VacationSelector

Reykjavik or Rio de Janeiro?

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

Your match

Reykjavik
46
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

Rio de Janeiro
✓ Best match
69
match

Wins on year-round weather 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.

ReykjavikRio de Janeiro
Beaches & swimming. Rio de Janeiro leads by 40 points.40
ReykjavikRio de Janeiro
Score60100
Swim season months012
Beaches 10 km3361
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. Rio de Janeiro leads by 5 points.5
ReykjavikRio de Janeiro
Score4954
Restaurants within 2 km of centre261804
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2916
Museums & heritage. Rio de Janeiro leads by 19 points.19
ReykjavikRio de Janeiro
Score5069
Museums within 10 km34110
Museums within 2 km of centre2351
Share of museums within 2 km %6846
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Rio de Janeiro leads by 30 points.30
ReykjavikRio de Janeiro
Score2757
Drinking venues within 4 km192818
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre166509
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8662
Nightclubs within 4 km1050
Nature & day trips. Rio de Janeiro leads by 3 points.3
ReykjavikRio de Janeiro
Score5962
Protected land share 50 km %1621
Landscape blanket share 50 km %017
Land share of disc %5657
Park area within 2 km28 hectares113 hectares
Good for families. Rio de Janeiro leads by 17 points.17
ReykjavikRio de Janeiro
Score4259
Tourist attractions within 2 km2130
Park area within 2 km28 hectares113 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Rio de Janeiro leads by 8 points.8
ReykjavikRio de Janeiro
Score4856
Notable places within 2 km6198
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rio de Janeiro leads by 40 points.40
ReykjavikRio de Janeiro
Score4181
Price level global102.846.1
Daily budget€243
Year-round weather. Rio de Janeiro leads by 48 points.48
ReykjavikRio de Janeiro
Score3785
Monthly daytime high3.2 °C to 14.9 °C24 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall41 mm to 97 mm42 mm to 232 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
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Rio de Janeiro
28
28
28
27
25
24
24
25
25
26
26
27
Sea temperature, °C
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rio de Janeiro
25
25
25
25
24
23
22
21
21
22
23
24
Rainfall, mm
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Rio de Janeiro
208
151
173
101
71
49
45
42
69
108
220
232
Daylight, hours per day
Reykjavik
6
9
12
15
18
21
20
16
13
10
7
4
Rio de Janeiro
13
13
12
12
11
11
11
11
12
13
13
14
Sunshine, hours per day
Reykjavik
1
2
4
5
7
6
6
5
4
3
1
0
Rio de Janeiro
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre). Rio de Janeiro: 2001-2020 normals, NASA POWER reanalysis grid, no weather station within 90 km.

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromReykjavikRio de Janeiro
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
11 h 35 m
€996-1109
2 stops
GIG · 12 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
9 h 45 m
€609-699
2 stops
GIG · 12 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
11 h 30 m
€957-1014
2 stops
GIG · 12 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
11 h 55 m
€900-974
1 stop
GIG · 12 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
5 h 35 m
€426-480
KEF · 37 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
GIG · 12 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
3 h 30 m
€313-393
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
11 h 55 m
€915-1205
2 stops
GIG · 12 km
RomeFCO, CIA
4 h 35 m
€255-375
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
11 h 25 m
€897-908
GIG · 12 km
MadridMAD
4 h 5 m
€222-314
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
10 h 15 m
€910-925
1 stop
GIG · 12 km
LisbonLIS
4 h 10 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
9 h 45 m
€821-922
GIG · 12 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
5 h 5 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
GIG · 12 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

MeasureReykjavikRio de Janeiro
Official languageIcelandicPortuguese
CurrencyIceland Krona (ISK)Brazilian Real (BRL)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCN60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTCUTC-3
Emergency number112Police 190, ambulance 192, fire 193
Elevation8 m31 m
Main airportKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsRio de Janeiro Galeão – Tom Jobim International Airport (GIG)12 km from centre59 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureReykjavikRio de Janeiro
City population138,7726,211,223
People per km²5694,930
Museums within 10 km2370
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre4227
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone12 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Reykjavik or Rio de Janeiro 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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. Temperature and rainfall for destinations with no weather station are from the NASA POWER 2001-2020 climatology, derived from MERRA-2. 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.