Route brief · SFO → SHA
San Francisco → Shanghai
$541
round-trip · too little price history on this route to compare
Oct 20 – Dec 7 · 48 nights
Philippine Airlines1 stop
Cached fare — the booking search re-prices live before you pay.
Destination briefSHAShanghaiThe Bund on one bank, a science-fiction skyline on the other — and a visa-free transit window worth checking.Best windowMar–May · Sep–NovAirportsPudong (PVG) · Hongqiao (SHA)All routes into ShanghaiWhen this route gets cheap.
Best time to be in Shanghai: Mar–May · Sep–Nov. Fare history for this route is still thin, so we make no seasonal call yet.
The cheapest itinerary we are tracking makes one stop and takes about 17.5 hours outbound, on a 48-night trip — ticketed under Philippine Airlines, which on a connecting fare need not operate every leg. At $541 for 9,879 km each way, that works out to about $27 per 1,000 km flown. That is well under the $44 that long-haul fares on this board typically run. Across the 29 departure cities we track at a similar distance from Shanghai, this fare ranks 4th — 12% above the $482 from Istanbul. That puts it in the cheaper half of the 44 routes of similar length we watch out of San Francisco, where the middle fare is $816. We have 2 months of cached prices for this route so far — not enough to call a fare cheap or expensive, so we publish the price without a percentage.
The 3 days we hold a cached fare for
Tap a date → live search
The median cached fare across this calendar is 22% lower than when tracking began on Aug 8 — $744 then versus $584 now, across 6 recorded snapshots. This is a calendar-level trend, so an individual deal above can be lower. The lowest single day we have seen here is $410, on Sep 7.
These are the only days we have a cached price for on this route so far — not the only days it flies. The search above covers any date.
Route facts
- Airports
- SFO · Oakland (OAK) · San José (SJC) ↔ Pudong (PVG) · Hongqiao (SHA)
- Flight time
- ~17.5 hours outbound
- Distance
- ~9,879 km each way
- Airlines on the board
- Philippine Airlines
- Itineraries
- Connections on current fares
- Best months to visit
- Mar–May · Sep–Nov
SF → SHA, answered.
How far in advance should I book SF → Shanghai?
We do not publish a number for this, because we cannot measure it yet. Answering it honestly means watching the same departure date on this route over many weeks as it approaches, and that archive is still filling up — so any "book N days ahead" figure here would be borrowed from somewhere else rather than measured. See /guides/what-moves-a-flight-price/ for the levers we can measure.
Are there nonstop flights from San Francisco to Shanghai?
The current cheapest fares involve a connection, ticketed under Philippine Airlines. Nonstop options exist on many dates at higher prices — check the live search for your exact dates.
Are these prices guaranteed?
No — these are cached fares found on real searches (this one on September 1). Airlines reprice constantly, so the booking search re-checks the live price before you pay. Fresher finds are far more likely to still be available.
Next step
Sleeping in Shanghai?
Lock the flight first — then compare stays for Oct 20 – Dec 7 · 48 nights.
Browse hotels ↗
Missed it?
Cached fares expire. This route has a feed of its own — follow it and the next SF → SHA drop reaches you as soon as we find it.
Follow SF → SHA