VacationSelector

Dubai or Paris?

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 value for money with your weighting.

Paris
✓ Best match
67
match

Wins on sights concentration 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.

DubaiParis
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 100 points.100
DubaiParis
Score1000
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km522
Coast distance0 km149 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Paris leads by 24 points.24
DubaiParis
Score6690
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0864,732
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2633
Museums & heritage. Paris leads by 38 points.38
DubaiParis
Score3876
Museums within 10 km26185
Museums within 2 km of centre1865
Share of museums within 2 km %6935
Unesco sites within 50 km04
Nightlife. Paris leads by 35 points.35
DubaiParis
Score5388
Drinking venues within 4 km6013,796
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre3061,694
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5145
Nightclubs within 4 km84201
Nature & day trips. Paris leads by 30 points.30
DubaiParis
Score1848
Protected land share 50 km %428
Landscape blanket share 50 km %026
Land share of disc %52100
Park area within 2 km13 hectares82 hectares
Good for families. Paris leads by 26 points.26
DubaiParis
Score4975
Tourist attractions within 2 km3789
Park area within 2 km13 hectares82 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km43
Sights concentration. Paris leads by 57 points.57
DubaiParis
Score3794
Notable places within 2 km33865
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dubai leads by 7 points.7
DubaiParis
Score6962
Price level global63.473.7
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. Dubai and Paris are level on 66.
DubaiParis
Score6666
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C7.8 °C to 26 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm38 mm to 75 mm
Dry months121
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
Paris
8
9
13
17
20
24
26
26
22
17
11
8
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Paris
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Paris
45
38
41
45
75
51
58
54
51
55
54
62
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Paris
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8

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). Paris: 1991-2020 normals, Paris-Montsouris (4.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiParis
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
1 h 5 m
€63-103
CDG · 22 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
7 h 30 m
€579-648
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
3 h 15 m
€152-378
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
3 h 10 m
€318-438
DXB · 7 km
4 h 30 m
€216-403
CDG · 22 km
AmsterdamAMS
6 h 45 m
€334-439
DXB · 7 km
1 h 10 m
€188-212
CDG · 22 km
RiyadhRUH
1 h 40 m
€106-123
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
6 h 10 m
no fares
CDG · 22 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
6 h 10 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 20 m
€61-89
CDG · 22 km
MunichMUC
6 h 0 m
€306-356
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
1 h 30 m
€160-210
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
TokyoHND, NRT
10 h 0 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
12 h 5 m
€705-999
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
Buenos AiresEZE, AEP
16 h 45 m
€1,139-1335
DXB · 7 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
CDG · 22 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

MeasureDubaiParis
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 m27 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsCharles de Gaulle International Airport (CDG)22 km from centre277 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiParis
City population3,944,7512,103,778
People per km²19,960
Museums within 10 km14251
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km04
Distinct cuisines in the centre52169
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 Paris 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.