VacationSelector

Manila or Shanghai?

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

Your match

Manila
✓ Best match
60
match

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

Shanghai
54
match

Wins on good for families and nature & day trips 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.

ManilaShanghai
Beaches & swimming. Manila leads by 59 points.59
ManilaShanghai
Score7617
Swim season months125
Beaches 10 km30
Coast distance2 km18 km
Water distance2 km18 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Museums & heritage. Manila leads by 5 points.5
ManilaShanghai
Score5045
Museums within 10 km77108
Museums within 2 km of centre2328
Share of museums within 2 km %3026
Unesco sites within 50 km10
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Nature & day trips. Shanghai leads by 13 points.13
ManilaShanghai
Score2942
Protected land share 50 km %49
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7882
Park area within 2 km54 hectares83 hectares
Good for families. Shanghai leads by 21 points.21
ManilaShanghai
Score6081
Tourist attractions within 2 km3786
Park area within 2 km54 hectares83 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km310
Sights concentration. Manila leads by 1 points.1
ManilaShanghai
Score5251
Notable places within 2 km7973
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Manila leads by 11 points.11
ManilaShanghai
Score9079
Price level global33.749
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Shanghai leads by 4 points.4
ManilaShanghai
Score6165
Monthly daytime high30.5 °C to 34.6 °C8.5 °C to 33.2 °C
Monthly rainfall24 mm to 564 mm43 mm to 216 mm
Dry months40
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
Manila
31
31
33
35
34
33
32
31
31
32
31
31
Shanghai
9
11
15
21
26
28
33
33
29
23
18
12
Sea temperature, °C
Manila
27
27
28
29
30
30
29
29
29
29
28
28
Shanghai
8
7
10
14
19
22
26
28
26
21
17
12
Rainfall, mm
Manila
26
24
40
36
220
314
487
564
509
297
152
109
Shanghai
69
65
88
72
84
192
151
216
97
64
53
43
Daylight, hours per day
Manila
11
12
12
13
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
Manila
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. Manila: 1991-2020 normals, Science Garden (6 km from centre). Shanghai: 1991-2020 normals, Shanghai / Hongqiao (8.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromManilaShanghai
TokyoHND, NRT
4 h 10 m
€304-317
MNL · 11 km
2 h 45 m
€326-382
PVG · 33 km
ChongqingCKG, CQW
3 h 20 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
2 h 25 m
€175-196
PVG · 33 km
SeoulICN, GMP
3 h 45 m
€191-223
MNL · 11 km
1 h 40 m
€173-183
PVG · 33 km
Hong KongHKG
2 h 0 m
€128-135
MNL · 11 km
2 h 10 m
€153-159
PVG · 33 km
ChengduTFU, CTU
3 h 30 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
2 h 35 m
€216-247
PVG · 33 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
4 h 5 m
€211-222
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
2 h 0 m
€150-154
PVG · 33 km
Kuala LumpurKUL, SZB
3 h 35 m
€159-184
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
5 h 10 m
€161-231
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
RiyadhRUH
9 h 50 m
€435-460
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
9 h 15 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
San FranciscoSFO
13 h 55 m
€628-629
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
12 h 15 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
13 h 20 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
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

MeasureManilaShanghai
Official languageEnglish, Filipino, TaglishPutonghua
CurrencyPhilippine Peso (PHP)Yuan Renminbi (CNY)
SocketsABC220 V, 60 HzACI220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC+8
Emergency number911Police 110, ambulance 120, fire 119
Elevation9 m4 m
Main airportNinoy Aquino International Airport (MNL)11 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsShanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)33 km from centre200 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year18 days6 days

By the numbers

MeasureManilaShanghai
City population1,902,59024,870,895
People per km²76,1043,922
Museums within 10 km2744
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre3964
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 Manila 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.