VacationSelector

Amsterdam or Reykjavik?

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

Your match

Amsterdam
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on nightlife and places to eat with your weighting.

Reykjavik
46
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

AmsterdamReykjavik
Beaches & swimming. Reykjavik leads by 20 points.20
AmsterdamReykjavik
Score4060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km3333
Coast distance24 km0 km
Water distance24 km0 km
Places to eat. Amsterdam leads by 34 points.34
AmsterdamReykjavik
Score8349
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,957261
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4429
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 30 points.30
AmsterdamReykjavik
Score8050
Museums within 10 km9834
Museums within 2 km of centre6923
Share of museums within 2 km %7068
Unesco sites within 50 km51
Nightlife. Amsterdam leads by 43 points.43
AmsterdamReykjavik
Score7027
Drinking venues within 4 km1,543192
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,078166
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7086
Nightclubs within 4 km11410
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 1 points.1
AmsterdamReykjavik
Score6059
Protected land share 50 km %2116
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8256
Park area within 2 km49 hectares28 hectares
Good for families. Amsterdam leads by 26 points.26
AmsterdamReykjavik
Score6842
Tourist attractions within 2 km7421
Park area within 2 km49 hectares28 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Amsterdam leads by 20 points.20
AmsterdamReykjavik
Score6848
Notable places within 2 km19661
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Amsterdam leads by 17 points.17
AmsterdamReykjavik
Score5841
Price level global79.2102.8
Daily budget€181€243
Year-round weather. Amsterdam leads by 20 points.20
AmsterdamReykjavik
Score5737
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C3.2 °C to 14.9 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm41 mm to 97 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
Amsterdam
6
7
11
15
18
21
23
23
20
15
10
7
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Reykjavik
6
9
12
15
18
21
20
16
13
10
7
4
Sunshine, hours per day
Amsterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
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. Amsterdam: 1991-2020 normals, De Bilt (35.3 km from centre). Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamReykjavik
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
3 h 10 m
€216-282
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 12 km
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
DublinDUB
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 12 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
OsloOSL, TRF
1 h 50 m
€155-209
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 12 km
2 h 35 m
€227-256
KEF · 37 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 10 m
€130-171
AMS · 12 km
4 h 10 m
€224-296
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 35 m
€106-155
AMS · 12 km
4 h 0 m
€160-192
KEF · 37 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 55 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
10 h 0 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

MeasureAmsterdamReykjavik
Official languageDutchIcelandic
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Iceland Krona (ISK)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC
Emergency number112 or 911112
Elevation-2 m8 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamReykjavik
City population921,468138,772
People per km²4,208569
Museums within 10 km10123
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km51
Distinct cuisines in the centre9842
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Amsterdam 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.