VacationSelector

Montpellier or Shanghai?

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

Your match

Montpellier
47
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather with your weighting.

Shanghai
✓ Best match
54
match

Wins on good for families and museums & heritage 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.

MontpellierShanghai
Beaches & swimming. Montpellier leads by 15 points.15
MontpellierShanghai
Score3217
Swim season months25
Beaches 10 km80
Coast distance9 km18 km
Water distance9 km18 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Museums & heritage. Shanghai leads by 19 points.19
MontpellierShanghai
Score2645
Museums within 10 km14108
Museums within 2 km of centre328
Share of museums within 2 km %2126
Unesco sites within 50 km20
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Nature & day trips. Montpellier leads by 1 points.1
MontpellierShanghai
Score4342
Protected land share 50 km %159
Landscape blanket share 50 km %100
Land share of disc %7082
Park area within 2 km55 hectares83 hectares
Good for families. Shanghai leads by 37 points.37
MontpellierShanghai
Score4481
Tourist attractions within 2 km886
Park area within 2 km55 hectares83 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km710
Sights concentration. Shanghai leads by 13 points.13
MontpellierShanghai
Score3851
Notable places within 2 km3573
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Shanghai leads by 17 points.17
MontpellierShanghai
Score6279
Price level global73.749
Daily budget€160—
Year-round weather. Montpellier leads by 9 points.9
MontpellierShanghai
Score7465
Monthly daytime high12 °C to 29.6 °C8.5 °C to 33.2 °C
Monthly rainfall17 mm to 93 mm43 mm to 216 mm
Dry months50
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
Montpellier
12
13
16
19
23
27
30
29
25
21
16
13
Shanghai
9
11
15
21
26
28
33
33
29
23
18
12
Sea temperature, °C
Montpellier
12
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
20
18
16
14
Shanghai
8
7
10
14
19
22
26
28
26
21
17
12
Rainfall, mm
Montpellier
56
35
39
56
46
33
17
36
88
93
78
59
Shanghai
69
65
88
72
84
192
151
216
97
64
53
43
Daylight, hours per day
Montpellier
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Shanghai
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Montpellier
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
10
8
6
5
5
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. Montpellier: 1991-2020 normals, Montpellier (7.8 km from centre). Shanghai: 1991-2020 normals, Shanghai / Hongqiao (8.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMontpellierShanghai
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 25 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
MadridMAD
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
12 h 45 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
MunichMUC
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 10 m
€136-184
1 stop
MRS · 109 km
13 h 20 m
no fares
HGH · 149 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
11 h 30 m
€528-630
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
11 h 5 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
1 h 40 m
€173-183
PVG · 33 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
1 h 35 m
no fares
FNI · 46 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
CasablancaCMN
2 h 25 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
13 h 45 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

MeasureMontpellierShanghai
Official languageFrenchPutonghua
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Yuan Renminbi (CNY)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzACI220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+8
Emergency number112Police 110, ambulance 120, fire 119
Elevation7 m4 m
Main airportMontpellier-Méditerranée Airport (MPL)8 km from centre36 non-stop destinationsShanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)33 km from centre200 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days6 days

By the numbers

MeasureMontpellierShanghai
City population310,24024,870,895
People per km²5,4523,922
Museums within 10 km1444
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre6564
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Montpellier 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). 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. 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.