VacationSelector

Budapest or Reykjavik?

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

Your match

Budapest
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on nightlife and value for money with your weighting.

Reykjavik
46
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

BudapestReykjavik
Beaches & swimming. Reykjavik leads by 60 points.60
BudapestReykjavik
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km633
Coast distance10,000 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Budapest leads by 28 points.28
BudapestReykjavik
Score7749
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,699261
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3529
Museums & heritage. Budapest leads by 14 points.14
BudapestReykjavik
Score6450
Museums within 10 km14434
Museums within 2 km of centre6423
Share of museums within 2 km %4468
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Budapest leads by 45 points.45
BudapestReykjavik
Score7227
Drinking venues within 4 km1,765192
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,168166
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6686
Nightclubs within 4 km9710
Nature & day trips. Reykjavik leads by 19 points.19
BudapestReykjavik
Score4059
Protected land share 50 km %816
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10056
Park area within 2 km111 hectares28 hectares
Good for families. Budapest leads by 29 points.29
BudapestReykjavik
Score7142
Tourist attractions within 2 km7521
Park area within 2 km111 hectares28 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Budapest leads by 21 points.21
BudapestReykjavik
Score6948
Notable places within 2 km20661
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Budapest leads by 39 points.39
BudapestReykjavik
Score8041
Price level global48102.8
Daily budget€104€243
Year-round weather. Budapest leads by 27 points.27
BudapestReykjavik
Score6437
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 27.9 °C3.2 °C to 14.9 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 75 mm41 mm to 97 mm
Dry months50
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
Budapest
4
7
11
17
22
26
27
28
22
16
9
4
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Budapest
No coastline within reach
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Budapest
29
27
30
37
67
67
75
60
48
41
48
39
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Daylight, hours per day
Budapest
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Reykjavik
6
9
12
15
18
21
20
16
13
10
7
4
Sunshine, hours per day
Budapest
2
4
5
7
9
9
10
9
7
5
3
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. Budapest: 1991-2020 normals, Budapest Met Center (2.1 km from centre). Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBudapestReykjavik
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€63-91
BUD · 18 km
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 50 m
€60-87
BUD · 18 km
3 h 10 m
€216-282
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 10 m
€97-114
BUD · 18 km
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 5 m
€175-230
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 40 m
€42-56
BUD · 18 km
4 h 0 m
€160-192
KEF · 37 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 40 m
€123-153
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
3 h 30 m
€313-393
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 50 m
€87-214
BUD · 18 km
5 h 30 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 40 m
€52-62
BUD · 18 km
4 h 35 m
€255-375
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
9 h 5 m
no fares
BUD · 18 km
5 h 35 m
€426-480
KEF · 37 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 15 m
no fares
BUD · 18 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

MeasureBudapestReykjavik
Official languageHungarianIcelandic
CurrencyForint (HUF)Iceland Krona (ISK)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC
Emergency number112112
Elevation117 m8 m
Main airportBudapest Liszt Ferenc International Airport (BUD)18 km from centre155 non-stop destinationsKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureBudapestReykjavik
City population1,685,209138,772
People per km²3,209569
Museums within 10 km8123
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre8642
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Budapest 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. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.