VacationSelector

Dubai or Zadar?

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 places to eat and nightlife with your weighting.

Zadar
47
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.

DubaiZadar
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 27 points.27
DubaiZadar
Score10073
Swim season months124
Beaches 10 km5249
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Dubai leads by 41 points.41
DubaiZadar
Score6625
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,086143
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2611
Museums & heritage. Dubai leads by 5 points.5
DubaiZadar
Score3833
Museums within 10 km268
Museums within 2 km of centre188
Share of museums within 2 km %69100
Unesco sites within 50 km02
Nightlife. Dubai leads by 28 points.28
DubaiZadar
Score5325
Drinking venues within 4 km601194
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306139
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5172
Nightclubs within 4 km844
Nature & day trips. Zadar leads by 37 points.37
DubaiZadar
Score1855
Protected land share 50 km %412
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5247
Park area within 2 km13 hectares30 hectares
Good for families. Dubai leads by 18 points.18
DubaiZadar
Score4931
Tourist attractions within 2 km379
Park area within 2 km13 hectares30 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Dubai leads by 6 points.6
DubaiZadar
Score3731
Notable places within 2 km3323
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Zadar leads by 11 points.11
DubaiZadar
Score6980
Price level global63.448.5
Daily budget€138
Year-round weather. Zadar leads by 3 points.3
DubaiZadar
Score6669
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C10.4 °C to 31 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm25 mm to 117 mm
Dry months122
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
Zadar
10
11
15
19
23
28
31
31
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Zadar
14
13
13
14
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Zadar
73
64
59
62
58
49
25
32
82
80
117
99
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Zadar
9
10
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
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). Zadar: 1999-2020 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Zadar / Zemunik (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiZadar
AmsterdamAMS
6 h 45 m
€334-439
DXB · 7 km
2 h 10 m
€186-201
1 stop
SPU · 107 km
MunichMUC
6 h 0 m
€306-356
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
SPU · 107 km
RomeFCO, CIA
5 h 45 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 5 m
€294
SPU · 107 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
ZAD · 10 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
6 h 50 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 5 m
€169-225
SPU · 107 km
ViennaVIE
5 h 40 m
€283-323
DXB · 7 km
1 h 10 m
€45-192
ZAD · 10 km
PraguePRG
5 h 55 m
€275-303
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
1 h 25 m
€95-155
1 stop
ZAD · 10 km
ZurichZRH
6 h 15 m
€237-344
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
1 h 35 m
€247-298
1 stop
SPU · 107 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
6 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 45 m
€123-165
1 stop
SPU · 107 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
SPU · 107 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

MeasureDubaiZadar
Official languageArabicCroatian
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 m5 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsZadar Airport (ZAD)10 km from centre67 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiZadar
City population3,944,75170,779
Museums within 10 km141
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km02
Distinct cuisines in the centre5217
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months4 months

Where else could you go?

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