VacationSelector

Bangkok or Shanghai?

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

Your match

Bangkok
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Shanghai
54
match

Wins on good for families and 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.

Scoreboard

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

BangkokShanghai
Beaches & swimming. Bangkok leads by 23 points.23
BangkokShanghai
Score4017
Swim season months125
Beaches 10 km00
Coast distance23 km18 km
Water distance23 km18 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Museums & heritage. Bangkok leads by 1 points.1
BangkokShanghai
Score4645
Museums within 10 km103108
Museums within 2 km of centre3028
Share of museums within 2 km %2926
Unesco sites within 50 km00
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Nature & day trips. Bangkok leads by 9 points.9
BangkokShanghai
Score5142
Protected land share 50 km %9
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8382
Park area within 2 km42 hectares83 hectares
Good for families. Shanghai leads by 24 points.24
BangkokShanghai
Score5781
Tourist attractions within 2 km3186
Park area within 2 km42 hectares83 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km410
Sights concentration. Shanghai leads by 3 points.3
BangkokShanghai
Score4851
Notable places within 2 km6273
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bangkok leads by 14 points.14
BangkokShanghai
Score9379
Price level global29.749
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Shanghai leads by 9 points.9
BangkokShanghai
Score5665
Monthly daytime high32.4 °C to 35.8 °C8.5 °C to 33.2 °C
Monthly rainfall7 mm to 331 mm43 mm to 216 mm
Dry months30
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
Bangkok
33
34
35
36
35
34
34
33
33
33
33
32
Shanghai
9
11
15
21
26
28
33
33
29
23
18
12
Sea temperature, °C
Bangkok
27
28
29
30
31
30
30
30
29
29
29
28
Shanghai
8
7
10
14
19
22
26
28
26
21
17
12
Rainfall, mm
Bangkok
18
22
43
92
221
187
184
227
331
276
42
7
Shanghai
69
65
88
72
84
192
151
216
97
64
53
43
Daylight, hours per day
Bangkok
11
12
12
12
13
13
13
13
12
12
12
11
Shanghai
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Bangkok
8
8
8
8
7
5
5
4
4
5
7
8
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. Bangkok: 1991-2020 normals, Bangkok (5.7 km from centre). Shanghai: 1991-2020 normals, Shanghai / Hongqiao (8.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBangkokShanghai
TokyoHND, NRT
6 h 5 m
€318-365
BKK · 26 km
2 h 45 m
€326-382
PVG · 33 km
ChengduTFU, CTU
2 h 55 m
€168-200
BKK · 26 km
2 h 35 m
€216-247
PVG · 33 km
GuangzhouCAN
2 h 40 m
€144-163
BKK · 26 km
2 h 5 m
€127-144
PVG · 33 km
ChongqingCKG, CQW
2 h 55 m
€196-229
1 stop
BKK · 26 km
2 h 25 m
€175-196
PVG · 33 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
4 h 35 m
€178-179
BKK · 26 km
2 h 0 m
€150-154
PVG · 33 km
SeoulICN, GMP
5 h 0 m
€175-251
BKK · 26 km
1 h 40 m
€173-183
PVG · 33 km
Hong KongHKG
2 h 40 m
€175-181
BKK · 26 km
2 h 10 m
€153-159
PVG · 33 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 55 m
€438-523
BKK · 26 km
11 h 30 m
€528-630
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 25 m
€409-425
DMK · 21 km
8 h 15 m
€508-557
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
16 h 20 m
€646-679
1 stop
BKK · 26 km
12 h 55 m
€606-798
1 stop
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

MeasureBangkokShanghai
Official languageThaiPutonghua
CurrencyBaht (THB)Yuan Renminbi (CNY)
SocketsABCF220 V, 50 HzACI220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+7UTC+8
Emergency numberPolice 191, ambulance 1669, fire 199Police 110, ambulance 120, fire 119
Elevation2 m4 m
Main airportSuvarnabhumi Airport (BKK)26 km from centre142 non-stop destinationsShanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)33 km from centre200 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year6 days

By the numbers

MeasureBangkokShanghai
City population5,676,64824,870,895
People per km²3,6193,922
Museums within 10 km5944
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre9164
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 Bangkok 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). 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. 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.

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.