VacationSelector

Dubai or Tallinn?

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 year-round weather with your weighting.

Tallinn
54
match

Wins on sights concentration 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.

DubaiTallinn
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 46 points.46
DubaiTallinn
Score10054
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km5218
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Dubai leads by 4 points.4
DubaiTallinn
Score6662
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,086481
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2639
Museums & heritage. Tallinn leads by 24 points.24
DubaiTallinn
Score3862
Museums within 10 km2671
Museums within 2 km of centre1857
Share of museums within 2 km %6980
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Dubai leads by 7 points.7
DubaiTallinn
Score5346
Drinking venues within 4 km601462
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306370
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5180
Nightclubs within 4 km8443
Nature & day trips. Tallinn leads by 13 points.13
DubaiTallinn
Score1831
Protected land share 50 km %42
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5253
Park area within 2 km13 hectares89 hectares
Good for families. Tallinn leads by 2 points.2
DubaiTallinn
Score4951
Tourist attractions within 2 km3720
Park area within 2 km13 hectares89 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Tallinn leads by 25 points.25
DubaiTallinn
Score3762
Notable places within 2 km33135
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Tallinn leads by 1 points.1
DubaiTallinn
Score6970
Price level global63.462.4
Daily budget€143
Year-round weather. Dubai leads by 18 points.18
DubaiTallinn
Score6648
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C-1.2 °C to 22.3 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm34 mm to 83 mm
Dry months124
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
Tallinn
-1
-1
3
10
15
19
22
21
16
10
4
1
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Tallinn
2
1
1
2
6
12
16
17
15
11
7
5
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Tallinn
56
40
38
34
38
66
82
80
57
83
64
57
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Tallinn
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Sunshine, hours per day
Dubai
No sunshine record
Tallinn
1
2
5
7
10
10
10
8
5
3
1
1

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). Tallinn: 1991-2020 normals, Tallin / Harku (10.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiTallinn
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
TLL · 6 km
TokyoHND, NRT
10 h 0 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
9 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 99 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
5 h 35 m
€244-282
DXB · 7 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
TLL · 6 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
3 h 5 m
no fares
TLL · 6 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
6 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
TLL · 6 km
RigaRIX
5 h 45 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
TLL · 6 km
HelsinkiHEL
6 h 0 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
45 m
no fares
TLL · 6 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
6 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
TLL · 6 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 99 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
6 h 25 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
10 h 0 m
€603-634
HEL · 99 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

MeasureDubaiTallinn
Official languageArabicEstonian
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 m28 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsLennart Meri Tallinn Airport (TLL)6 km from centre64 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiTallinn
City population3,944,751457,572
People per km²2,871
Museums within 10 km1415
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre5263
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 Tallinn 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.