VacationSelector

Lyon or Reykjavik?

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

Your match

Lyon
✓ Best match
52
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.

LyonReykjavik
Beaches & swimming. Reykjavik leads by 60 points.60
LyonReykjavik
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km2633
Coast distance253 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Lyon leads by 30 points.30
LyonReykjavik
Score7949
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,691261
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4029
Museums & heritage. Lyon leads by 5 points.5
LyonReykjavik
Score5550
Museums within 10 km5334
Museums within 2 km of centre2523
Share of museums within 2 km %4768
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Lyon leads by 31 points.31
LyonReykjavik
Score5827
Drinking venues within 4 km866192
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre611166
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7186
Nightclubs within 4 km4710
Nature & day trips. Reykjavik leads by 26 points.26
LyonReykjavik
Score3359
Protected land share 50 km %616
Landscape blanket share 50 km %60
Land share of disc %10056
Park area within 2 km120 hectares28 hectares
Good for families. Lyon leads by 17 points.17
LyonReykjavik
Score5942
Tourist attractions within 2 km2521
Park area within 2 km120 hectares28 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Lyon leads by 6 points.6
LyonReykjavik
Score5448
Notable places within 2 km8661
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lyon leads by 21 points.21
LyonReykjavik
Score6241
Price level global73.7102.8
Daily budget€160€243
Year-round weather. Lyon leads by 27 points.27
LyonReykjavik
Score6437
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 28 °C3.2 °C to 14.9 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 101 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
Lyon
7
9
14
17
21
26
28
28
23
18
11
8
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Lyon
No coastline within reach
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Lyon
51
43
50
68
82
73
66
68
84
101
88
54
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Daylight, hours per day
Lyon
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Reykjavik
6
9
12
15
18
21
20
16
13
10
7
4
Sunshine, hours per day
Lyon
2
3
6
6
7
9
9
8
6
4
3
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. Lyon: 1991-2020 normals, Lyon / Bron (10.6 km from centre). Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLyonReykjavik
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 30 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
CopenhagenCPH
2 h 0 m
no fares
GVA · 111 km
3 h 10 m
€216-282
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 20 m
€195-211
2 stops
LYS · 20 km
3 h 30 m
€313-393
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€167-217
LYS · 20 km
5 h 30 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 0 m
no fares
GVA · 111 km
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 20 m
€70-92
LYS · 20 km
4 h 10 m
€224-296
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 30 m
€79-99
LYS · 20 km
4 h 35 m
€255-375
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 111 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

MeasureLyonReykjavik
Official languageFrenchIcelandic
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Iceland Krona (ISK)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC
Emergency number112112
Elevation160 m8 m
Main airportLyon Saint-Exupéry Airport (LYS)20 km from centre139 non-stop destinationsKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureLyonReykjavik
City population519,127138,772
People per km²10,838569
Museums within 10 km4223
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre14842
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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