VacationSelector

Lucerne or Reykjavik?

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

Your match

Lucerne
33
match

Wins on year-round weather and nightlife with your weighting.

Reykjavik
✓ Best match
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.

LucerneReykjavik
Beaches & swimming. Reykjavik leads by 60 points.60
LucerneReykjavik
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1633
Coast distance669 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Reykjavik leads by 2 points.2
LucerneReykjavik
Score4749
Restaurants within 2 km of centre269261
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2529
Museums & heritage. Reykjavik leads by 10 points.10
LucerneReykjavik
Score4050
Museums within 10 km2334
Museums within 2 km of centre1323
Share of museums within 2 km %5768
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Lucerne leads by 1 points.1
LucerneReykjavik
Score2827
Drinking venues within 4 km202192
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre151166
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7586
Nightclubs within 4 km1110
Nature & day trips. Reykjavik leads by 34 points.34
LucerneReykjavik
Score2559
Protected land share 50 km %716
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10056
Park area within 2 km29 hectares28 hectares
Good for families. Reykjavik leads by 4 points.4
LucerneReykjavik
Score3842
Tourist attractions within 2 km1521
Park area within 2 km29 hectares28 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Reykjavik leads by 13 points.13
LucerneReykjavik
Score3548
Notable places within 2 km2961
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Reykjavik leads by 6 points.6
LucerneReykjavik
Score3541
Price level global110.5102.8
Daily budget€248€243
Year-round weather. Lucerne leads by 16 points.16
LucerneReykjavik
Score5337
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 24.3 °C3.2 °C to 14.9 °C
Monthly rainfall60 mm to 128 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
Lucerne
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Lucerne
No coastline within reach
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Daylight, hours per day
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Reykjavik
6
9
12
15
18
21
20
16
13
10
7
4
Sunshine, hours per day
Lucerne
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
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. Lucerne: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (41.7 km from centre). Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLucerneReykjavik
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 45 m
€204-248
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
3 h 10 m
€216-282
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 49 km
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 49 km
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
BerlinBER
1 h 25 m
€140-176
ZRH · 49 km
3 h 30 m
€245-365
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
3 h 30 m
€313-393
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
OsloOSL, TRF
2 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 25 m
€174-215
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
4 h 5 m
€281-315
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 49 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 2026-08 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

MeasureLucerneReykjavik
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, RomanshIcelandic
CurrencySwiss Franc (CHF)Iceland Krona (ISK)
SocketsCJ230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC
Emergency number112112
Elevation436 m8 m
Main airportZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinationsKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureLucerneReykjavik
City population86,234138,772
People per km²2,963569
Museums within 10 km1423
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre4642
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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