VacationSelector

Dubai or Reykjavik?

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 year-round weather with your weighting.

Reykjavik
46
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

DubaiReykjavik
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 40 points.40
DubaiReykjavik
Score10060
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km5233
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Dubai leads by 17 points.17
DubaiReykjavik
Score6649
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,086261
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2629
Museums & heritage. Reykjavik leads by 12 points.12
DubaiReykjavik
Score3850
Museums within 10 km2634
Museums within 2 km of centre1823
Share of museums within 2 km %6968
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Dubai leads by 26 points.26
DubaiReykjavik
Score5327
Drinking venues within 4 km601192
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306166
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5186
Nightclubs within 4 km8410
Nature & day trips. Reykjavik leads by 41 points.41
DubaiReykjavik
Score1859
Protected land share 50 km %416
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5256
Park area within 2 km13 hectares28 hectares
Good for families. Dubai leads by 7 points.7
DubaiReykjavik
Score4942
Tourist attractions within 2 km3721
Park area within 2 km13 hectares28 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Reykjavik leads by 11 points.11
DubaiReykjavik
Score3748
Notable places within 2 km3361
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dubai leads by 28 points.28
DubaiReykjavik
Score6941
Price level global63.4102.8
Daily budget€243
Year-round weather. Dubai leads by 29 points.29
DubaiReykjavik
Score6637
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C3.2 °C to 14.9 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm41 mm to 97 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
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Reykjavik
6
9
12
15
18
21
20
16
13
10
7
4
Sunshine, hours per day
Dubai
No sunshine record
Reykjavik
1
2
4
5
7
6
6
5
4
3
1
0

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). Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiReykjavik
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
CopenhagenCPH
6 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
3 h 10 m
€216-282
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
6 h 45 m
€334-439
DXB · 7 km
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
6 h 50 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
BostonBOS, PSM
13 h 15 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
5 h 15 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
5 h 35 m
€244-282
DXB · 7 km
4 h 0 m
€157-219
KEF · 37 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
5 h 30 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
OsloOSL, TRF
6 h 45 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
7 h 35 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
KEF · 37 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

MeasureDubaiReykjavik
Official languageArabicIcelandic
CurrencyUAE Dirham (AED)Iceland Krona (ISK)
SocketsCG220 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+4UTC
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m8 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiReykjavik
City population3,944,751138,772
People per km²569
Museums within 10 km1423
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre5242
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

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