VacationSelector

Cape Town or Reykjavik?

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

Your match

Cape Town
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on year-round weather and value for money with your weighting.

Reykjavik
46
match

Wins on nature & day trips and good for families 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.

Cape TownReykjavik
Beaches & swimming. Cape Town and Reykjavik are level on 60.
Cape TownReykjavik
Score6060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km2933
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Cape Town leads by 18 points.18
Cape TownReykjavik
Score6749
Restaurants within 2 km of centre650261
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4229
Museums & heritage. Cape Town leads by 4 points.4
Cape TownReykjavik
Score5450
Museums within 10 km2534
Museums within 2 km of centre2023
Share of museums within 2 km %8068
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Cape Town leads by 20 points.20
Cape TownReykjavik
Score4727
Drinking venues within 4 km483192
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre389166
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8186
Nightclubs within 4 km4710
Nature & day trips. Reykjavik leads by 23 points.23
Cape TownReykjavik
Score3659
Protected land share 50 km %616
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4256
Park area within 2 km27 hectares28 hectares
Good for families. Reykjavik leads by 6 points.6
Cape TownReykjavik
Score3642
Tourist attractions within 2 km1921
Park area within 2 km27 hectares28 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Reykjavik leads by 3 points.3
Cape TownReykjavik
Score4548
Notable places within 2 km5161
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cape Town leads by 44 points.44
Cape TownReykjavik
Score8541
Price level global40.5102.8
Daily budget—€243
Year-round weather. Cape Town leads by 49 points.49
Cape TownReykjavik
Score8637
Monthly daytime high18 °C to 27.5 °C3.2 °C to 14.9 °C
Monthly rainfall10 mm to 97 mm41 mm to 97 mm
Dry months60
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
Cape Town
27
28
26
24
21
18
18
18
20
22
24
26
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Cape Town
18
18
17
16
15
15
15
15
15
15
16
17
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Cape Town
10
11
13
42
65
97
89
76
47
32
27
13
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Daylight, hours per day
Cape Town
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Reykjavik
6
9
12
15
18
21
20
16
13
10
7
4
Sunshine, hours per day
Cape Town
12
10
9
8
6
6
6
7
8
9
10
11
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. Cape Town: 1991-2020 normals, Cape Town Airport (17.5 km from centre). Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCape TownReykjavik
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
12 h 5 m
€634-815
CPT · 18 km
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
15 h 25 m
no fares
CPT · 18 km
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 40 m
€742-801
2 stops
CPT · 18 km
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
12 h 5 m
no fares
CPT · 18 km
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 45 m
€632-724
1 stop
CPT · 18 km
3 h 30 m
€313-393
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
15 h 40 m
no fares
CPT · 18 km
5 h 55 m
€406-422
KEF · 37 km
MunichMUC
11 h 30 m
no fares
CPT · 18 km
3 h 50 m
€275-453
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
ZurichZRH
11 h 25 m
no fares
CPT · 18 km
3 h 45 m
€365-480
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
10 h 35 m
€717-799
1 stop
CPT · 18 km
5 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 2026-09 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

MeasureCape TownReykjavik
Official languageEnglish, Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans, Venda, Northern Sotho, Swazi, Tswana, Tsonga, Sesotho, Southern Ndebele, South African Sign LanguageIcelandic
CurrencyRand (ZAR)Iceland Krona (ISK)
SocketsCMN230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+2UTC
Emergency number112112
Elevation5 m8 m
Main airportCape Town International Airport (CPT)18 km from centre44 non-stop destinationsKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureCape TownReykjavik
City population3,776,313138,772
People per km²1,538569
Museums within 10 km2223
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre6542
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

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