VacationSelector

Cologne or Reykjavik?

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

Your match

Cologne
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on nightlife and good for families with your weighting.

Reykjavik
46
match

Wins on 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.

CologneReykjavik
Beaches & swimming. Reykjavik leads by 60 points.60
CologneReykjavik
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km4033
Coast distance256 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 23 points.23
CologneReykjavik
Score7249
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,142261
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3529
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 10 points.10
CologneReykjavik
Score6050
Museums within 10 km4734
Museums within 2 km of centre2723
Share of museums within 2 km %5768
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 37 points.37
CologneReykjavik
Score6427
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107192
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727166
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6686
Nightclubs within 4 km9010
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 12 points.12
CologneReykjavik
Score7159
Protected land share 50 km %5316
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %10056
Park area within 2 km118 hectares28 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 30 points.30
CologneReykjavik
Score7242
Tourist attractions within 2 km4321
Park area within 2 km118 hectares28 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km61
Sights concentration. Cologne leads by 5 points.5
CologneReykjavik
Score5348
Notable places within 2 km8161
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cologne leads by 19 points.19
CologneReykjavik
Score6041
Price level global75.9102.8
Daily budget€163€243
Year-round weather. Cologne leads by 23 points.23
CologneReykjavik
Score6037
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C3.2 °C to 14.9 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 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
Cologne
6
7
12
16
20
23
25
25
21
15
10
7
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Reykjavik
6
9
12
15
18
21
20
16
13
10
7
4
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
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. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneReykjavik
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
5 h 30 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
3 h 50 m
€275-453
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 25 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
3 h 10 m
€216-282
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
4 h 5 m
€281-315
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
BerlinBER
1 h 15 m
€136-255
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
3 h 30 m
€245-365
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
4 h 0 m
€160-192
KEF · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
55 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
4 h 10 m
€224-296
1 stop
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

MeasureCologneReykjavik
Official languageGermanIcelandic
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Iceland Krona (ISK)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC
Emergency number112112
Elevation59 m8 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneReykjavik
City population1,024,621138,772
People per km²2,530569
Museums within 10 km4023
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre8442
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cologne 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). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.