VacationSelector

Madrid or Reykjavik?

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

Your match

Madrid
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nightlife and good for families with your weighting.

Reykjavik
46
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

MadridReykjavik
Beaches & swimming. Reykjavik leads by 60 points.60
MadridReykjavik
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km433
Coast distance305 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 34 points.34
MadridReykjavik
Score8349
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,508261
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2829
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 25 points.25
MadridReykjavik
Score7550
Museums within 10 km9734
Museums within 2 km of centre5923
Share of museums within 2 km %6168
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 54 points.54
MadridReykjavik
Score8127
Drinking venues within 4 km2,414192
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,498166
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6286
Nightclubs within 4 km34110
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 4 points.4
MadridReykjavik
Score6359
Protected land share 50 km %1916
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10056
Park area within 2 km187 hectares28 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 35 points.35
MadridReykjavik
Score7742
Tourist attractions within 2 km6121
Park area within 2 km187 hectares28 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 27 points.27
MadridReykjavik
Score7548
Notable places within 2 km28861
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 30 points.30
MadridReykjavik
Score7141
Price level global60.8102.8
Daily budget€122€243
Year-round weather. Madrid leads by 35 points.35
MadridReykjavik
Score7237
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C3.2 °C to 14.9 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm41 mm to 97 mm
Dry months70
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
Madrid
10
12
16
19
23
29
33
32
27
20
14
10
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Madrid
No coastline within reach
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Reykjavik
6
9
12
15
18
21
20
16
13
10
7
4
Sunshine, hours per day
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
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. Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre). Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMadridReykjavik
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€175-213
MAD · 14 km
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
CopenhagenCPH
3 h 5 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
3 h 10 m
€216-282
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
2 h 50 m
€109-153
MAD · 14 km
5 h 25 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
4 h 35 m
€255-375
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 0 m
€53-86
MAD · 14 km
4 h 0 m
€160-192
KEF · 37 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
4 h 10 m
€224-296
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
11 h 30 m
€638-793
2 stops
MAD · 14 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

MeasureMadridReykjavik
Official languageSpanishIcelandic
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Iceland Krona (ISK)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC
Emergency number112112
Elevation663 m8 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridReykjavik
City population3,506,730138,772
People per km²5,801569
Museums within 10 km8823
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre10642
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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