VacationSelector

Singapore or Dubai?

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

Your match

Singapore
✓ Best match
68
match

Wins on sights concentration and places to eat with your weighting.

Dubai
55
match

Wins on year-round weather with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Dubai if warmth and water come first: the sea starts at the centre, the dry months are genuinely dry, and from November to March highs of 25-31°C make being outside easy.

Choose Singapore if you want a city you can walk: far more to see close to the centre, a much wider choice of places to eat and drink, and more for children, with rain in every month of the year.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

SingaporeDubai
Beaches & swimming. Singapore and Dubai are level on 100.
SingaporeDubai
Score100100
Swim season months1212
Beaches 10 km4252
Coast distance2 km0 km
Water distance2 km0 km
Places to eat. Singapore leads by 21 points.21
SingaporeDubai
Score8766
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4,1151,086
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3126
Museums & heritage. Singapore leads by 12 points.12
SingaporeDubai
Score5038
Museums within 10 km5726
Museums within 2 km of centre2618
Share of museums within 2 km %4669
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Singapore leads by 21 points.21
SingaporeDubai
Score7453
Drinking venues within 4 km1,973601
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,393306
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7151
Nightclubs within 4 km7784
Nature & day trips. Singapore leads by 16 points.16
SingaporeDubai
Score3418
Protected land share 50 km %14
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5352
Park area within 2 km156 hectares13 hectares
Good for families. Singapore leads by 19 points.19
SingaporeDubai
Score6849
Tourist attractions within 2 km2837
Park area within 2 km156 hectares13 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km54
Sights concentration. Singapore leads by 29 points.29
SingaporeDubai
Score6637
Notable places within 2 km17233
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Singapore leads by 1 points.1
SingaporeDubai
Score7069
Price level global6263.4
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. Dubai leads by 4 points.4
SingaporeDubai
Score6266
Monthly daytime high30.6 °C to 32.4 °C24.5 °C to 42.1 °C
Monthly rainfall109 mm to 329 mm0 mm to 21 mm
Dry months012
0255075100

Where they differ

Dubai is the warmer, drier trip: daytime highs of 25-42°C against Singapore's steady 31-32°C, and every month at 40mm of rain or less where Singapore has none. The sea meets the centre, with 52 beaches nearby against 42, and slightly more tourist attractions close in.

Singapore is the denser city: many times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, about three times as many restaurants and places to drink near the centre. Nightclub numbers are close, but most of Singapore's sit near the centre.

Where they are alike

Both put swimming at the centre of the trip. The sea meets Dubai's centre and lies 2km from Singapore's, and in both the water stays at 21°C or more every month, so neither has an off season for a swim.

Neither is ever cold, either. Dubai's coolest month still reaches 25°C and Singapore holds 31-32°C throughout, so the choice is never about avoiding winter, only about how you handle heat and rain.

Which traveller are you?

If you are travelling to eat and drink, choose Singapore: about three times as many restaurants near the centre, a wider range of kitchens, about three times as many places to drink, and most of its nightclubs close in.

If sun and sea are the point, choose Dubai. The sea starts at the centre, 52 beaches sit nearby, and between November and March the heat is manageable with almost no rain.

For families, Singapore is the easier base, with far more park space near the centre and 5 theme parks within reach against Dubai's 4. Dubai answers with more tourist attractions close to the centre.

What the numbers don't tell you

No cost comparison is possible for these two. The dataset carries no daily budget figure for either city, so nothing here tells you which is the more expensive trip, and the value standing rests on a different measure.

The sunshine figure is missing for Dubai, because no nearby station records it, so that side of the weather comparison is unmeasured rather than weak, and its monthly picture rests on temperature, rainfall and sea temperature alone. Both cities look equally strong for swimming, which hides what the season does to it: Dubai's sea reaches 33°C in August under highs of 42°C.

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
Singapore
31
31
32
32
32
32
31
31
32
32
31
31
Dubai
25
26
29
34
38
41
42
42
40
36
31
27
Sea temperature, °C
Singapore
28
28
29
30
30
30
30
29
29
29
29
29
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Rainfall, mm
Singapore
227
109
151
165
163
139
145
149
124
167
253
329
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Daylight, hours per day
Singapore
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Sunshine, hours per day
Singapore
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
5
5
4
4
Dubai
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Singapore: 1991-2020 normals, Singapore / Changi Airport (17 km from centre). Dubai: 1991-2020 normals, Dubai International Airport (3.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Dubai is at its best from November to March, when highs run 25-31°C and rainfall stays at 21mm a month or less; from June to September highs reach 40-42°C and the sea warms to 33°C.

Singapore barely changes, 31-32°C in every month, so the question is rain. February to September is the drier half, from 109mm upwards, while November and December are the wettest, up to 329mm. Through Dubai's hottest months, Singapore is the steadier choice.

Getting there

Flying fromSingaporeDubai
Kuala LumpurKUL, SZB
1 h 0 m
€85-88
SIN · 17 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
TokyoHND, NRT
6 h 55 m
€310-338
SIN · 17 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
13 h 30 m
€463-619
1 stop
SIN · 17 km
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
New DelhiDEL
5 h 35 m
€238-293
SIN · 17 km
3 h 15 m
€247-331
DXB · 7 km
MumbaiBOM, NMI
5 h 15 m
no fares
SIN · 17 km
2 h 55 m
€201-238
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
Denpasar (Bali)DPS
2 h 40 m
€188-241
SIN · 17 km
9 h 30 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
JakartaCGK, HLP
1 h 40 m
€145-152
SIN · 17 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
SeoulICN, GMP
6 h 5 m
€240-286
1 stop
SIN · 17 km
8 h 35 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
JeddahJED
9 h 20 m
no fares
SIN · 17 km
2 h 40 m
€154-180
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
18 h 45 m
€835
SIN · 17 km
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 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 2026-09 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

MeasureSingaporeDubai
Official languageEnglish, Tamil, Malay, Standard ChineseArabic
CurrencySingapore Dollar (SGD)UAE Dirham (AED)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCG220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC+4
Emergency numberPolice 999, ambulance 995, fire 995112
Elevation21 m0 m
Main airportSingapore Changi Airport (SIN)17 km from centre165 non-stop destinationsDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days–

By the numbers

MeasureSingaporeDubai
City population5,866,1393,944,751
People per km²8,158–
Museums within 10 km4014
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre10752
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months12 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Singapore or Dubai 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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. 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.