osaka leads by 23 points.23
DubaiOsaka
Score4972
Tourist attractions within 2 km3747
Park area within 2 km13 hectares88 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km47
Sights concentration. Osaka leads by 11 points.11
DubaiOsaka
Score3748
Notable places within 2 km3363
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Osaka leads by 1 points.1
DubaiOsaka
Score6970
Price level global63.462.4
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Dubai leads by 3 points.3
DubaiOsaka
Score6663
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C9.7 °C to 33.6 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm47 mm to 185 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
Osaka
10
11
14
20
25
28
32
34
30
24
18
12
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Osaka
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Osaka
47
61
103
103
136
185
175
113
146
140
73
56
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Osaka
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Dubai
No sunshine record
Osaka
5
5
6
6
7
5
6
7
5
5
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). Osaka: 1991-2020 normals, Osaka (1.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiOsaka
SeoulICN, GMP
8 h 35 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 40 m
€107-142
KIX · 38 km
TokyoHND, NRT
10 h 0 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 10 m
€118-135
ITM · 11 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
8 h 15 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 10 m
€237-303
KIX · 38 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
MumbaiBOM, NMI
2 h 55 m
€201-238
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
8 h 10 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
10 h 55 m
no fares
KIX · 38 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
6 h 25 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
5 h 35 m
€288-317
KIX · 38 km
New DelhiDEL
3 h 15 m
€247-331
DXB · 7 km
7 h 5 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
Hong KongHKG
7 h 40 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
3 h 35 m
€254-314
KIX · 38 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

MeasureDubaiOsaka
Official languageArabicJapanese
CurrencyUAE Dirham (AED)Yen (JPY)
SocketsCG220 V, 50 HzAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+4UTC+9
Emergency number112Police 110, fire 119
Elevation0 m20 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsKansai International Airport (KIX)38 km from centre62 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiOsaka
City population3,944,7512,751,862
People per km²12,340
Museums within 10 km1443
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km06
Distinct cuisines in the centre5297
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months5 months

Where else could you go?

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