VacationSelector

Calgary or Reykjavik?

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

Your match

Calgary
38
match

Wins on year-round weather and places to eat with your weighting.

Reykjavik
✓ Best match
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.

CalgaryReykjavik
Beaches & swimming. Reykjavik leads by 60 points.60
CalgaryReykjavik
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km433
Coast distance649 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Calgary leads by 17 points.17
CalgaryReykjavik
Score6649
Restaurants within 2 km of centre749261
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3629
Museums & heritage. Reykjavik leads by 41 points.41
CalgaryReykjavik
Score950
Museums within 10 km834
Museums within 2 km of centre323
Share of museums within 2 km %3868
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Calgary leads by 17 points.17
CalgaryReykjavik
Score4427
Drinking venues within 4 km465192
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre343166
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7486
Nightclubs within 4 km1910
Nature & day trips. Reykjavik leads by 23 points.23
CalgaryReykjavik
Score3659
Protected land share 50 km %416
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10056
Park area within 2 km142 hectares28 hectares
Good for families. Reykjavik leads by 1 points.1
CalgaryReykjavik
Score4142
Tourist attractions within 2 km321
Park area within 2 km142 hectares28 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km51
Sights concentration. Reykjavik leads by 9 points.9
CalgaryReykjavik
Score3948
Notable places within 2 km3761
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Calgary leads by 13 points.13
CalgaryReykjavik
Score5441
Price level global84102.8
Daily budget€243
Year-round weather. Calgary leads by 20 points.20
CalgaryReykjavik
Score5737
Monthly daytime high-0.7 °C to 24.8 °C3.2 °C to 14.9 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 106 mm41 mm to 97 mm
Dry months80
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
Calgary
0
-1
4
11
16
20
25
23
19
12
4
0
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Calgary
No coastline within reach
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Calgary
9
13
19
28
58
106
44
47
33
21
17
17
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Daylight, hours per day
Calgary
9
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
Calgary
No sunshine record
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. Calgary: 1991-2020 normals, Calgary Int'l CS (8.2 km from centre). Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCalgaryReykjavik
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 55 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
4 h 30 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
3 h 50 m
€182-359
1 stop
YYC · 9 km
5 h 35 m
€426-480
KEF · 37 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
3 h 15 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
6 h 15 m
€415-534
KEF · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
9 h 20 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
9 h 5 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
1 h 30 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
7 h 30 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
BostonBOS, PSM
4 h 40 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
5 h 15 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
4 h 20 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
5 h 55 m
€406-422
KEF · 37 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
4 h 10 m
€170-221
YYC · 9 km
5 h 5 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

MeasureCalgaryReykjavik
Official languageFrench, EnglishIcelandic
CurrencyCanadian Dollar (CAD)Iceland Krona (ISK)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-7, UTC-6 in summerUTC
Emergency number911112
Elevation1,045 m8 m
Main airportCalgary International Airport (YYC)9 km from centre106 non-stop destinationsKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureCalgaryReykjavik
City population1,306,784138,772
People per km²1,583569
Museums within 10 km1323
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre6742
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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