VacationSelector

Manchester or Reykjavik?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Manchester
47
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.

ManchesterReykjavik
Beaches & swimming. Reykjavik leads by 32 points.32
ManchesterReykjavik
Score2860
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1033
Coast distance27 km0 km
Water distance27 km0 km
Places to eat. Manchester leads by 19 points.19
ManchesterReykjavik
Score6849
Restaurants within 2 km of centre853261
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3529
Museums & heritage. Reykjavik leads by 8 points.8
ManchesterReykjavik
Score4250
Museums within 10 km2334
Museums within 2 km of centre1123
Share of museums within 2 km %4868
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Manchester leads by 35 points.35
ManchesterReykjavik
Score6227
Drinking venues within 4 km1,029192
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre792166
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7786
Nightclubs within 4 km8210
Nature & day trips. Reykjavik leads by 23 points.23
ManchesterReykjavik
Score3659
Protected land share 50 km %1716
Landscape blanket share 50 km %170
Land share of disc %9956
Park area within 2 km63 hectares28 hectares
Good for families. Reykjavik leads by 10 points.10
ManchesterReykjavik
Score3242
Tourist attractions within 2 km521
Park area within 2 km63 hectares28 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Manchester and Reykjavik are level on 48.
ManchesterReykjavik
Score4848
Notable places within 2 km6161
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Manchester leads by 13 points.13
ManchesterReykjavik
Score5441
Price level global84.9102.8
Daily budget€243
Year-round weather. Manchester leads by 17 points.17
ManchesterReykjavik
Score5437
Monthly daytime high7.2 °C to 20.8 °C3.2 °C to 14.9 °C
Monthly rainfall51 mm to 95 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
Manchester
7
8
10
13
17
19
21
20
18
14
10
8
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Manchester
7
6
7
9
11
14
16
17
16
14
11
9
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Manchester
67
62
51
61
59
63
60
73
71
95
86
84
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Daylight, hours per day
Manchester
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Reykjavik
6
9
12
15
18
21
20
16
13
10
7
4
Sunshine, hours per day
Manchester
2
2
3
5
6
6
6
6
4
3
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. Manchester: 1991-2020 normals, Manchester Airport (14.8 km from centre). Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromManchesterReykjavik
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 50 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
3 h 10 m
€216-282
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
55 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 20 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
OsloOSL, TRF
2 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 15 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
4 h 0 m
€160-192
KEF · 37 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 15 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
5 h 25 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 10 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
5 h 35 m
€426-480
KEF · 37 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 10 m
no fares
MAN · 15 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

MeasureManchesterReykjavik
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
Elevation38 m8 m
Main airportManchester Airport (MAN)15 km from centre210 non-stop destinationsKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureManchesterReykjavik
City population547,627138,772
People per km²4,737569
Museums within 10 km2823
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre6342
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

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