VacationSelector

Alicante or Reykjavik?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Alicante
✓ Best match
56
match

Wins on year-round weather and value for money with your weighting.

Reykjavik
46
match

Wins on sights concentration and nature & day trips 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.

AlicanteReykjavik
Beaches & swimming. Alicante leads by 17 points.17
AlicanteReykjavik
Score7760
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km3333
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Alicante leads by 17 points.17
AlicanteReykjavik
Score6649
Restaurants within 2 km of centre867261
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3129
Museums & heritage. Reykjavik leads by 8 points.8
AlicanteReykjavik
Score4250
Museums within 10 km1434
Museums within 2 km of centre1123
Share of museums within 2 km %7968
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Alicante leads by 24 points.24
AlicanteReykjavik
Score5127
Drinking venues within 4 km591192
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre488166
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8386
Nightclubs within 4 km5410
Nature & day trips. Reykjavik leads by 19 points.19
AlicanteReykjavik
Score4059
Protected land share 50 km %716
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5956
Park area within 2 km60 hectares28 hectares
Good for families. Alicante and Reykjavik are level on 42.
AlicanteReykjavik
Score4242
Tourist attractions within 2 km1321
Park area within 2 km60 hectares28 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Reykjavik leads by 22 points.22
AlicanteReykjavik
Score2648
Notable places within 2 km1861
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Alicante leads by 30 points.30
AlicanteReykjavik
Score7141
Price level global60.8102.8
Daily budget€122€243
Year-round weather. Alicante leads by 50 points.50
AlicanteReykjavik
Score8737
Monthly daytime high17 °C to 31.1 °C3.2 °C to 14.9 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 52 mm41 mm to 97 mm
Dry months110
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
Alicante
17
18
20
22
24
28
30
31
29
25
21
18
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Alicante
15
14
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Alicante
21
18
25
34
21
8
3
12
52
32
34
23
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Daylight, hours per day
Alicante
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Reykjavik
6
9
12
15
18
21
20
16
13
10
7
4
Sunshine, hours per day
Alicante
6
6
8
8
10
10
11
10
8
7
6
6
Reykjavik
1
2
4
5
7
6
6
5
4
3
1
0

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Alicante: 1991-2020 normals, Alicante (2.8 km from centre). Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAlicanteReykjavik
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€46-56
ALC · 10 km
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 40 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
2 h 35 m
€227-256
KEF · 37 km
CopenhagenCPH
3 h 15 m
€110-130
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
3 h 10 m
€216-282
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 35 m
€150-169
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 5 m
€85-109
ALC · 10 km
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
OsloOSL, TRF
3 h 40 m
€122-139
ALC · 10 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 25 m
€102-119
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
€62-93
ALC · 10 km
4 h 10 m
€224-296
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
3 h 50 m
€96-151
ALC · 10 km
3 h 10 m
€174-231
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 30 m
no fares
VLC · 127 km
5 h 5 m
no fares
KEF · 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 2026-08 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

MeasureAlicanteReykjavik
Official languageSpanishIcelandic
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Iceland Krona (ISK)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC
Emergency number112112
Elevation3 m8 m
Main airportAlicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport (ALC)10 km from centre124 non-stop destinationsKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureAlicanteReykjavik
City population366,221138,772
People per km²1,819569
Museums within 10 km823
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre5242
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Alicante or Reykjavik 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.