VacationSelector

Rotterdam or Shanghai?

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

Your match

Too close to call, level with your weighting

Rotterdam
54
match

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

Shanghai
54
match

Wins on value for money 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.

RotterdamShanghai
Beaches & swimming. Rotterdam leads by 20 points.20
RotterdamShanghai
Score3717
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km220
Coast distance24 km18 km
Water distance24 km18 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 15 points.15
RotterdamShanghai
Score6045
Museums within 10 km41108
Museums within 2 km of centre2028
Share of museums within 2 km %4926
Unesco sites within 50 km50
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Nature & day trips. Rotterdam and Shanghai are level on 42.
RotterdamShanghai
Score4242
Protected land share 50 km %109
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7982
Park area within 2 km61 hectares83 hectares
Good for families. Shanghai leads by 19 points.19
RotterdamShanghai
Score6281
Tourist attractions within 2 km2786
Park area within 2 km61 hectares83 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km810
Sights concentration. Rotterdam and Shanghai are level on 51.
RotterdamShanghai
Score5151
Notable places within 2 km7473
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Shanghai leads by 21 points.21
RotterdamShanghai
Score5879
Price level global79.249
Daily budget€181
Year-round weather. Shanghai leads by 9 points.9
RotterdamShanghai
Score5665
Monthly daytime high6.2 °C to 22.1 °C8.5 °C to 33.2 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 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
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Shanghai
9
11
15
21
26
28
33
33
29
23
18
12
Sea temperature, °C
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Shanghai
8
7
10
14
19
22
26
28
26
21
17
12
Rainfall, mm
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Shanghai
69
65
88
72
84
192
151
216
97
64
53
43
Daylight, hours per day
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Shanghai
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Rotterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
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. Rotterdam: 1993-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Rotterdam Airport Zestienhoven (3.9 km from centre). Shanghai: 1991-2020 normals, Shanghai / Hongqiao (8.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromRotterdamShanghai
DublinDUB
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
12 h 45 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
8 h 15 m
€508-557
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 47 km
11 h 30 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
14 h 40 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 0 m
€156-208
AMS · 47 km
9 h 50 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
ChengduTFU, CTU
10 h 10 m
no fares
BRU · 113 km
2 h 35 m
€216-247
PVG · 33 km
Buenos AiresEZE, AEP
14 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
23 h 45 m
€1,545-1873
2 stops
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

MeasureRotterdamShanghai
Official languageDutchPutonghua
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Yuan Renminbi (CNY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzACI220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+8
Emergency number112 or 911Police 110, ambulance 120, fire 119
Elevation10 m4 m
Main airportRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinationsShanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)33 km from centre200 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days6 days

By the numbers

MeasureRotterdamShanghai
City population664,31124,870,895
People per km²2,0803,922
Museums within 10 km4044
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km50
Distinct cuisines in the centre7764
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone5 months

Where else could you go?

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