VacationSelector

Belfast or Reykjavik?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Belfast
48
match

Wins on nightlife and year-round weather with your weighting.

Reykjavik
46
match

Wins on museums & heritage and 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.

BelfastReykjavik
Beaches & swimming. Reykjavik leads by 12 points.12
BelfastReykjavik
Score4860
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1033
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Belfast leads by 7 points.7
BelfastReykjavik
Score5649
Restaurants within 2 km of centre432261
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3129
Museums & heritage. Reykjavik leads by 21 points.21
BelfastReykjavik
Score2950
Museums within 10 km1834
Museums within 2 km of centre623
Share of museums within 2 km %3368
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Belfast leads by 21 points.21
BelfastReykjavik
Score4827
Drinking venues within 4 km550192
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre348166
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6386
Nightclubs within 4 km2910
Nature & day trips. Reykjavik leads by 6 points.6
BelfastReykjavik
Score5359
Protected land share 50 km %1916
Landscape blanket share 50 km %130
Land share of disc %6556
Park area within 2 km68 hectares28 hectares
Good for families. Belfast leads by 6 points.6
BelfastReykjavik
Score4842
Tourist attractions within 2 km1621
Park area within 2 km68 hectares28 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Reykjavik leads by 6 points.6
BelfastReykjavik
Score4248
Notable places within 2 km4361
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Belfast leads by 13 points.13
BelfastReykjavik
Score5441
Price level global84.9102.8
Daily budget€243
Year-round weather. Belfast leads by 14 points.14
BelfastReykjavik
Score5137
Monthly daytime high6.9 °C to 19 °C3.2 °C to 14.9 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 89 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
Belfast
7
8
10
12
15
18
19
19
17
13
10
7
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Belfast
9
8
8
8
9
11
12
13
14
14
12
11
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Belfast
74
62
60
56
55
65
74
86
67
89
87
85
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Daylight, hours per day
Belfast
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
7
Reykjavik
6
9
12
15
18
21
20
16
13
10
7
4
Sunshine, hours per day
Belfast
2
2
3
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
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. Belfast: 1991-2020 normals, Belfast / Aldergrove Airport (19.4 km from centre). Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBelfastReykjavik
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 15 m
€72-142
BHD · 4 km
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
CopenhagenCPH
2 h 10 m
€86-108
1 stop
DUB · 132 km
3 h 10 m
€216-282
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 35 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 0 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
2 h 35 m
€227-256
KEF · 37 km
BostonBOS, PSM
6 h 20 m
€519-589
1 stop
DUB · 132 km
5 h 15 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 50 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
4 h 25 m
€240-369
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
GlasgowGLA, PIK
50 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 25 m
no fares
DUB · 132 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

MeasureBelfastReykjavik
Official languageEnglishIcelandic
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Iceland Krona (ISK)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation3 m8 m
Main airportGeorge Best Belfast City Airport (BHD)4 km from centre24 non-stop destinationsKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureBelfastReykjavik
City population345,006138,772
People per km²3,000569
Museums within 10 km823
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre4442
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

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