How much does it cost to live extremely well in Shanghai? Quite a lot, according to people whose clients are professionally familiar with the subject.

Swiss private bank Julius Baer has published its Global Wealth & Lifestyle Report 2026, ranking the cost of luxury living across 25 cities.

Singapore took first place for the fourth consecutive year, followed by Zurich, Monaco, Hong Kong and London. Shanghai came sixth – ahead of Paris, Sydney, Milan and Bangkok.

The report tracks 20 high-end goods and services, including residential property, cars, watches, jewellery, business-class flights, private schools, hotel suites and fine dining. It is aimed at high-net-worth individuals, not anyone currently comparing vegetable prices on Hema.

As someone who lives between Shanghai and Milan, the result made me curious. At first glance, Milan – and quite a few other European cities – often feel significantly more expensive.

We couldn't reproduce Julius Baer's index. The report explains its general methodology, but it doesn't identify the individual apartments, schools or restaurants used in each city.

So we treated the report less as something to prove or disprove, and more as an excuse to ask a practical question:

So what do three major parts of Shanghai life—dinner, rent and international school—actually cost compared with other cities on the list?

This is not science. We picked things that people might realistically rent, book or send their children to, checked publicly available prices and converted them into renminbi.

So, yeah. Basically journalism.

the Fancy Dinner

One category in the Julius Baer report particularly stood out: Shanghai was ranked the most expensive city in the world for fine dining.

More expensive than Paris. More expensive than Hong Kong. More expensive than Monaco.

Really?

We recently published a guide to Shanghai's best chef's tables, where menus ranged from 1,388rmb at Nabi to 2,888rmb at Tai'an Table.

So we spent days painstakingly researching menus around the world asked ChatGPT to conduct a quick scan of publicly available menus.

It found €400–500 tasting menus at several celebrated Paris restaurants. Three-Michelin-starred Caprice in Hong Kong charges HKD 4,228 plus service, or approximately 4,000rmb including 10% service. In Monaco, the longer menu at Le Louis XV costs €420—around 3,300rmb.

Restaurant comparisons are messy, obviously. The number of courses varies, wine pairings may or may not be included, and an eight-seat chef's counter is not the same product as a three-Michelin-starred dining room inside a European palace.

Our original Shanghai article also wasn't intended as a list of the city's most expensive restaurants. We picked chef's tables that people we know actually visit. We didn't call every luxury hotel or ask Da Vittorio for the maximum amount it was possible to spend.

So, Which Shanghai Restaurants Did They Use?

Julius Baer says it selects three-Michelin-starred restaurants where possible, followed by restaurants in The World's 50 Best Restaurants.

When its prices were collected in February 2026, Tai'an Table was Shanghai's only operating three-Michelin-starred restaurant. It therefore seems a likely part of the sample.

Our guess for another candidate is Da Vittorio. The two-Michelin-starred Italian restaurant currently charges 2,388rmb for seven courses or 3,388rmb for its fourteen-course Carte Blanche, plus 10% service.

Even using those two restaurants as a plausible Shanghai sample, Shanghai does not look clearly more expensive than Paris, Hong Kong or Monaco.

But that is the problem with a sample of two unidentified restaurants: the result is extremely sensitive to which two get selected.

So we wouldn't read the ranking as meaning dinner in Shanghai generally costs more than dinner in Paris. It means the two Shanghai restaurants they chose came out more expensive than the two they chose in Paris. We just don't know which restaurants any of them were.

Interesting, yes. Definitive? Well.

The Nice Home

Housing is more relevant to SmartShanghai—and to anyone planning to live extremely well for longer than one dinner.

Again, we couldn't compare directly with Julius Baer's residential-property index. Instead, we looked at current asking rents for four three-bedroom homes of roughly 150–200sqm in desirable, internationally popular neighborhoods in each city.

For Shanghai, we used four current SmartShanghai listings:

• A furnished 160sqm apartment near Xintiandi: 29,800rmb per month

• A new 190sqm Pudong riverside apartment: 35,800rmb

• A 180sqm apartment near Yu Garden: 35,000rmb

• A modern 147sqm apartment at Ladoll: 31,800rmb

That gives Shanghai a median asking rent of approximately 33,400rmb per month.

We then looked for broadly comparable homes in Milan, Singapore and Hong Kong. Milan comes to around 39,700rmb, but you usually pay condo fees and end up around 44,000rmb. Singapore comes to around 48,400 rmb andHong Kong to, wait for it .. 80,600rmb for that type of apartment.

No, these apartments aren't identical. Shanghai listings generally quote gross construction area, while Hong Kong listings often use net usable area. Shanghai homes were furnished; several Milan apartments were not.

But the overall difference is large enough to be meaningful.

A spacious, furnished, centrally located Shanghai apartment costing around 30,000–36,000rmb per month would generally cost more in Milan, substantially more in Singapore and dramatically more in Hong Kong.

The Hong Kong figure is especially brutal—and because its sizes are commonly quoted as net area, those apartments may also provide more genuinely usable space than their nominally similar Shanghai counterparts.

Still, housing is the category in which Shanghai looks like a relative bargain.

Not a bargain in the normal meaning of that word, obviously. A bargain in the "person comparing 180sqm downtown apartments" meaning.

The School Fees

Housing makes Shanghai look relatively affordable. International education is where it starts fighting back.

Our older guide to Shanghai international-school fees had become, well, old. So we checked the schools' published fees for the 2026–27 academic year.

To keep the comparison vaguely sensible, we looked at senior-secondary day-school fees at three established international schools in Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong and Milan. We included unavoidable annual levies where possible, but left out buses, lunches, laptops and one-time admission charges.

School fees, naturally, come with their own set of footnotes. Different schools include different things, currencies move, and choosing a school is not like sorting washing machines by price on Taobao.

But the result was fairly clear.

At the Shanghai schools we checked, annual senior-school tuition ranged from 311,000rmb to 402,700rmb. The comparable range was approximately 291,000–307,000rmb in Singapore, 149,000–274,000rmb in Hong Kong and 195,000–222,000rmb in Milan.

So, yeah: unlike housing, Shanghai does look exceptionally expensive here. In our small sample, Shanghai came out on top—although its lower end was only slightly above Singapore's upper end.

There is one important complication. Julius Baer describes its education category as the price of full sixth-form boarding at a leading school in each city. That is not how most international families educate their children in Shanghai, Milan, Hong Kong or Singapore, and it is not what we compared.

Still, if the broader question is whether Shanghai's international-school system is expensive, the answer is considerably less mysterious.

Yes. Very.

So, Is Shanghai Really Number Six?

It depends on which part of "living well" you mean.

A large, centrally located apartment in Shanghai appears relatively affordable next to comparable options in Milan, Singapore and especially Hong Kong.

International-school tuition does not. Shanghai is right at the expensive end of our sample.

Fine dining remains harder to explain. Shanghai has enormously expensive restaurants, but so do Paris, Monaco and Hong Kong. With only two unidentified restaurants representing each city, a change in the sample could change the ranking completely.

Global lifestyle rankings are neat because they turn many complicated decisions into one satisfying number. But nobody actually lives inside an index. People rent particular apartments, choose particular schools and eat at particular restaurants.

Shanghai may officially be the world's sixth-most expensive city for living well, according to Julius Baer.

In practice, it can be relatively affordable right up until you have a teenager and would like them to receive an IB diploma.

Then it gets expensive very quickly.