VacationSelector

Galway or Reykjavik?

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

Your match

Galway
39
match

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

Reykjavik
✓ Best match
46
match

Wins on museums & heritage and sights concentration 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.

GalwayReykjavik
Beaches & swimming. Reykjavik leads by 9 points.9
GalwayReykjavik
Score5160
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1333
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Reykjavik leads by 12 points.12
GalwayReykjavik
Score3749
Restaurants within 2 km of centre173261
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2029
Museums & heritage. Reykjavik leads by 30 points.30
GalwayReykjavik
Score2050
Museums within 10 km534
Museums within 2 km of centre523
Share of museums within 2 km %10068
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Reykjavik leads by 1 points.1
GalwayReykjavik
Score2627
Drinking venues within 4 km185192
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre153166
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8386
Nightclubs within 4 km810
Nature & day trips. Reykjavik leads by 4 points.4
GalwayReykjavik
Score5559
Protected land share 50 km %16
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8556
Park area within 2 km65 hectares28 hectares
Good for families. Reykjavik leads by 17 points.17
GalwayReykjavik
Score2542
Tourist attractions within 2 km521
Park area within 2 km65 hectares28 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Reykjavik leads by 26 points.26
GalwayReykjavik
Score2248
Notable places within 2 km1461
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Galway leads by 16 points.16
GalwayReykjavik
Score5741
Price level global80.2102.8
Daily budget€187€243
Year-round weather. Galway leads by 17 points.17
GalwayReykjavik
Score5437
Monthly daytime high8.9 °C to 19.6 °C3.2 °C to 14.9 °C
Monthly rainfall63 mm to 113 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
Galway
9
10
11
14
16
19
20
19
18
14
11
9
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Galway
9
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
15
14
12
10
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Galway
100
87
76
63
63
72
76
89
77
101
104
113
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Daylight, hours per day
Galway
8
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
Galway
2
2
4
5
6
5
4
5
4
3
2
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. Galway: 1991-2020 normals, Shannon Airport (64.2 km from centre). Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGalwayReykjavik
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 30 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
BostonBOS, PSM
6 h 10 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
5 h 15 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
DublinDUB
1 h 0 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 45 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 10 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 35 m
€227-256
KEF · 37 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 10 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
3 h 30 m
€313-393
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 0 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
5 h 25 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 40 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
4 h 25 m
€240-369
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
7 h 25 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
6 h 15 m
€415-534
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

MeasureGalwayReykjavik
Official languageEnglish, IrishIcelandic
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Iceland Krona (ISK)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC
Emergency number112112
Elevation25 m8 m
Main airportShannon Airport (SNN)64 km from centre36 non-stop destinationsKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureGalwayReykjavik
City population83,456138,772
People per km²1,563569
Museums within 10 km423
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre2542
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

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