VacationSelector

Dubai or Plovdiv?

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 places to eat with your weighting.

Plovdiv
44
match

Wins on value for money and nature & day trips 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.

DubaiPlovdiv
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 100 points.100
DubaiPlovdiv
Score1000
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km521
Coast distance0 km130 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Dubai leads by 20 points.20
DubaiPlovdiv
Score6646
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,086369
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2619
Museums & heritage. Dubai and Plovdiv are level on 38.
DubaiPlovdiv
Score3838
Museums within 10 km2626
Museums within 2 km of centre1826
Share of museums within 2 km %69100
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Dubai leads by 11 points.11
DubaiPlovdiv
Score5342
Drinking venues within 4 km601392
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306285
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5173
Nightclubs within 4 km8426
Nature & day trips. Plovdiv leads by 19 points.19
DubaiPlovdiv
Score1837
Protected land share 50 km %45
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %52100
Park area within 2 km13 hectares125 hectares
Good for families. Dubai leads by 18 points.18
DubaiPlovdiv
Score4931
Tourist attractions within 2 km375
Park area within 2 km13 hectares125 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km40
Sights concentration. Plovdiv leads by 4 points.4
DubaiPlovdiv
Score3741
Notable places within 2 km3341
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Plovdiv leads by 30 points.30
DubaiPlovdiv
Score6999
Price level global63.421.4
Daily budget€77
Year-round weather. Dubai leads by 1 points.1
DubaiPlovdiv
Score6665
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C5.4 °C to 31.1 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm25 mm to 81 mm
Dry months122
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
Plovdiv
5
9
14
19
24
28
31
31
26
19
13
7
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Plovdiv
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Plovdiv
65
63
61
53
67
62
40
25
48
66
59
81
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Plovdiv
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Dubai
No sunshine record
Plovdiv
3
4
5
6
8
9
10
10
7
5
3
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). Plovdiv: 1997-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Plovdiv (1.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiPlovdiv
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
ViennaVIE
5 h 40 m
€283-323
DXB · 7 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 125 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
1 h 15 m
€116-123
SOF · 125 km
MunichMUC
6 h 0 m
€306-356
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 125 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
6 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
3 h 10 m
€318-438
DXB · 7 km
2 h 30 m
€154-198
SOF · 125 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
6 h 10 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 125 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
5 h 35 m
€244-282
DXB · 7 km
1 h 55 m
€41-70
SOF · 125 km
RomeFCO, CIA
5 h 45 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 125 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
6 h 25 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
10 h 0 m
€614-660
2 stops
SOF · 125 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

MeasureDubaiPlovdiv
Official languageArabicBulgarian
CurrencyUAE Dirham (AED)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCG220 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+4UTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m172 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsPlovdiv International Airport (PDV)12 km from centre8 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiPlovdiv
City population3,944,751333,994
People per km²3,274
Museums within 10 km1418
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre5236
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 Plovdiv 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.