VacationSelector

New Orleans 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

New Orleans
47
match

Wins on year-round weather and nightlife with your weighting.

Reykjavik
46
match

Wins on nature & day trips and 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.

New OrleansReykjavik
Beaches & swimming. Reykjavik leads by 21 points.21
New OrleansReykjavik
Score3960
Swim season months70
Beaches 10 km333
Coast distance21 km0 km
Water distance17 km0 km
Places to eat. New Orleans leads by 12 points.12
New OrleansReykjavik
Score6149
Restaurants within 2 km of centre803261
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2529
Museums & heritage. Reykjavik leads by 5 points.5
New OrleansReykjavik
Score4550
Museums within 10 km4234
Museums within 2 km of centre3023
Share of museums within 2 km %7168
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. New Orleans leads by 27 points.27
New OrleansReykjavik
Score5427
Drinking venues within 4 km704192
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre495166
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7086
Nightclubs within 4 km4110
Nature & day trips. Reykjavik leads by 34 points.34
New OrleansReykjavik
Score2559
Protected land share 50 km %416
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8956
Park area within 2 km43 hectares28 hectares
Good for families. New Orleans leads by 4 points.4
New OrleansReykjavik
Score4642
Tourist attractions within 2 km2221
Park area within 2 km43 hectares28 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Reykjavik leads by 8 points.8
New OrleansReykjavik
Score4048
Notable places within 2 km4061
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. New Orleans leads by 2 points.2
New OrleansReykjavik
Score4341
Price level global100102.8
Daily budget€243
Year-round weather. New Orleans leads by 31 points.31
New OrleansReykjavik
Score6837
Monthly daytime high17.1 °C to 33 °C3.2 °C to 14.9 °C
Monthly rainfall94 mm to 194 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
New Orleans
17
19
23
26
30
32
33
33
31
27
22
18
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
New Orleans
14
15
18
22
25
29
30
30
28
24
20
16
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rainfall, mm
New Orleans
132
104
111
132
143
194
169
180
128
94
98
123
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Daylight, hours per day
New Orleans
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
12
11
10
Reykjavik
6
9
12
15
18
21
20
16
13
10
7
4
Sunshine, hours per day
New Orleans
No sunshine record
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. New Orleans: 1991-2020 normals, New Orleans Airport (2.7 km from centre). Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromNew OrleansReykjavik
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 55 m
€254-325
1 stop
MSY · 18 km
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
9 h 25 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
2 h 30 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
5 h 55 m
€406-422
KEF · 37 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 15 m
€208-268
1 stop
MSY · 18 km
6 h 15 m
€415-534
KEF · 37 km
BostonBOS, PSM
3 h 15 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
5 h 15 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
DenverDEN, APA
2 h 40 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
7 h 25 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
2 h 45 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
5 h 35 m
€426-480
KEF · 37 km
OrlandoMCO, SFB, ORL
1 h 45 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
4 h 35 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
7 h 30 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
BaltimoreBWI
2 h 35 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
5 h 55 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

MeasureNew OrleansReykjavik
Official languageIcelandic
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Iceland Krona (ISK)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC
Emergency number911112
Elevation-2 m8 m
Main airportLouis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY)18 km from centre50 non-stop destinationsKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureNew OrleansReykjavik
City population383,997138,772
People per km²423569
Museums within 10 km1623
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre3942
Swim season, months above 21 °C7 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

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