VacationSelector

Amsterdam or Shanghai?

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

Your match

Amsterdam
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on museums & heritage and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Shanghai
54
match

Wins on value for money and good for families 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.

AmsterdamShanghai
Beaches & swimming. Amsterdam leads by 23 points.23
AmsterdamShanghai
Score4017
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km330
Coast distance24 km18 km
Water distance24 km18 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 35 points.35
AmsterdamShanghai
Score8045
Museums within 10 km98108
Museums within 2 km of centre6928
Share of museums within 2 km %7026
Unesco sites within 50 km50
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 18 points.18
AmsterdamShanghai
Score6042
Protected land share 50 km %219
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8282
Park area within 2 km49 hectares83 hectares
Good for families. Shanghai leads by 13 points.13
AmsterdamShanghai
Score6881
Tourist attractions within 2 km7486
Park area within 2 km49 hectares83 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km310
Sights concentration. Amsterdam leads by 17 points.17
AmsterdamShanghai
Score6851
Notable places within 2 km19673
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Shanghai leads by 21 points.21
AmsterdamShanghai
Score5879
Price level global79.249
Daily budget€181
Year-round weather. Shanghai leads by 8 points.8
AmsterdamShanghai
Score5765
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C8.5 °C to 33.2 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm43 mm to 216 mm
Dry months00
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
Amsterdam
6
7
11
15
18
21
23
23
20
15
10
7
Shanghai
9
11
15
21
26
28
33
33
29
23
18
12
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
Shanghai
8
7
10
14
19
22
26
28
26
21
17
12
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Shanghai
69
65
88
72
84
192
151
216
97
64
53
43
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Shanghai
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Amsterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Shanghai
4
4
5
5
6
4
6
6
5
5
4
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Amsterdam: 1991-2020 normals, De Bilt (35.3 km from centre). Shanghai: 1991-2020 normals, Shanghai / Hongqiao (8.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamShanghai
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
11 h 30 m
€528-630
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 40 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
2 h 45 m
€326-382
PVG · 33 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 55 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
2 h 0 m
€150-154
PVG · 33 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 10 m
€130-171
AMS · 12 km
12 h 15 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
GuangzhouCAN
11 h 25 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
2 h 5 m
€127-144
PVG · 33 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 15 m
€166-175
AMS · 12 km
10 h 5 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
DublinDUB
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 12 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
8 h 15 m
€508-557
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
14 h 40 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
Buenos AiresEZE, AEP
14 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
23 h 45 m
€1,545-1873
2 stops
PVG · 33 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

MeasureAmsterdamShanghai
Official languageDutchPutonghua
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Yuan Renminbi (CNY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzACI220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+8
Emergency number112 or 911Police 110, ambulance 120, fire 119
Elevation-2 m4 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsShanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)33 km from centre200 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days6 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamShanghai
City population921,46824,870,895
People per km²4,2083,922
Museums within 10 km10144
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km50
Distinct cuisines in the centre9864
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Amsterdam or Shanghai 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.