VacationSelector

Shanghai or Vienna?

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 value for money and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Vienna
✓ Best match
59
match

Wins on museums & heritage and sights concentration 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.

ShanghaiVienna
Beaches & swimming. Shanghai leads by 17 points.17
ShanghaiVienna
Score170
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km022
Coast distance18 km10,000 km
Water distance18 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Museums & heritage. Vienna leads by 36 points.36
ShanghaiVienna
Score4581
Museums within 10 km108192
Museums within 2 km of centre28110
Share of museums within 2 km %2657
Unesco sites within 50 km03
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Nature & day trips. Shanghai leads by 10 points.10
ShanghaiVienna
Score4232
Protected land share 50 km %94
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %82100
Park area within 2 km83 hectares93 hectares
Good for families. Shanghai leads by 12 points.12
ShanghaiVienna
Score8169
Tourist attractions within 2 km8646
Park area within 2 km83 hectares93 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km104
Sights concentration. Vienna leads by 24 points.24
ShanghaiVienna
Score5175
Notable places within 2 km73287
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Shanghai leads by 20 points.20
ShanghaiVienna
Score7959
Price level global4976.9
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. Shanghai leads by 4 points.4
ShanghaiVienna
Score6561
Monthly daytime high8.5 °C to 33.2 °C3.3 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 216 mm38 mm to 80 mm
Dry months01
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
Vienna
3
6
11
17
21
25
27
27
21
15
9
4
Sea temperature, °C
Shanghai
8
7
10
14
19
22
26
28
26
21
17
12
Vienna
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Shanghai
69
65
88
72
84
192
151
216
97
64
53
43
Vienna
42
38
52
42
80
70
78
71
64
47
46
46
Daylight, hours per day
Shanghai
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Vienna
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Shanghai
4
4
5
5
6
4
6
6
5
5
4
4
Vienna
2
4
5
7
8
8
9
9
6
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Shanghai: 1991-2020 normals, Shanghai / Hongqiao (8.1 km from centre). Vienna: 1991-2020 normals, Wien / Hohe Warte (4.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromShanghaiVienna
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 30 m
€528-630
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
2 h 10 m
€105-189
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
ChengduTFU, CTU
2 h 35 m
€216-247
PVG · 33 km
9 h 25 m
no fares
VIE · 18 km
TokyoHND, NRT
2 h 45 m
€326-382
PVG · 33 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
VIE · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 5 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
1 h 25 m
€143-152
VIE · 18 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
10 h 5 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
2 h 5 m
€121-285
VIE · 18 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
2 h 0 m
€150-154
PVG · 33 km
9 h 25 m
no fares
VIE · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 35 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
1 h 55 m
€112-162
VIE · 18 km
ShenzhenSZX
2 h 5 m
€170-179
SHA · 14 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
VIE · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
8 h 15 m
€508-557
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
5 h 40 m
€292-307
VIE · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
14 h 40 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
8 h 40 m
€736-786
1 stop
VIE · 18 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

MeasureShanghaiVienna
Official languagePutonghuaGerman, Austrian Sign Language
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 m151 m
Main airportShanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)33 km from centre200 non-stop destinationsVienna International Airport (VIE)18 km from centre204 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year6 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureShanghaiVienna
City population24,870,8952,028,289
People per km²3,9224,890
Museums within 10 km44152
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km03
Distinct cuisines in the centre64113
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

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