VacationSelector

San Sebastian or Shanghai?

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

Your match

San Sebastian
51
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips 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.

San SebastianShanghai
Beaches & swimming. San Sebastian leads by 38 points.38
San SebastianShanghai
Score5517
Swim season months25
Beaches 10 km100
Coast distance0 km18 km
Water distance0 km18 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Museums & heritage. Shanghai leads by 6 points.6
San SebastianShanghai
Score3945
Museums within 10 km17108
Museums within 2 km of centre728
Share of museums within 2 km %4126
Unesco sites within 50 km30
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 14 points.14
San SebastianShanghai
Score5642
Protected land share 50 km %119
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5282
Park area within 2 km70 hectares83 hectares
Good for families. Shanghai leads by 51 points.51
San SebastianShanghai
Score3081
Tourist attractions within 2 km586
Park area within 2 km70 hectares83 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km110
Sights concentration. San Sebastian leads by 3 points.3
San SebastianShanghai
Score5451
Notable places within 2 km8973
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Shanghai leads by 8 points.8
San SebastianShanghai
Score7179
Price level global60.849
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Shanghai leads by 7 points.7
San SebastianShanghai
Score5865
Monthly daytime high11.2 °C to 22.9 °C8.5 °C to 33.2 °C
Monthly rainfall92 mm to 203 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
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Shanghai
9
11
15
21
26
28
33
33
29
23
18
12
Sea temperature, °C
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Shanghai
8
7
10
14
19
22
26
28
26
21
17
12
Rainfall, mm
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Shanghai
69
65
88
72
84
192
151
216
97
64
53
43
Daylight, hours per day
San Sebastian
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
San Sebastian
3
4
5
5
7
6
7
6
6
5
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. San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre). Shanghai: 1991-2020 normals, Shanghai / Hongqiao (8.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan SebastianShanghai
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
11 h 5 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
MadridMAD
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
12 h 45 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
11 h 30 m
€528-630
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
12 h 15 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
LisbonLIS
1 h 30 m
€129-223
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
13 h 20 m
no fares
HGH · 149 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 75 km
10 h 5 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
14 h 40 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

MeasureSan SebastianShanghai
Official languageSpanishPutonghua
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Yuan Renminbi (CNY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzACI220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+8
Emergency number112Police 110, ambulance 120, fire 119
Elevation6 m4 m
Main airportSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinationsShanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)33 km from centre200 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days6 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan SebastianShanghai
City population189,86624,870,895
People per km²3,1183,922
Museums within 10 km1444
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre4564
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 San Sebastian 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.