VacationSelector

Seattle 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, 2 points apart

Seattle
52
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration 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.

SeattleShanghai
Beaches & swimming. Seattle leads by 43 points.43
SeattleShanghai
Score6017
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km1000
Coast distance1 km18 km
Water distance1 km18 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Museums & heritage. Shanghai leads by 9 points.9
SeattleShanghai
Score3645
Museums within 10 km28108
Museums within 2 km of centre1728
Share of museums within 2 km %6126
Unesco sites within 50 km00
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Nature & day trips. Shanghai leads by 2 points.2
SeattleShanghai
Score4042
Protected land share 50 km %99
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8082
Park area within 2 km63 hectares83 hectares
Good for families. Shanghai leads by 35 points.35
SeattleShanghai
Score4681
Tourist attractions within 2 km1786
Park area within 2 km63 hectares83 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km110
Sights concentration. Seattle leads by 1 points.1
SeattleShanghai
Score5251
Notable places within 2 km7673
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Shanghai leads by 36 points.36
SeattleShanghai
Score4379
Price level global10049
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Shanghai leads by 4 points.4
SeattleShanghai
Score6165
Monthly daytime high7.8 °C to 24.9 °C8.5 °C to 33.2 °C
Monthly rainfall15 mm to 160 mm43 mm to 216 mm
Dry months30
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
Seattle
8
10
12
15
19
21
25
25
22
15
11
8
Shanghai
9
11
15
21
26
28
33
33
29
23
18
12
Sea temperature, °C
Seattle
8
8
8
9
10
11
12
12
11
10
9
9
Shanghai
8
7
10
14
19
22
26
28
26
21
17
12
Rainfall, mm
Seattle
147
96
106
81
48
37
15
25
41
99
160
147
Shanghai
69
65
88
72
84
192
151
216
97
64
53
43
Daylight, hours per day
Seattle
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Shanghai
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Seattle
No sunshine record
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. Seattle: 1991-2020 normals, Seattle-Tacoma Airport (17.3 km from centre). Shanghai: 1991-2020 normals, Shanghai / Hongqiao (8.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSeattleShanghai
TokyoHND, NRT
9 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
2 h 45 m
€326-382
PVG · 33 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
2 h 30 m
€111-203
SEA · 18 km
12 h 55 m
€606-798
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 30 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
1 h 40 m
€173-183
PVG · 33 km
ChongqingCKG, CQW
12 h 35 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
2 h 25 m
€175-196
PVG · 33 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 55 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
2 h 0 m
€150-154
PVG · 33 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
9 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
11 h 30 m
€528-630
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 15 m
€300-424
SEA · 18 km
14 h 40 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
3 h 50 m
€204-286
1 stop
SEA · 18 km
14 h 35 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
San FranciscoSFO
1 h 55 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
12 h 15 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
14 h 40 m
€1,006-1077
2 stops
SEA · 18 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

MeasureSeattleShanghai
Official languagePutonghua
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Yuan Renminbi (CNY)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzACI220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC+8
Emergency number911Police 110, ambulance 120, fire 119
Elevation40 m4 m
Main airportSeattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)18 km from centre135 non-stop destinationsShanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)33 km from centre200 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days6 days

By the numbers

MeasureSeattleShanghai
City population737,01524,870,895
People per km²1,9963,922
Museums within 10 km2744
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre7864
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 Seattle 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.