VacationSelector

Milan or Shanghai?

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

Your match

Milan
✓ Best match
63
match

Wins on museums & heritage and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Shanghai
54
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

MilanShanghai
Beaches & swimming. Shanghai leads by 17 points.17
MilanShanghai
Score017
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km40
Coast distance120 km18 km
Water distance18 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Museums & heritage. Milan leads by 29 points.29
MilanShanghai
Score7445
Museums within 10 km87108
Museums within 2 km of centre5528
Share of museums within 2 km %6326
Unesco sites within 50 km40
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Nature & day trips. Milan leads by 23 points.23
MilanShanghai
Score6542
Protected land share 50 km %309
Landscape blanket share 50 km %110
Land share of disc %10082
Park area within 2 km102 hectares83 hectares
Good for families. Shanghai leads by 4 points.4
MilanShanghai
Score7781
Tourist attractions within 2 km7686
Park area within 2 km102 hectares83 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km510
Sights concentration. Milan leads by 23 points.23
MilanShanghai
Score7451
Notable places within 2 km26673
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Shanghai leads by 11 points.11
MilanShanghai
Score6879
Price level global64.949
Daily budget€155
Year-round weather. Shanghai leads by 1 points.1
MilanShanghai
Score6465
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 28.6 °C8.5 °C to 33.2 °C
Monthly rainfall44 mm to 127 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
Milan
7
10
15
17
23
26
29
28
24
18
11
7
Shanghai
9
11
15
21
26
28
33
33
29
23
18
12
Sea temperature, °C
Milan
No coastline within reach
Shanghai
8
7
10
14
19
22
26
28
26
21
17
12
Rainfall, mm
Milan
54
44
50
78
102
75
57
83
116
113
127
49
Shanghai
69
65
88
72
84
192
151
216
97
64
53
43
Daylight, hours per day
Milan
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Shanghai
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Milan
3
4
5
6
7
7
9
8
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. Milan: 1991-2020 normals, Novara / Cameri (41.2 km from centre). Shanghai: 1991-2020 normals, Shanghai / Hongqiao (8.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMilanShanghai
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€48-103
MXP · 40 km
11 h 30 m
€528-630
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
ChengduTFU, CTU
10 h 10 m
no fares
MXP · 40 km
2 h 35 m
€216-247
PVG · 33 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 20 m
€46-63
MXP · 40 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
TokyoHND, NRT
12 h 10 m
no fares
MXP · 40 km
2 h 45 m
€326-382
PVG · 33 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 30 m
€34-53
MXP · 40 km
12 h 15 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 10 m
€710-815
1 stop
MXP · 40 km
2 h 0 m
€150-154
PVG · 33 km
ChongqingCKG, CQW
10 h 25 m
no fares
MXP · 40 km
2 h 25 m
€175-196
PVG · 33 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 15 m
€116-135
LIN · 7 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 15 m
€542-635
1 stop
MXP · 40 km
14 h 40 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 10 m
€375-563
MXP · 40 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

MeasureMilanShanghai
Official languageItalianPutonghua
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Yuan Renminbi (CNY)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzACI220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+8
Emergency number112Police 110, ambulance 120, fire 119
Elevation138 m4 m
Main airportMilan Malpensa International Airport (MXP)40 km from centre203 non-stop destinationsShanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)33 km from centre200 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days6 days

By the numbers

MeasureMilanShanghai
City population1,354,19624,870,895
People per km²7,4533,922
Museums within 10 km8744
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km40
Distinct cuisines in the centre7964
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Milan 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. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.