VacationSelector

London or Reykjavik?

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

Your match

London
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on nightlife and sights concentration 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.

LondonReykjavik
Beaches & swimming. Reykjavik leads by 60 points.60
LondonReykjavik
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km4733
Coast distance43 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. London leads by 39 points.39
LondonReykjavik
Score8849
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,317261
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4029
Museums & heritage. London leads by 22 points.22
LondonReykjavik
Score7250
Museums within 10 km14834
Museums within 2 km of centre4923
Share of museums within 2 km %3368
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. London leads by 68 points.68
LondonReykjavik
Score9527
Drinking venues within 4 km5,327192
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,443166
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4686
Nightclubs within 4 km31210
Nature & day trips. Reykjavik leads by 19 points.19
LondonReykjavik
Score4059
Protected land share 50 km %1616
Landscape blanket share 50 km %140
Land share of disc %9756
Park area within 2 km84 hectares28 hectares
Good for families. London leads by 33 points.33
LondonReykjavik
Score7542
Tourist attractions within 2 km8521
Park area within 2 km84 hectares28 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. London leads by 41 points.41
LondonReykjavik
Score8948
Notable places within 2 km64961
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. London leads by 13 points.13
LondonReykjavik
Score5441
Price level global84.9102.8
Daily budget€243
Year-round weather. London leads by 26 points.26
LondonReykjavik
Score6337
Monthly daytime high8.2 °C to 23.8 °C3.2 °C to 14.9 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 67 mm41 mm to 97 mm
Dry months10
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
London
8
9
12
15
18
22
24
23
20
16
11
9
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
London
No coastline within reach
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rainfall, mm
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Daylight, hours per day
London
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
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
4
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. London: 1991-2020 normals, London Heathrow Airport (22.5 km from centre). Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLondonReykjavik
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 10 m
€518-651
1 stop
LHR · 23 km
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 5 m
€92-144
LHR · 23 km
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 50 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
3 h 10 m
€216-282
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 5 m
€146-170
LHR · 23 km
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 5 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
5 h 25 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 45 m
€83-138
LGW · 40 km
4 h 0 m
€160-192
KEF · 37 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 20 m
€66-100
LGW · 40 km
4 h 25 m
€240-369
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
BostonBOS, PSM
6 h 50 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
5 h 15 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€61-144
LGW · 40 km
4 h 10 m
€224-296
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 15 m
no fares
LHR · 23 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 2026-08 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

MeasureLondonReykjavik
Official languageEnglishIcelandic
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Iceland Krona (ISK)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation4 m8 m
Main airportLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre220 non-stop destinationsKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureLondonReykjavik
City population8,799,728138,772
People per km²5,598569
Museums within 10 km21523
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre11642
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow London 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). 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.