VacationSelector

New York or Reykjavik?

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

Your match

New York
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nightlife and places to eat with your weighting.

Reykjavik
46
match

Wins on 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.

New YorkReykjavik
Beaches & swimming. New York leads by 4 points.4
New YorkReykjavik
Score6460
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km1733
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. New York leads by 46 points.46
New YorkReykjavik
Score9549
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6,032261
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3829
Museums & heritage. New York leads by 10 points.10
New YorkReykjavik
Score6050
Museums within 10 km11934
Museums within 2 km of centre3123
Share of museums within 2 km %2668
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. New York leads by 62 points.62
New YorkReykjavik
Score8927
Drinking venues within 4 km4,159192
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,015166
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4886
Nightclubs within 4 km19210
Nature & day trips. Reykjavik leads by 20 points.20
New YorkReykjavik
Score3959
Protected land share 50 km %416
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %6956
Park area within 2 km134 hectares28 hectares
Good for families. New York leads by 30 points.30
New YorkReykjavik
Score7242
Tourist attractions within 2 km3721
Park area within 2 km134 hectares28 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km71
Sights concentration. New York leads by 26 points.26
New YorkReykjavik
Score7448
Notable places within 2 km26861
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. New York leads by 2 points.2
New YorkReykjavik
Score4341
Price level global100102.8
Daily budget€243
Year-round weather. New York leads by 21 points.21
New YorkReykjavik
Score5837
Monthly daytime high4.5 °C to 30.1 °C3.2 °C to 14.9 °C
Monthly rainfall74 mm to 112 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 York
5
6
10
16
22
27
30
29
25
19
13
7
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
New York
6
4
5
8
13
18
22
23
21
17
13
9
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rainfall, mm
New York
83
74
102
97
91
103
107
112
98
97
80
104
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Daylight, hours per day
New York
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
New York
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 York: 1991-2020 normals, LaGuardia Airport (12.9 km from centre). Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromNew YorkReykjavik
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€459-498
JFK · 21 km
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 30 m
€445-517
JFK · 21 km
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
BostonBOS, PSM
1 h 0 m
€193-222
JFK · 21 km
5 h 15 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
CopenhagenCPH
7 h 55 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
3 h 10 m
€216-282
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
1 h 5 m
€203-258
LGA · 13 km
5 h 55 m
€406-422
KEF · 37 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 5 m
€236-237
LGA · 13 km
6 h 15 m
€415-534
KEF · 37 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 20 m
€206-234
LGA · 13 km
5 h 35 m
€426-480
KEF · 37 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
7 h 55 m
€439-457
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
3 h 30 m
€313-393
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
7 h 35 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
13 h 35 m
no fares
JFK · 21 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

MeasureNew YorkReykjavik
Official languageIcelandic
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Iceland Krona (ISK)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC
Emergency number911112
Elevation25 m8 m
Main airportJohn F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)21 km from centre188 non-stop destinationsKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureNew YorkReykjavik
City population8,804,190138,772
People per km²7,256569
Museums within 10 km15723
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre13242
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 New York 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.