VacationSelector

Shanghai or Warsaw?

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 beaches & swimming and good for families with your weighting.

Warsaw
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on sights concentration 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.

ShanghaiWarsaw
Beaches & swimming. Shanghai leads by 17 points.17
ShanghaiWarsaw
Score170
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km026
Coast distance18 km238 km
Water distance18 km—
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Museums & heritage. Warsaw leads by 18 points.18
ShanghaiWarsaw
Score4563
Museums within 10 km108107
Museums within 2 km of centre2860
Share of museums within 2 km %2656
Unesco sites within 50 km01
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Nature & day trips. Warsaw leads by 13 points.13
ShanghaiWarsaw
Score4255
Protected land share 50 km %927
Landscape blanket share 50 km %019
Land share of disc %82100
Park area within 2 km83 hectares107 hectares
Good for families. Shanghai leads by 11 points.11
ShanghaiWarsaw
Score8170
Tourist attractions within 2 km8642
Park area within 2 km83 hectares107 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km105
Sights concentration. Warsaw leads by 25 points.25
ShanghaiWarsaw
Score5176
Notable places within 2 km73299
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Shanghai and Warsaw are level on 79.
ShanghaiWarsaw
Score7979
Price level global4949
Daily budget—€133
Year-round weather. Shanghai leads by 6 points.6
ShanghaiWarsaw
Score6559
Monthly daytime high8.5 °C to 33.2 °C0.9 °C to 25.2 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 216 mm29 mm to 83 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
Warsaw
1
3
7
15
20
23
25
25
19
13
7
2
Sea temperature, °C
Shanghai
8
7
10
14
19
22
26
28
26
21
17
12
Warsaw
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Shanghai
69
65
88
72
84
192
151
216
97
64
53
43
Warsaw
31
29
29
36
56
63
83
63
50
40
36
37
Daylight, hours per day
Shanghai
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Warsaw
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Shanghai
4
4
5
5
6
4
6
6
5
5
4
4
Warsaw
1
2
5
8
9
11
11
10
8
5
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Shanghai: 1991-2020 normals, Shanghai / Hongqiao (8.1 km from centre). Warsaw: 1991-2020 normals, Warszawa-Okecie (7.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromShanghaiWarsaw
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 30 m
€528-630
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
TokyoHND, NRT
2 h 45 m
€326-382
PVG · 33 km
10 h 45 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 35 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
2 h 0 m
€150-154
PVG · 33 km
8 h 50 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
AmsterdamAMS
11 h 10 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 5 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
8 h 15 m
€508-557
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
5 h 35 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
11 h 15 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
CopenhagenCPH
10 h 25 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
14 h 40 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
8 h 45 m
no fares
WAW · 8 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

MeasureShanghaiWarsaw
Official languagePutonghuaPolish
CurrencyYuan Renminbi (CNY)Zloty (PLN)
SocketsACI220 V, 50 HzCE50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, ambulance 120, fire 119112
Elevation4 m118 m
Main airportShanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)33 km from centre200 non-stop destinationsWarsaw Chopin Airport (WAW)8 km from centre170 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year6 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureShanghaiWarsaw
City population24,870,8951,862,402
People per km²3,9223,601
Museums within 10 km44117
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre6476
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 Warsaw 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.