VacationSelector

Malaga or Reykjavik?

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

Your match

Malaga
✓ Best match
59
match

Wins on year-round weather and value for money with your weighting.

Reykjavik
46
match

Wins on nature & day trips and sights concentration 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.

MalagaReykjavik
Beaches & swimming. Malaga leads by 6 points.6
MalagaReykjavik
Score6660
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km2133
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Malaga leads by 20 points.20
MalagaReykjavik
Score6949
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,002261
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3429
Museums & heritage. Malaga leads by 3 points.3
MalagaReykjavik
Score5350
Museums within 10 km4034
Museums within 2 km of centre3523
Share of museums within 2 km %8868
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Malaga leads by 27 points.27
MalagaReykjavik
Score5427
Drinking venues within 4 km715192
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre486166
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6886
Nightclubs within 4 km4510
Nature & day trips. Reykjavik leads by 16 points.16
MalagaReykjavik
Score4359
Protected land share 50 km %716
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %6356
Park area within 2 km85 hectares28 hectares
Good for families. Malaga leads by 11 points.11
MalagaReykjavik
Score5342
Tourist attractions within 2 km3321
Park area within 2 km85 hectares28 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Reykjavik leads by 11 points.11
MalagaReykjavik
Score3748
Notable places within 2 km3361
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Malaga leads by 30 points.30
MalagaReykjavik
Score7141
Price level global60.8102.8
Daily budget€122€243
Year-round weather. Malaga leads by 45 points.45
MalagaReykjavik
Score8237
Monthly daytime high17.2 °C to 31.5 °C3.2 °C to 14.9 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 88 mm41 mm to 97 mm
Dry months50
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
Malaga
17
18
20
22
25
29
31
32
28
24
20
18
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Malaga
15
15
15
16
18
20
22
23
22
20
17
16
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Malaga
62
55
66
41
23
4
0
3
25
60
78
88
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Daylight, hours per day
Malaga
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Reykjavik
6
9
12
15
18
21
20
16
13
10
7
4
Sunshine, hours per day
Malaga
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
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. Malaga: 1991-2020 normals, Malaga / Aeropuerto (8.2 km from centre). Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMalagaReykjavik
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 40 m
€67-129
AGP · 9 km
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
CopenhagenCPH
3 h 35 m
€107-122
AGP · 9 km
3 h 10 m
€216-282
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 25 m
€92
AGP · 9 km
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 55 m
€146-177
AGP · 9 km
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
DublinDUB
2 h 50 m
€122-139
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 35 m
€73-109
AGP · 9 km
4 h 10 m
€224-296
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 50 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
2 h 35 m
€227-256
KEF · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
OsloOSL, TRF
4 h 0 m
€151-202
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
4 h 15 m
€112-120
AGP · 9 km
3 h 10 m
€174-231
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

MeasureMalagaReykjavik
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
Elevation18 m8 m
Main airportMálaga-Costa del Sol Airport (AGP)9 km from centre165 non-stop destinationsKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureMalagaReykjavik
City population599,063138,772
People per km²1,517569
Museums within 10 km3223
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre6542
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

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