VacationSelector

Mexico City or Reykjavik?

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

Your match

Mexico City
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on year-round weather and nightlife 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.

Mexico CityReykjavik
Beaches & swimming. Reykjavik leads by 60 points.60
Mexico CityReykjavik
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km433
Coast distance247 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Mexico City leads by 17 points.17
Mexico CityReykjavik
Score6649
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,179261
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1529
Museums & heritage. Mexico City leads by 29 points.29
Mexico CityReykjavik
Score7950
Museums within 10 km13834
Museums within 2 km of centre6523
Share of museums within 2 km %4768
Unesco sites within 50 km61
Nightlife. Mexico City leads by 51 points.51
Mexico CityReykjavik
Score7827
Drinking venues within 4 km2,156192
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre926166
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4386
Nightclubs within 4 km19810
Nature & day trips. Mexico City leads by 4 points.4
Mexico CityReykjavik
Score6359
Protected land share 50 km %3016
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10056
Park area within 2 km32 hectares28 hectares
Good for families. Mexico City leads by 8 points.8
Mexico CityReykjavik
Score5042
Tourist attractions within 2 km2321
Park area within 2 km32 hectares28 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Mexico City leads by 6 points.6
Mexico CityReykjavik
Score5448
Notable places within 2 km8861
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Mexico City leads by 35 points.35
Mexico CityReykjavik
Score7641
Price level global54.2102.8
Daily budget€243
Year-round weather. Mexico City leads by 53 points.53
Mexico CityReykjavik
Score9037
Monthly daytime high22.2 °C to 27.9 °C3.2 °C to 14.9 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 186 mm41 mm to 97 mm
Dry months60
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
Mexico City
22
25
26
28
27
26
25
25
24
23
23
22
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Mexico City
No coastline within reach
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Mexico City
7
3
19
27
53
127
176
186
144
79
10
9
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Daylight, hours per day
Mexico City
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
Reykjavik
6
9
12
15
18
21
20
16
13
10
7
4
Sunshine, hours per day
Mexico City
8
8
9
8
8
6
6
6
5
6
7
7
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. Mexico City: 1991-2020 normals, Mexico Central, D. F. (7.9 km from centre). Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMexico CityReykjavik
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 10 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
4 h 40 m
€335-379
MEX · 7 km
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 30 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
3 h 50 m
€259-271
MEX · 7 km
6 h 15 m
€415-534
KEF · 37 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
4 h 30 m
€367-420
1 stop
MEX · 7 km
5 h 35 m
€426-480
KEF · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
11 h 30 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
BostonBOS, PSM
5 h 0 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
5 h 15 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 55 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
3 h 30 m
€313-393
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
DenverDEN, APA
3 h 25 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
7 h 25 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
15 h 20 m
€1,089-1205
3 stops
MEX · 7 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

MeasureMexico CityReykjavik
Official languageSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec MayaIcelandic
CurrencyMexican Peso (MXN)Iceland Krona (ISK)
SocketsAB127 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6UTC
Emergency number911112
Elevation2,240 m8 m
Main airportMexico City Benito Juárez International Airport (MEX)7 km from centre95 non-stop destinationsKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureMexico CityReykjavik
City population9,209,944138,772
People per km²6,202569
Museums within 10 km10823
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km61
Distinct cuisines in the centre5042
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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