VacationSelector

Copenhagen or Shanghai?

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

Your match

Copenhagen
✓ Best match
63
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage 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.

CopenhagenShanghai
Beaches & swimming. Copenhagen leads by 37 points.37
CopenhagenShanghai
Score5417
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km170
Coast distance1 km18 km
Water distance1 km18 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Museums & heritage. Copenhagen leads by 30 points.30
CopenhagenShanghai
Score7545
Museums within 10 km83108
Museums within 2 km of centre5128
Share of museums within 2 km %6126
Unesco sites within 50 km50
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Nature & day trips. Copenhagen leads by 8 points.8
CopenhagenShanghai
Score5042
Protected land share 50 km %59
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %3982
Park area within 2 km138 hectares83 hectares
Good for families. Shanghai leads by 10 points.10
CopenhagenShanghai
Score7181
Tourist attractions within 2 km5486
Park area within 2 km138 hectares83 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km210
Sights concentration. Copenhagen leads by 23 points.23
CopenhagenShanghai
Score7451
Notable places within 2 km27373
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Shanghai leads by 27 points.27
CopenhagenShanghai
Score5279
Price level global87.849
Daily budget€214
Year-round weather. Shanghai leads by 10 points.10
CopenhagenShanghai
Score5565
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 22.7 °C8.5 °C to 33.2 °C
Monthly rainfall28 mm to 74 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
Copenhagen
4
4
7
12
17
20
23
22
18
13
8
5
Shanghai
9
11
15
21
26
28
33
33
29
23
18
12
Sea temperature, °C
Copenhagen
3
2
3
6
10
14
17
18
15
12
9
5
Shanghai
8
7
10
14
19
22
26
28
26
21
17
12
Rainfall, mm
Copenhagen
44
32
30
28
47
60
59
74
59
61
49
47
Shanghai
69
65
88
72
84
192
151
216
97
64
53
43
Daylight, hours per day
Copenhagen
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
8
7
Shanghai
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Copenhagen
No sunshine record
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. Copenhagen: 1991-2020 normals, Koebenhavn / Landbohoejskolen (2.4 km from centre). Shanghai: 1991-2020 normals, Shanghai / Hongqiao (8.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCopenhagenShanghai
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 50 m
€55-95
CPH · 8 km
11 h 30 m
€528-630
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 20 m
€90-98
1 stop
CPH · 8 km
9 h 50 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
TokyoHND, NRT
10 h 55 m
no fares
CPH · 8 km
2 h 45 m
€326-382
PVG · 33 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 25 m
€167-221
CPH · 8 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 10 m
no fares
CPH · 8 km
2 h 0 m
€150-154
PVG · 33 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 50 m
€70-135
CPH · 8 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€195-237
CPH · 8 km
10 h 5 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 0 m
€78-118
CPH · 8 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 55 m
€460-501
1 stop
CPH · 8 km
14 h 40 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 20 m
€338-366
1 stop
CPH · 8 km
8 h 15 m
€508-557
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

MeasureCopenhagenShanghai
Official languageDanishPutonghua
CurrencyDanish Krone (DKK)Yuan Renminbi (CNY)
SocketsCEFK230 V, 50 HzACI220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+8
Emergency number112Police 110, ambulance 120, fire 119
Elevation14 m4 m
Main airportCopenhagen Kastrup Airport (CPH)8 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsShanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)33 km from centre200 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days6 days

By the numbers

MeasureCopenhagenShanghai
City population667,09924,870,895
People per km²7,3393,922
Museums within 10 km7244
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km50
Distinct cuisines in the centre8264
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 Copenhagen 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). 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 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.