VacationSelector

Shanghai or Washington DC?

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, 2 points apart

Shanghai
54
match

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

Washington DC
52
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.

ShanghaiWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Washington DC leads by 1 points.1
ShanghaiWashington DC
Score1718
Swim season months53
Beaches 10 km01
Coast distance18 km34 km
Water distance18 km34 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 10 points.10
ShanghaiWashington DC
Score4555
Museums within 10 km10883
Museums within 2 km of centre2855
Share of museums within 2 km %2666
Unesco sites within 50 km00
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Nature & day trips. Shanghai and Washington DC are level on 42.
ShanghaiWashington DC
Score4242
Protected land share 50 km %910
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %8294
Park area within 2 km83 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Shanghai leads by 43 points.43
ShanghaiWashington DC
Score8138
Tourist attractions within 2 km867
Park area within 2 km83 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km101
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 25 points.25
ShanghaiWashington DC
Score5176
Notable places within 2 km73305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Shanghai leads by 36 points.36
ShanghaiWashington DC
Score7943
Price level global49100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Shanghai leads by 3 points.3
ShanghaiWashington DC
Score6562
Monthly daytime high8.5 °C to 33.2 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 216 mm65 mm to 108 mm
Dry months00
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
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Shanghai
8
7
10
14
19
22
26
28
26
21
17
12
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Shanghai
69
65
88
72
84
192
151
216
97
64
53
43
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Shanghai
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Shanghai
4
4
5
5
6
4
6
6
5
5
4
4
Washington DC
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Shanghai: 1991-2020 normals, Shanghai / Hongqiao (8.1 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromShanghaiWashington DC
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
14 h 40 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
TokyoHND, NRT
2 h 45 m
€326-382
PVG · 33 km
13 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
2 h 0 m
€150-154
PVG · 33 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
12 h 55 m
€606-798
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
5 h 0 m
€226-372
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
SeoulICN, GMP
1 h 40 m
€173-183
PVG · 33 km
13 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
14 h 5 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
11 h 30 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
5 h 5 m
€329-399
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 30 m
€528-630
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
14 h 35 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
8 h 15 m
€508-557
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
14 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 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

MeasureShanghaiWashington DC
Official languagePutonghua
CurrencyYuan Renminbi (CNY)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsACI220 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, ambulance 120, fire 119911
Elevation4 m72 m
Main airportShanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)33 km from centre200 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year6 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureShanghaiWashington DC
City population24,870,895689,545
People per km²3,9223,896
Museums within 10 km4499
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre6482
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months3 months

Where else could you go?

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