VacationSelector

Dubai or San Sebastian?

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 good for families with your weighting.

San Sebastian
51
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.

DubaiSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 45 points.45
DubaiSan Sebastian
Score10055
Swim season months122
Beaches 10 km5210
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Dubai leads by 11 points.11
DubaiSan Sebastian
Score6655
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,086472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2626
Museums & heritage. San Sebastian leads by 1 points.1
DubaiSan Sebastian
Score3839
Museums within 10 km2617
Museums within 2 km of centre187
Share of museums within 2 km %6941
Unesco sites within 50 km03
Nightlife. Dubai leads by 13 points.13
DubaiSan Sebastian
Score5340
Drinking venues within 4 km601388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5187
Nightclubs within 4 km8412
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 38 points.38
DubaiSan Sebastian
Score1856
Protected land share 50 km %411
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5252
Park area within 2 km13 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Dubai leads by 19 points.19
DubaiSan Sebastian
Score4930
Tourist attractions within 2 km375
Park area within 2 km13 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. San Sebastian leads by 17 points.17
DubaiSan Sebastian
Score3754
Notable places within 2 km3389
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 2 points.2
DubaiSan Sebastian
Score6971
Price level global63.460.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Dubai leads by 8 points.8
DubaiSan Sebastian
Score6658
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm92 mm to 203 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
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Dubai
No sunshine record
San Sebastian
3
4
5
5
7
6
7
6
6
5
3
3

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). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiSan Sebastian
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
6 h 50 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
AmsterdamAMS
6 h 45 m
€334-439
DXB · 7 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
MunichMUC
6 h 0 m
€306-356
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
PalmaPMI
6 h 40 m
no fares
AUH · 114 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
6 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 75 km
MadridMAD
7 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
BarcelonaBCN
6 h 45 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 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

MeasureDubaiSan Sebastian
Official languageArabicSpanish
CurrencyUAE Dirham (AED)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCG220 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+4UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m6 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiSan Sebastian
City population3,944,751189,866
People per km²3,118
Museums within 10 km1414
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km03
Distinct cuisines in the centre5245
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months2 months

Where else could you go?

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