VacationSelector

Dubai or Tirana?

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 museums & heritage with your weighting.

Tirana
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.

DubaiTirana
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 83 points.83
DubaiTirana
Score10017
Swim season months125
Beaches 10 km520
Coast distance0 km26 km
Water distance0 km26 km
Places to eat. Dubai leads by 11 points.11
DubaiTirana
Score6655
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,086572
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2622
Museums & heritage. Dubai leads by 13 points.13
DubaiTirana
Score3825
Museums within 10 km2612
Museums within 2 km of centre188
Share of museums within 2 km %6967
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Tirana leads by 5 points.5
DubaiTirana
Score5358
Drinking venues within 4 km601945
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306683
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5172
Nightclubs within 4 km8429
Nature & day trips. Tirana leads by 31 points.31
DubaiTirana
Score1849
Protected land share 50 km %411
Landscape blanket share 50 km %03
Land share of disc %5283
Park area within 2 km13 hectares147 hectares
Good for families. Tirana leads by 3 points.3
DubaiTirana
Score4952
Tourist attractions within 2 km3721
Park area within 2 km13 hectares147 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km40
Sights concentration. Tirana leads by 16 points.16
DubaiTirana
Score3753
Notable places within 2 km3383
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Tirana leads by 15 points.15
DubaiTirana
Score6984
Price level global63.442.6
Daily budget€76
Year-round weather. Tirana leads by 1 points.1
DubaiTirana
Score6667
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C11.6 °C to 30.7 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm43 mm to 172 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
Tirana
12
13
16
19
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Tirana
15
14
14
16
19
23
24
25
24
21
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Tirana
143
117
116
103
84
66
43
55
78
114
172
148
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Tirana
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Dubai
No sunshine record
Tirana
4
4
5
6
9
10
12
11
9
7
4
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). Tirana: 1961-1990 normals, Tirana (3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiTirana
WarsawWAW, WMI
5 h 35 m
€244-282
DXB · 7 km
2 h 5 m
€68-80
TIA · 13 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
2 h 55 m
€62-138
TIA · 13 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
3 h 10 m
€318-438
DXB · 7 km
2 h 40 m
€222-261
TIA · 13 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
1 h 35 m
€100-109
TIA · 13 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
6 h 50 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 30 m
€73-102
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
KatowiceKTW
5 h 35 m
no fares
DWC · 44 km
1 h 50 m
€73-87
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
PraguePRG
5 h 55 m
€275-303
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
1 h 55 m
€90-115
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
BudapestBUD
5 h 25 m
€345-378
DXB · 7 km
1 h 25 m
€58-106
TIA · 13 km
AlmatyALA
4 h 0 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
6 h 5 m
€370-455
3 stops
TGD · 124 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
13 h 40 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
TIA · 13 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

MeasureDubaiTirana
Official languageArabicAlbanian
CurrencyUAE Dirham (AED)Lek (ALL)
SocketsCG220 V, 50 HzCF220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+4UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m110 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsTirana International Airport Mother Teresa (TIA)13 km from centre129 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiTirana
City population3,944,751389,323
People per km²9,314
Museums within 10 km1411
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre5246
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months5 months

Where else could you go?

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