VacationSelector

Shanghai or Valencia?

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

Your match

Shanghai
54
match

Wins on good for families and value for money with your weighting.

Valencia
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

ShanghaiValencia
Beaches & swimming. Valencia leads by 50 points.50
ShanghaiValencia
Score1767
Swim season months55
Beaches 10 km012
Coast distance18 km3 km
Water distance18 km3 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Museums & heritage. Valencia leads by 10 points.10
ShanghaiValencia
Score4555
Museums within 10 km10859
Museums within 2 km of centre2826
Share of museums within 2 km %2644
Unesco sites within 50 km02
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Nature & day trips. Valencia leads by 11 points.11
ShanghaiValencia
Score4253
Protected land share 50 km %910
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8264
Park area within 2 km83 hectares119 hectares
Good for families. Shanghai leads by 39 points.39
ShanghaiValencia
Score8142
Tourist attractions within 2 km8612
Park area within 2 km83 hectares119 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km100
Sights concentration. Valencia leads by 1 points.1
ShanghaiValencia
Score5152
Notable places within 2 km7378
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Shanghai leads by 8 points.8
ShanghaiValencia
Score7971
Price level global4960.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Valencia leads by 19 points.19
ShanghaiValencia
Score6584
Monthly daytime high8.5 °C to 33.2 °C16.8 °C to 30.6 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 216 mm7 mm to 70 mm
Dry months08
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
Shanghai
9
11
15
21
26
28
33
33
29
23
18
12
Valencia
17
17
19
21
24
28
30
31
28
25
20
17
Sea temperature, °C
Shanghai
8
7
10
14
19
22
26
28
26
21
17
12
Valencia
14
14
14
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Shanghai
69
65
88
72
84
192
151
216
97
64
53
43
Valencia
38
30
40
33
36
26
7
15
70
66
52
48
Daylight, hours per day
Shanghai
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Valencia
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Shanghai
4
4
5
5
6
4
6
6
5
5
4
4
Valencia
6
6
7
8
9
9
10
10
8
7
6
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Shanghai: 1991-2020 normals, Shanghai / Hongqiao (8.1 km from centre). Valencia: 1991-2020 normals, Valencia (1.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromShanghaiValencia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 30 m
€528-630
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
2 h 15 m
€80-167
VLC · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 35 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
1 h 55 m
€103-131
VLC · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
11 h 10 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
2 h 25 m
€155-178
VLC · 9 km
RomeFCO, CIA
11 h 25 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
2 h 0 m
€70-117
VLC · 9 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
11 h 25 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
1 h 50 m
€51-87
VLC · 9 km
MadridMAD
12 h 45 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
1 h 0 m
€69-81
VLC · 9 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
11 h 15 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
2 h 15 m
€110-139
VLC · 9 km
ZurichZRH
11 h 20 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
2 h 0 m
€151-206
1 stop
VLC · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 5 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
2 h 15 m
€128-199
1 stop
VLC · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
10 h 5 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
3 h 35 m
€167-378
VLC · 9 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

MeasureShanghaiValencia
Official languagePutonghuaSpanish
CurrencyYuan Renminbi (CNY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsACI220 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, ambulance 120, fire 119112
Elevation4 m15 m
Main airportShanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)33 km from centre200 non-stop destinationsValencia Airport (VLC)9 km from centre107 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year6 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureShanghaiValencia
City population24,870,895840,792
People per km²3,9226,242
Museums within 10 km4446
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km02
Distinct cuisines in the centre6492
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 Shanghai or Valencia 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.