VacationSelector

Boston or Reykjavik?

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

Your match

Boston
✓ Best match
55
match

Wins on nightlife and places to eat with your weighting.

Reykjavik
46
match

Wins on museums & heritage 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.

BostonReykjavik
Beaches & swimming. Boston and Reykjavik are level on 60.
BostonReykjavik
Score6060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km6833
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Boston leads by 24 points.24
BostonReykjavik
Score7349
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,452261
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3229
Museums & heritage. Reykjavik leads by 7 points.7
BostonReykjavik
Score4350
Museums within 10 km7934
Museums within 2 km of centre2723
Share of museums within 2 km %3468
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Boston leads by 31 points.31
BostonReykjavik
Score5827
Drinking venues within 4 km886192
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre513166
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5886
Nightclubs within 4 km4310
Nature & day trips. Reykjavik leads by 6 points.6
BostonReykjavik
Score5359
Protected land share 50 km %1216
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7756
Park area within 2 km116 hectares28 hectares
Good for families. Boston leads by 11 points.11
BostonReykjavik
Score5342
Tourist attractions within 2 km2821
Park area within 2 km116 hectares28 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Boston leads by 10 points.10
BostonReykjavik
Score5848
Notable places within 2 km11161
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Boston leads by 2 points.2
BostonReykjavik
Score4341
Price level global100102.8
Daily budget€243
Year-round weather. Boston leads by 19 points.19
BostonReykjavik
Score5637
Monthly daytime high2.9 °C to 28 °C3.2 °C to 14.9 °C
Monthly rainfall79 mm to 107 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
Boston
3
4
8
14
19
25
28
27
23
17
11
6
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Daylight, hours per day
Boston
10
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
Boston
5
5
6
7
8
8
9
9
7
5
5
4
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. Boston: 1991-2020 normals, Boston Logan International (3.5 km from centre). Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBostonReykjavik
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 0 m
€192-203
BOS · 4 km
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
CopenhagenCPH
7 h 35 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
3 h 10 m
€216-282
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 20 m
€176-196
BOS · 4 km
6 h 15 m
€415-534
KEF · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 30 m
€211-283
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
5 h 35 m
€426-480
KEF · 37 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
1 h 25 m
€175-234
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
5 h 55 m
€406-422
KEF · 37 km
DublinDUB
6 h 20 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
13 h 25 m
no fares
BOS · 4 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 2026-09 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

MeasureBostonReykjavik
Official languageIcelandic
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Iceland Krona (ISK)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC
Emergency number911112
Elevation43 m8 m
Main airportBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureBostonReykjavik
City population675,647138,772
People per km²2,910569
Museums within 10 km5123
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre7442
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

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