VacationSelector

Kyoto or Reykjavik?

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

Your match

Kyoto
✓ Best match
58
match

Wins on nightlife and places to eat with your weighting.

Reykjavik
46
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips 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.

KyotoReykjavik
Beaches & swimming. Reykjavik leads by 43 points.43
KyotoReykjavik
Score1760
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km033
Coast distance47 km0 km
Water distance47 km0 km
Places to eat. Kyoto leads by 35 points.35
KyotoReykjavik
Score8449
Restaurants within 2 km of centre5,023261
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2229
Museums & heritage. Kyoto leads by 22 points.22
KyotoReykjavik
Score7250
Museums within 10 km13234
Museums within 2 km of centre5123
Share of museums within 2 km %3968
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Kyoto leads by 53 points.53
KyotoReykjavik
Score8027
Drinking venues within 4 km3,215192
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,363166
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7386
Nightclubs within 4 km2610
Nature & day trips. Reykjavik leads by 37 points.37
KyotoReykjavik
Score2259
Protected land share 50 km %216
Landscape blanket share 50 km %20
Land share of disc %10056
Park area within 2 km45 hectares28 hectares
Good for families. Kyoto leads by 24 points.24
KyotoReykjavik
Score6642
Tourist attractions within 2 km6221
Park area within 2 km45 hectares28 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Kyoto leads by 4 points.4
KyotoReykjavik
Score5248
Notable places within 2 km7961
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Kyoto leads by 29 points.29
KyotoReykjavik
Score7041
Price level global62.4102.8
Daily budget€243
Year-round weather. Kyoto leads by 25 points.25
KyotoReykjavik
Score6237
Monthly daytime high8.6 °C to 32.4 °C3.2 °C to 14.9 °C
Monthly rainfall40 mm to 232 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
Kyoto
9
9
13
20
24
27
31
32
28
22
17
11
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Kyoto
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Kyoto
47
67
112
150
147
232
225
149
215
108
68
40
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Daylight, hours per day
Kyoto
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Reykjavik
6
9
12
15
18
21
20
16
13
10
7
4
Sunshine, hours per day
Kyoto
5
5
6
6
7
5
6
7
5
5
5
5
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. Kyoto: 1971-2000 (sunshine 1991-2020) normals, Kyoto (3.2 km from centre). Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromKyotoReykjavik
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
12 h 0 m
€859-891
3 stops
KIX · 81 km
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
CopenhagenCPH
10 h 45 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
3 h 10 m
€216-282
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 45 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
11 h 30 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 30 m
€1,507-1966
2 stops
ITM · 39 km
3 h 30 m
€313-393
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
13 h 10 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
5 h 35 m
€426-480
KEF · 37 km
HelsinkiHEL
9 h 45 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
3 h 35 m
€268-383
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
10 h 10 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
7 h 30 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
2 h 45 m
€327-334
KIX · 81 km
10 h 0 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

MeasureKyotoReykjavik
Official languageJapaneseIcelandic
CurrencyYen (JPY)Iceland Krona (ISK)
SocketsAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the regionCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+9UTC
Emergency numberPolice 110, fire 119112
Elevation51 m8 m
Main airportKansai International Airport (KIX)81 km from centre62 non-stop destinationsKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureKyotoReykjavik
City population1,463,723138,772
People per km²1,768569
Museums within 10 km7623
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre8942
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Kyoto 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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.