VacationSelector

Bilbao or Reykjavik?

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

Your match

Bilbao
✓ Best match
54
match

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

Reykjavik
46
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage 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.

BilbaoReykjavik
Beaches & swimming. Reykjavik leads by 29 points.29
BilbaoReykjavik
Score3160
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km133
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Bilbao leads by 13 points.13
BilbaoReykjavik
Score6249
Restaurants within 2 km of centre840261
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2629
Museums & heritage. Reykjavik leads by 12 points.12
BilbaoReykjavik
Score3850
Museums within 10 km2534
Museums within 2 km of centre1223
Share of museums within 2 km %4868
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Bilbao leads by 31 points.31
BilbaoReykjavik
Score5827
Drinking venues within 4 km869192
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre730166
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8486
Nightclubs within 4 km5010
Nature & day trips. Reykjavik leads by 6 points.6
BilbaoReykjavik
Score5359
Protected land share 50 km %1116
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7056
Park area within 2 km119 hectares28 hectares
Good for families. Bilbao leads by 5 points.5
BilbaoReykjavik
Score4742
Tourist attractions within 2 km1721
Park area within 2 km119 hectares28 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Bilbao leads by 4 points.4
BilbaoReykjavik
Score5248
Notable places within 2 km7961
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bilbao leads by 30 points.30
BilbaoReykjavik
Score7141
Price level global60.8102.8
Daily budget€122€243
Year-round weather. Bilbao leads by 33 points.33
BilbaoReykjavik
Score7037
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C3.2 °C to 14.9 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 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
Bilbao
14
14
17
18
21
24
25
26
25
21
17
14
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Reykjavik
6
9
12
15
18
21
20
16
13
10
7
4
Sunshine, hours per day
Bilbao
3
3
5
5
6
6
6
6
5
4
3
3
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. Bilbao: 1991-2020 normals, Bilbao / Sondica (4.1 km from centre). Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoReykjavik
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
4 h 5 m
€222-314
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
4 h 10 m
€224-296
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
3 h 30 m
€313-393
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
CopenhagenCPH
2 h 45 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
3 h 10 m
€216-282
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
3 h 50 m
€275-453
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
MalagaAGP
1 h 35 m
€77-114
BIO · 5 km
4 h 30 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

MeasureBilbaoReykjavik
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
Elevation19 m8 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoReykjavik
City population351,124138,772
People per km²8,440569
Museums within 10 km1723
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre5442
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 monthNone

Where else could you go?

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