Shanghai or Beijing?
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, 1 point apart
Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.
Wins on museums & heritage and year-round weather with your weighting.
What matters to you?
Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.
The verdict
Choose Beijing if heritage is the reason for the trip: it has 6 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach where Shanghai has none, plus generous park space near the centre and long dry spells in its best months.
Choose Shanghai if you want a milder winter, at about 9°C in January against Beijing's 2°C, more protected countryside for day trips, and a denser set of attractions near the centre.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Shanghai leads by 17 points.17
| Shanghai | Beijing | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 17 | 0 |
| Swim season months | 5 | 0 |
| Beaches 10 km | 0 | 0 |
| Coast distance | 18 km | 145 km |
| Water distance | 18 km | — |
Museums & heritage. Beijing leads by 18 points.18
| Shanghai | Beijing | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 45 | 63 |
| Museums within 10 km | 108 | 95 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 28 | 15 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 26 | 16 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 0 | 6 |
Nature & day trips. Shanghai leads by 7 points.7
| Shanghai | Beijing | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 42 | 35 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 9 | 3 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 0 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 82 | 100 |
| Park area within 2 km | 83 hectares | 143 hectares |
Good for families. Shanghai leads by 4 points.4
| Shanghai | Beijing | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 81 | 77 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 86 | 41 |
| Park area within 2 km | 83 hectares | 143 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 10 | 12 |
Sights concentration. Shanghai leads by 1 points.1
| Shanghai | Beijing | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 51 | 50 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 73 | 69 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Shanghai and Beijing are level on 79.
| Shanghai | Beijing | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 79 | 79 |
| Price level global | 49 | 49 |
| Daily budget | — | — |
Year-round weather. Beijing leads by 1 points.1
| Shanghai | Beijing | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 65 | 66 |
| Monthly daytime high | 8.5 °C to 33.2 °C | 2.2 °C to 31.8 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 43 mm to 216 mm | 3 mm to 163 mm |
| Dry months | 0 | 8 |
Where they differ
Beijing carries the heritage weight: about as many museums as Shanghai, but 6 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach where Shanghai has none. It also has about twice as much park space near the centre, and a drier calendar, with 8 months at 40mm or less.
Shanghai leads outdoors: 9% of the land around it is protected against 3% around Beijing, and 5 months of sea at 21°C or more, where Beijing has none. It also has about twice as many tourist attractions near the centre.
Where they are alike
Both put a similar number of notable places within walking distance of the centre, so in either city a stay built around walking still fills several days.
The same holds for weather and family travel. Both are warmest in July and coolest in January, with a long warm stretch from spring into autumn, and both have attractions and parkland near the centre plus 10 or more theme parks within reach.
Which traveller are you?
If old buildings and the story behind them are the point, Beijing. The two hold comparable museum collections, but only Beijing puts 6 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, and it has the greener centre.
Families with young children will find more packed into a short radius in Shanghai, with about twice as many attractions near the centre. Beijing answers with far more park space and slightly more theme parks within reach.
For walking, countryside and days out of town, Shanghai has three times the share of protected land around it, and sea reaching 28°C in August, though neither city has a beach close by.
What the numbers don't tell you
Treat the value figure as noise. It reflects a national price level, identical for both cities by construction, and no daily budget figure exists for either, so no cost comparison between Beijing and Shanghai is possible here. What you spend will turn on your own choices, not on this comparison.
Shanghai's warm sea reads better than it lives: neither city has a beach nearby, so 5 months of sea at 21°C or more matter little without a trip out to find water worth swimming in. And in both cities the warmest months are also the wettest, so peak heat and peak rain arrive together.
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.
Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Shanghai: 1991-2020 normals, Shanghai / Hongqiao (8.1 km from centre). Beijing: 1991-2020 normals, Beijing (11.1 km from centre).
Beijing is at its best in April and May, when highs run 21-27°C and rain sits at 23-38mm; early autumn is close behind. July is the month to skip, hot and heavy with 163mm.
Shanghai's better window is October, when the heat eases and rain is at its lowest of the warm half-year. Its winter is the milder of the two but far from dry: January brings 69mm against Beijing's 3mm, and August is the wettest month at 216mm.
Getting there
| Flying from | Shanghai | Beijing |
|---|---|---|
| ChengduTFU, CTU | 2 h 35 m €216-247 PVG · 33 km | 2 h 25 m €217-253 PKX · 45 km |
| ChongqingCKG, CQW | 2 h 25 m €175-196 PVG · 33 km | 2 h 20 m no fares PKX · 45 km |
| TokyoHND, NRT | 2 h 45 m €326-382 PVG · 33 km | 3 h 10 m €312-367 PEK · 25 km |
| ShenzhenSZX | 2 h 5 m €170-179 SHA · 14 km | 2 h 55 m €220-303 PKX · 45 km |
| SeoulICN, GMP | 1 h 40 m €173-183 PVG · 33 km | 1 h 45 m €180-197 PKX · 45 km |
| GuangzhouCAN | 2 h 5 m €127-144 PVG · 33 km | 2 h 50 m €184-282 PKX · 45 km |
| Hong KongHKG | 2 h 10 m €153-159 PVG · 33 km | 2 h 55 m €151-190 PKX · 45 km |
| VladivostokVVO | 2 h 35 m no fares PVG · 33 km | 2 h 15 m €140-284 PKX · 45 km |
| DohaDOH | 8 h 40 m no fares PVG · 33 km | 7 h 55 m €595-787 3 stops PKX · 45 km |
| TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ | 14 h 5 m no fares PVG · 33 km | 13 h 5 m €1,020-1172 2 stops PEK · 25 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
| Measure | Shanghai | Beijing |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | Putonghua | Putonghua |
| Currency | Yuan Renminbi (CNY) | Yuan Renminbi (CNY) |
| Sockets | ACI220 V, 50 Hz | ACI220 V, 50 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Right |
| Time zone | UTC+8 | UTC+8 |
| Emergency number | Police 110, ambulance 120, fire 119 | Police 110, ambulance 120, fire 119 |
| Elevation | 4 m | 43 m |
| Main airport | Shanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)33 km from centre200 non-stop destinations | Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK)25 km from centre88 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 6 days | 6 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Shanghai | Beijing |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 24,870,895 | 21,893,095 |
| People per km² | 3,922 | 1,334 |
| Museums within 10 km | 44 | 83 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 0 | 6 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 64 | 29 |
| Swim season, months above 21 °C | 5 months | – |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Shanghai or Beijing somewhere new.