By day, Metro Line 2 is the least painful option: one train into the city centre, priced by distance, at the cost of a slow, crowded ride and a same-platform change at Guanglan Road on some services. If you are in a hurry and travelling light, the maglev is far quicker, but it only takes you as far as Longyang Road, where you still change to the metro. Land late at night or before dawn and both the metro and the maglev have usually stopped running, leaving taxis, ride-hailing or night airport buses, plus a queue.

There are three practical ways in: a Shanghai metro ride code inside Alipay or WeChat Pay, a single-journey ticket from a station vending machine, or a stored-value card or travel pass. An eligible contactless foreign Visa, Mastercard, American Express or JCB card can also tap straight through the gates, provided small-amount password-free payment is enabled. Set up Alipay or WeChat Pay with your passport and a foreign card before you fly, or you may find yourself stuck at the gate on arrival.

The Shanghai metro starts early in the morning, and the last trains leave their originating stations in the late evening, after which the network is effectively closed. But a last train is set per line, per direction and per station, so there is no single network-wide closing time; the only time that matters is the last train from the station you are actually standing in, in the direction you are going. Check the station's first-and-last-train timetable or the notices beside the line map, or look the journey up in a map app on the day.

Locals in Shanghai mostly order cars through domestic ride-hailing apps rather than international platforms. Foreign visitors can use them, but only if the app is installed, registered and bound to a working payment method before departure; doing it after arrival is where the trouble starts. Anyone who has not set one up in advance can still get around on Shanghai's plentiful metered taxis.

There is no single answer, because in Shanghai the city is not one place: the riverside centre and the old city, the western commercial districts, and Pudong and the eastern side lie far apart, and one station exit does not serve them alike. The useful answer is not a duration but which part of Shanghai each option puts you in: the metro is cheapest and most predictable, while a taxi or a ride-hailing car is door to door but exposed to traffic. The time depends on your destination, the traffic and the time of day, and has to be checked on the day.

There is no answer here that can simply be copied: Pudong Airport sits on the eastern side of the city and the hub holding Hongqiao Railway Station and Hongqiao Airport sits on the western side, so the transfer is a crossing of the whole city, and a thin margin is the real risk. The options are rail, a taxi or a ride-hailing car, and shuttle services between the airports, whose existence, frequency and current operation all have to be verified. The useful answer is not how long it takes, but how much margin you have left between the two legs.

Yes. People drag suitcases in and out of Shanghai metro stations every day, the rules do not forbid luggage, and nobody stops you at the entrance for having a case. What decides how hard it is is not the rules but the station: escalators and lifts are not at every exit, the older central stations are deep and long, an interchange can be a long walk, and a case in a full carriage at the commuting peak is uncomfortable for everyone. One case and a backpack outside the peak is workable; a family with several large cases, or an arrival that lands in the peak, is a car journey.

Whether it is worth leaving depends on three things: which airport you land at, whether this connection means clearing immigration and dropping bags again, and how much margin the ticket leaves. No single duration fits every itinerary, so the timing has to be worked out for your own flights. The two airports sit very differently within the city, a through-ticket is not the same as a self-transfer and the latter needs far more margin, and leaving the airport means entering the country, so visa-free transit conditions must be checked against the current official rules before planning anything.