VacationSelector

Ottawa or Reykjavik?

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

Your match

Ottawa
43
match

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

Reykjavik
✓ Best match
46
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage 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.

OttawaReykjavik
Beaches & swimming. Reykjavik leads by 60 points.60
OttawaReykjavik
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km933
Coast distance423 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Ottawa leads by 15 points.15
OttawaReykjavik
Score6449
Restaurants within 2 km of centre684261
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3429
Museums & heritage. Reykjavik leads by 18 points.18
OttawaReykjavik
Score3250
Museums within 10 km1534
Museums within 2 km of centre823
Share of museums within 2 km %5368
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Ottawa leads by 17 points.17
OttawaReykjavik
Score4427
Drinking venues within 4 km432192
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre303166
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7086
Nightclubs within 4 km3510
Nature & day trips. Reykjavik leads by 18 points.18
OttawaReykjavik
Score4159
Protected land share 50 km %816
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10056
Park area within 2 km122 hectares28 hectares
Good for families. Ottawa leads by 4 points.4
OttawaReykjavik
Score4642
Tourist attractions within 2 km1121
Park area within 2 km122 hectares28 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Ottawa leads by 2 points.2
OttawaReykjavik
Score5048
Notable places within 2 km7161
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Ottawa leads by 13 points.13
OttawaReykjavik
Score5441
Price level global84102.8
Daily budget€243
Year-round weather. Ottawa leads by 16 points.16
OttawaReykjavik
Score5337
Monthly daytime high-4.9 °C to 27 °C3.2 °C to 14.9 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 94 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
Ottawa
-5
-3
3
11
19
24
27
26
22
14
6
-2
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Ottawa
No coastline within reach
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Ottawa
60
53
56
74
66
87
82
89
78
94
59
80
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Daylight, hours per day
Ottawa
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Reykjavik
6
9
12
15
18
21
20
16
13
10
7
4
Sunshine, hours per day
Ottawa
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. Ottawa: 1991-2020 normals, Ottawa CDA RCS (5.3 km from centre). Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromOttawaReykjavik
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
5 h 35 m
€426-480
KEF · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
50 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
5 h 5 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
BostonBOS, PSM
1 h 15 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
5 h 15 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
1 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
6 h 15 m
€415-534
KEF · 37 km
CalgaryYYC
4 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
6 h 40 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
1 h 30 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
5 h 55 m
€406-422
KEF · 37 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
4 h 50 m
€175-263
2 stops
YOW · 12 km
7 h 20 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

MeasureOttawaReykjavik
Official languageFrench, EnglishIcelandic
CurrencyCanadian Dollar (CAD)Iceland Krona (ISK)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC
Emergency number911112
Elevation70 m8 m
Main airportOttawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport (YOW)12 km from centre46 non-stop destinationsKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureOttawaReykjavik
City population1,017,449138,772
People per km²366569
Museums within 10 km2023
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre6242
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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