VacationSelector

Chicago or Reykjavik?

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

Your match

Chicago
✓ Best match
56
match

Wins on nightlife and places to eat with your weighting.

Reykjavik
46
match

Wins on nature & day trips and beaches & swimming 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.

ChicagoReykjavik
Beaches & swimming. Reykjavik leads by 7 points.7
ChicagoReykjavik
Score5360
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km1233
Coast distance10,000 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 32 points.32
ChicagoReykjavik
Score8149
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,147261
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3729
Museums & heritage. Reykjavik leads by 4 points.4
ChicagoReykjavik
Score4650
Museums within 10 km4534
Museums within 2 km of centre2023
Share of museums within 2 km %4468
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 35 points.35
ChicagoReykjavik
Score6227
Drinking venues within 4 km1,123192
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728166
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6586
Nightclubs within 4 km5110
Nature & day trips. Reykjavik leads by 21 points.21
ChicagoReykjavik
Score3859
Protected land share 50 km %616
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10056
Park area within 2 km118 hectares28 hectares
Good for families. Chicago leads by 13 points.13
ChicagoReykjavik
Score5542
Tourist attractions within 2 km1821
Park area within 2 km118 hectares28 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 22 points.22
ChicagoReykjavik
Score7048
Notable places within 2 km21761
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Chicago leads by 2 points.2
ChicagoReykjavik
Score4341
Price level global100102.8
Daily budget€243
Year-round weather. Chicago leads by 20 points.20
ChicagoReykjavik
Score5737
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C3.2 °C to 14.9 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 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
Chicago
0
3
9
15
22
27
29
28
25
17
10
3
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
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
Chicago
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. Chicago: 1991-2020 normals, Chicago Midway Airport (14.5 km from centre). Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoReykjavik
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
BostonBOS, PSM
2 h 20 m
€220-252
ORD · 25 km
5 h 15 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
CopenhagenCPH
8 h 45 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
3 h 10 m
€216-282
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 30 m
€189-423
ORD · 25 km
5 h 35 m
€426-480
KEF · 37 km
MinneapolisMSP, STP
1 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
6 h 15 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
BaltimoreBWI
1 h 50 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
5 h 55 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
8 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
1 h 45 m
€109-226
ORD · 25 km
5 h 55 m
€406-422
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

MeasureChicagoReykjavik
Official languageIcelandic
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Iceland Krona (ISK)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC
Emergency number911112
Elevation179 m8 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoReykjavik
City population2,746,388138,772
People per km²4,529569
Museums within 10 km4323
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre8742
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 Chicago 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.