VacationSelector

Dubai or Seattle?

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 value for money with your weighting.

Seattle
52
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.

DubaiSeattle
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 40 points.40
DubaiSeattle
Score10060
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km52100
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. Seattle leads by 9 points.9
DubaiSeattle
Score6675
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0861,460
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2635
Museums & heritage. Dubai leads by 2 points.2
DubaiSeattle
Score3836
Museums within 10 km2628
Museums within 2 km of centre1817
Share of museums within 2 km %6961
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Seattle leads by 4 points.4
DubaiSeattle
Score5357
Drinking venues within 4 km601873
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306696
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5180
Nightclubs within 4 km8434
Nature & day trips. Seattle leads by 22 points.22
DubaiSeattle
Score1840
Protected land share 50 km %49
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5280
Park area within 2 km13 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Dubai leads by 3 points.3
DubaiSeattle
Score4946
Tourist attractions within 2 km3717
Park area within 2 km13 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Seattle leads by 15 points.15
DubaiSeattle
Score3752
Notable places within 2 km3376
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dubai leads by 26 points.26
DubaiSeattle
Score6943
Price level global63.4100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Dubai leads by 5 points.5
DubaiSeattle
Score6661
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C7.8 °C to 24.9 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm15 mm to 160 mm
Dry months123
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
Seattle
8
10
12
15
19
21
25
25
22
15
11
8
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Seattle
8
8
8
9
10
11
12
12
11
10
9
9
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Seattle
147
96
106
81
48
37
15
25
41
99
160
147
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Seattle
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9

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). Seattle: 1991-2020 normals, Seattle-Tacoma Airport (17.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiSeattle
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
16 h 25 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 30 m
€111-203
SEA · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
5 h 15 m
€300-424
SEA · 18 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
12 h 10 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
14 h 0 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
5 h 0 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
14 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
3 h 55 m
€257-317
1 stop
SEA · 18 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
15 h 50 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
3 h 50 m
€204-286
1 stop
SEA · 18 km
SeoulICN, GMP
8 h 35 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
San FranciscoSFO
16 h 0 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
BostonBOS, PSM
13 h 15 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
5 h 25 m
no fares
SEA · 18 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

MeasureDubaiSeattle
Official languageArabic
CurrencyUAE Dirham (AED)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCG220 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+4UTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation0 m40 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsSeattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)18 km from centre135 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiSeattle
City population3,944,751737,015
People per km²1,996
Museums within 10 km1427
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre5278
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 Seattle 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.