VacationSelector

Dubai or Sofia?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Dubai
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and places to eat with your weighting.

Sofia
56
match

Wins on nature & day trips and value for money 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.

DubaiSofia
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 100 points.100
DubaiSofia
Score1000
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km520
Coast distance0 km214 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Dubai leads by 2 points.2
DubaiSofia
Score6664
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,086845
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2628
Museums & heritage. Sofia leads by 19 points.19
DubaiSofia
Score3857
Museums within 10 km2651
Museums within 2 km of centre1840
Share of museums within 2 km %6978
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Sofia leads by 8 points.8
DubaiSofia
Score5361
Drinking venues within 4 km601958
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306608
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5163
Nightclubs within 4 km84102
Nature & day trips. Sofia leads by 33 points.33
DubaiSofia
Score1851
Protected land share 50 km %412
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %52100
Park area within 2 km13 hectares229 hectares
Good for families. Sofia leads by 6 points.6
DubaiSofia
Score4955
Tourist attractions within 2 km3720
Park area within 2 km13 hectares229 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km40
Sights concentration. Sofia leads by 20 points.20
DubaiSofia
Score3757
Notable places within 2 km33104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 30 points.30
DubaiSofia
Score6999
Price level global63.421.4
Daily budget€77
Year-round weather. Dubai leads by 2 points.2
DubaiSofia
Score6664
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C3.5 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm36 mm to 78 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
Sofia
4
7
11
17
21
25
28
28
23
18
11
5
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Sofia
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Sofia
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Dubai
No sunshine record
Sofia
3
4
6
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). Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiSofia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
ViennaVIE
5 h 40 m
€283-323
DXB · 7 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 8 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
1 h 15 m
€116-123
SOF · 8 km
MunichMUC
6 h 0 m
€306-356
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
6 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
3 h 10 m
€318-438
DXB · 7 km
2 h 30 m
€154-198
SOF · 8 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
6 h 10 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 5 m
€56-159
SOF · 8 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
5 h 35 m
€244-282
DXB · 7 km
1 h 55 m
€41-70
SOF · 8 km
RomeFCO, CIA
5 h 45 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 8 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
6 h 25 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
10 h 0 m
€614-660
2 stops
SOF · 8 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

MeasureDubaiSofia
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 m560 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiSofia
City population3,944,7511,213,134
People per km²2,466
Museums within 10 km1442
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre5251
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 Sofia 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.