VacationSelector

Osaka or Shanghai?

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

Your match

Osaka
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Shanghai
54
match

Wins on nature & day trips and good for families 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.

OsakaShanghai
Beaches & swimming. Osaka leads by 38 points.38
OsakaShanghai
Score5517
Swim season months55
Beaches 10 km250
Coast distance7 km18 km
Water distance7 km18 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Museums & heritage. Osaka leads by 19 points.19
OsakaShanghai
Score6445
Museums within 10 km78108
Museums within 2 km of centre2228
Share of museums within 2 km %2826
Unesco sites within 50 km60
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Nature & day trips. Shanghai leads by 14 points.14
OsakaShanghai
Score2842
Protected land share 50 km %19
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %8482
Park area within 2 km88 hectares83 hectares
Good for families. Shanghai leads by 9 points.9
OsakaShanghai
Score7281
Tourist attractions within 2 km4786
Park area within 2 km88 hectares83 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km710
Sights concentration. Shanghai leads by 3 points.3
OsakaShanghai
Score4851
Notable places within 2 km6373
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Shanghai leads by 9 points.9
OsakaShanghai
Score7079
Price level global62.449
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Shanghai leads by 2 points.2
OsakaShanghai
Score6365
Monthly daytime high9.7 °C to 33.6 °C8.5 °C to 33.2 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 185 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
Osaka
10
11
14
20
25
28
32
34
30
24
18
12
Shanghai
9
11
15
21
26
28
33
33
29
23
18
12
Sea temperature, °C
Osaka
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Shanghai
8
7
10
14
19
22
26
28
26
21
17
12
Rainfall, mm
Osaka
47
61
103
103
136
185
175
113
146
140
73
56
Shanghai
69
65
88
72
84
192
151
216
97
64
53
43
Daylight, hours per day
Osaka
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
14
12
11
10
10
Shanghai
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Osaka
5
5
6
6
7
5
6
7
5
5
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. Osaka: 1991-2020 normals, Osaka (1.8 km from centre). Shanghai: 1991-2020 normals, Shanghai / Hongqiao (8.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromOsakaShanghai
SeoulICN, GMP
1 h 40 m
€107-142
KIX · 38 km
1 h 40 m
€173-183
PVG · 33 km
TokyoHND, NRT
1 h 10 m
€118-135
ITM · 11 km
2 h 45 m
€326-382
PVG · 33 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
2 h 45 m
€327-334
KIX · 38 km
2 h 0 m
€150-154
PVG · 33 km
GuangzhouCAN
3 h 35 m
€339-364
1 stop
KIX · 38 km
2 h 5 m
€127-144
PVG · 33 km
SapporoCTS, OKD
1 h 55 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
Hong KongHKG
3 h 35 m
€254-314
KIX · 38 km
2 h 10 m
€153-159
PVG · 33 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
5 h 35 m
€288-317
KIX · 38 km
4 h 5 m
€170-196
PVG · 33 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
11 h 30 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
12 h 55 m
€606-798
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
11 h 30 m
€528-630
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
9 h 35 m
no fares
KIX · 38 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

MeasureOsakaShanghai
Official languageJapanesePutonghua
CurrencyYen (JPY)Yuan Renminbi (CNY)
SocketsAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the regionACI220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+9UTC+8
Emergency numberPolice 110, fire 119Police 110, ambulance 120, fire 119
Elevation20 m4 m
Main airportKansai International Airport (KIX)38 km from centre62 non-stop destinationsShanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)33 km from centre200 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days6 days

By the numbers

MeasureOsakaShanghai
City population2,751,86224,870,895
People per km²12,3403,922
Museums within 10 km4344
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km60
Distinct cuisines in the centre9764
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months5 months

Where else could you go?

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