VacationSelector

Los Angeles or Shanghai?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Los Angeles
53
match

Wins on year-round weather and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Shanghai
54
match

Wins on good for families 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.

Los AngelesShanghai
Beaches & swimming. Los Angeles leads by 12 points.12
Los AngelesShanghai
Score2917
Beaches 25 km11
Beaches 10 km00
Swim season months05
Warmest sea temp20.2 °C
Scoring variantbeachScoreWideRing
Declared2026-08-25
Registerseed/editorial-overrides.json
Coast distance18 km
Water distance18 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Museums & heritage. Los Angeles leads by 4 points.4
Los AngelesShanghai
Score4945
Museums within 10 km69108
Museums within 2 km of centre2328
Share of museums within 2 km %3326
Unesco sites within 50 km10
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Nature & day trips. Los Angeles leads by 20 points.20
Los AngelesShanghai
Score6242
Protected land share 50 km %269
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8082
Park area within 2 km20 hectares83 hectares
Good for families. Shanghai leads by 48 points.48
Los AngelesShanghai
Score3381
Tourist attractions within 2 km1186
Park area within 2 km20 hectares83 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km210
Sights concentration. Los Angeles leads by 3 points.3
Los AngelesShanghai
Score5451
Notable places within 2 km8873
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Shanghai leads by 36 points.36
Los AngelesShanghai
Score4379
Price level global10049
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Los Angeles leads by 22 points.22
Los AngelesShanghai
Score8765
Monthly daytime high18.6 °C to 24.7 °C8.5 °C to 33.2 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 76 mm43 mm to 216 mm
Dry months80
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
Los Angeles
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
24
22
19
Shanghai
9
11
15
21
26
28
33
33
29
23
18
12
Sea temperature, °C
Los Angeles
15
15
15
15
17
18
20
20
20
19
17
16
Shanghai
8
7
10
14
19
22
26
28
26
21
17
12
Rainfall, mm
Los Angeles
73
76
44
16
7
2
1
0
3
13
21
57
Shanghai
69
65
88
72
84
192
151
216
97
64
53
43
Daylight, hours per day
Los Angeles
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
10
10
Shanghai
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Los Angeles
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. Los Angeles: 1991-2020 normals, Los Angeles Airport (18.5 km from centre). Shanghai: 1991-2020 normals, Shanghai / Hongqiao (8.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLos AngelesShanghai
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 0 m
€785-892
1 stop
LAX · 19 km
2 h 45 m
€326-382
PVG · 33 km
ChengduTFU, CTU
14 h 15 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
2 h 35 m
€216-247
PVG · 33 km
San FranciscoSFO
1 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
12 h 15 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
12 h 30 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
2 h 0 m
€150-154
PVG · 33 km
GuangzhouCAN
14 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
2 h 5 m
€127-144
PVG · 33 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
14 h 40 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
ShenzhenSZX
14 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
2 h 5 m
€170-179
SHA · 14 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
2 h 30 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
11 h 30 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 0 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
11 h 30 m
€528-630
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
16 h 25 m
€964-1015
LAX · 19 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 2026-09 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

MeasureLos AngelesShanghai
Official languagePutonghua
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Yuan Renminbi (CNY)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzACI220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC+8
Emergency number911Police 110, ambulance 120, fire 119
Elevation106 m4 m
Main airportLos Angeles International Airport (LAX)19 km from centre180 non-stop destinationsShanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)33 km from centre200 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days6 days

By the numbers

MeasureLos AngelesShanghai
City population3,898,74724,870,895
People per km²2,9943,922
Museums within 10 km3844
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre4664
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 Los Angeles 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). 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.