VacationSelector

Shanghai or Valletta?

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.

Valletta
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage 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.

ShanghaiValletta
Beaches & swimming. Valletta leads by 60 points.60
ShanghaiValletta
Score1777
Swim season months56
Beaches 10 km022
Coast distance18 km0 km
Water distance18 km0 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Museums & heritage. Valletta leads by 16 points.16
ShanghaiValletta
Score4561
Museums within 10 km10846
Museums within 2 km of centre2829
Share of museums within 2 km %2663
Unesco sites within 50 km03
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Nature & day trips. Valletta leads by 4 points.4
ShanghaiValletta
Score4246
Protected land share 50 km %9
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %826
Park area within 2 km83 hectares24 hectares
Good for families. Shanghai leads by 35 points.35
ShanghaiValletta
Score8146
Tourist attractions within 2 km8632
Park area within 2 km83 hectares24 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km101
Sights concentration. Valletta leads by 10 points.10
ShanghaiValletta
Score5161
Notable places within 2 km73133
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Shanghai leads by 10 points.10
ShanghaiValletta
Score7969
Price level global4962.8
Daily budget€129
Year-round weather. Valletta leads by 14 points.14
ShanghaiValletta
Score6579
Monthly daytime high8.5 °C to 33.2 °C15.7 °C to 31.9 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 216 mm0 mm to 90 mm
Dry months06
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
Valletta
16
16
17
20
24
29
32
32
29
25
21
17
Sea temperature, °C
Shanghai
8
7
10
14
19
22
26
28
26
21
17
12
Valletta
16
15
15
16
19
22
25
27
26
24
21
18
Rainfall, mm
Shanghai
69
65
88
72
84
192
151
216
97
64
53
43
Valletta
80
72
39
19
10
5
0
10
63
74
90
85
Daylight, hours per day
Shanghai
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Valletta
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Shanghai
4
4
5
5
6
4
6
6
5
5
4
4
Valletta
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
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). Valletta: 1991-2020 normals, Luqa (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromShanghaiValletta
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 30 m
€528-630
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
3 h 10 m
€91-131
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
RomeFCO, CIA
11 h 25 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
1 h 30 m
€37-71
MLA · 6 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 35 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
2 h 45 m
€99-132
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
11 h 25 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
2 h 5 m
€62-92
MLA · 6 km
ManchesterMAN
11 h 30 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
MunichMUC
11 h 0 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
2 h 20 m
€165-259
MLA · 6 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 5 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
11 h 15 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
2 h 50 m
€83-115
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
8 h 15 m
€508-557
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
5 h 25 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
14 h 40 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
9 h 20 m
no fares
MLA · 6 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

MeasureShanghaiValletta
Official languagePutonghuaEnglish, Maltese
CurrencyYuan Renminbi (CNY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsACI220 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+8UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, ambulance 120, fire 119112
Elevation4 m56 m
Main airportShanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)33 km from centre200 non-stop destinationsMalta International Airport (MLA)6 km from centre109 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year6 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureShanghaiValletta
City population24,870,8956,444
People per km²3,9228,055
Museums within 10 km4415
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km03
Distinct cuisines in the centre6455
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months6 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Shanghai or Valletta 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.