VacationSelector

Montreal or Shanghai?

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

Your match

Montreal
47
match

Wins on sights concentration with your weighting.

Shanghai
✓ Best match
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.

MontrealShanghai
Beaches & swimming. Shanghai leads by 17 points.17
MontrealShanghai
Score017
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km70
Coast distance276 km18 km
Water distance18 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Museums & heritage. Shanghai leads by 8 points.8
MontrealShanghai
Score3745
Museums within 10 km39108
Museums within 2 km of centre1928
Share of museums within 2 km %4926
Unesco sites within 50 km00
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Nature & day trips. Shanghai leads by 6 points.6
MontrealShanghai
Score3642
Protected land share 50 km %29
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10082
Park area within 2 km189 hectares83 hectares
Good for families. Shanghai leads by 31 points.31
MontrealShanghai
Score5081
Tourist attractions within 2 km1186
Park area within 2 km189 hectares83 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km110
Sights concentration. Montreal leads by 5 points.5
MontrealShanghai
Score5651
Notable places within 2 km9873
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Shanghai leads by 25 points.25
MontrealShanghai
Score5479
Price level global8449
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Shanghai leads by 15 points.15
MontrealShanghai
Score5065
Monthly daytime high-3.5 °C to 26.5 °C8.5 °C to 33.2 °C
Monthly rainfall69 mm to 121 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
Montreal
-3
-3
3
11
19
24
27
26
22
13
6
-1
Shanghai
9
11
15
21
26
28
33
33
29
23
18
12
Sea temperature, °C
Montreal
No coastline within reach
Shanghai
8
7
10
14
19
22
26
28
26
21
17
12
Rainfall, mm
Montreal
84
69
89
121
89
107
98
109
88
100
85
94
Shanghai
69
65
88
72
84
192
151
216
97
64
53
43
Daylight, hours per day
Montreal
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
Montreal
3
4
6
6
8
8
9
8
7
4
3
3
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. Montreal: 1991-2020 normals, Montreal McTavish (3.2 km from centre). Shanghai: 1991-2020 normals, Shanghai / Hongqiao (8.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMontrealShanghai
TokyoHND, NRT
12 h 55 m
no fares
YUL · 16 km
2 h 45 m
€326-382
PVG · 33 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 20 m
€231-372
1 stop
YUL · 16 km
14 h 40 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 15 m
€133-276
YUL · 16 km
14 h 5 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 50 m
€447-599
1 stop
YUL · 16 km
11 h 30 m
€528-630
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
SeoulICN, GMP
13 h 5 m
no fares
YUL · 16 km
1 h 40 m
€173-183
PVG · 33 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 10 m
€308-372
YUL · 16 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
LisbonLIS
6 h 50 m
no fares
YUL · 16 km
13 h 20 m
no fares
HGH · 149 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
3 h 30 m
no fares
YUL · 16 km
14 h 35 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
5 h 0 m
€190-216
2 stops
YUL · 16 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
CasablancaCMN
7 h 20 m
no fares
YUL · 16 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 2026-08 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

MeasureMontrealShanghai
Official languageFrench, EnglishPutonghua
CurrencyCanadian Dollar (CAD)Yuan Renminbi (CNY)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzACI220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC+8
Emergency number911Police 110, ambulance 120, fire 119
Elevation31 m4 m
Main airportMontreal / Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport (YUL)16 km from centre164 non-stop destinationsShanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)33 km from centre200 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days6 days

By the numbers

MeasureMontrealShanghai
City population1,895,21124,870,895
People per km²3,8063,922
Museums within 10 km3744
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre9764
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 Montreal 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). 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.