VacationSelector

Reykjavik or San Diego?

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

Your match

Reykjavik
46
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage with your weighting.

San Diego
✓ Best match
58
match

Wins on year-round weather and good for families 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.

ReykjavikSan Diego
Beaches & swimming. San Diego leads by 3 points.3
ReykjavikSan Diego
Score6063
Swim season months01
Beaches 10 km3342
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. San Diego leads by 14 points.14
ReykjavikSan Diego
Score4963
Restaurants within 2 km of centre261823
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2927
Museums & heritage. Reykjavik leads by 6 points.6
ReykjavikSan Diego
Score5044
Museums within 10 km3459
Museums within 2 km of centre2330
Share of museums within 2 km %6851
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. San Diego leads by 23 points.23
ReykjavikSan Diego
Score2750
Drinking venues within 4 km192615
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre166408
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8666
Nightclubs within 4 km1031
Nature & day trips. Reykjavik leads by 4 points.4
ReykjavikSan Diego
Score5955
Protected land share 50 km %166
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5652
Park area within 2 km28 hectares308 hectares
Good for families. San Diego leads by 33 points.33
ReykjavikSan Diego
Score4275
Tourist attractions within 2 km2140
Park area within 2 km28 hectares308 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km13
Sights concentration. Reykjavik leads by 8 points.8
ReykjavikSan Diego
Score4840
Notable places within 2 km6140
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Diego leads by 2 points.2
ReykjavikSan Diego
Score4143
Price level global102.8100
Daily budget€243
Year-round weather. San Diego leads by 51 points.51
ReykjavikSan Diego
Score3788
Monthly daytime high3.2 °C to 14.9 °C18.6 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall41 mm to 97 mm0 mm to 56 mm
Dry months09
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
San Diego
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
23
21
19
Sea temperature, °C
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
San Diego
15
15
16
16
17
19
20
21
21
19
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
San Diego
50
56
37
17
7
1
2
0
3
13
20
42
Daylight, hours per day
Reykjavik
6
9
12
15
18
21
20
16
13
10
7
4
San Diego
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Reykjavik
1
2
4
5
7
6
6
5
4
3
1
0
San Diego
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). San Diego: 1991-2020 normals, San Diego International Airport (2.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromReykjavikSan Diego
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
5 h 15 m
€299-455
1 stop
SAN · 3 km
BostonBOS, PSM
5 h 15 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
5 h 35 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
6 h 15 m
€415-534
KEF · 37 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
DenverDEN, APA
7 h 25 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
2 h 15 m
€64-224
SAN · 3 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
5 h 55 m
€406-422
KEF · 37 km
4 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
7 h 30 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
5 h 35 m
€426-480
KEF · 37 km
4 h 45 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
RaleighRDU
6 h 20 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
4 h 50 m
no fares
SAN · 3 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

MeasureReykjavikSan Diego
Official languageIcelandic
CurrencyIceland Krona (ISK)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTCUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation8 m129 m
Main airportKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsSan Diego International Airport (SAN)3 km from centre87 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureReykjavikSan Diego
City population138,7721,386,932
People per km²5691,438
Museums within 10 km2326
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre4244
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone1 month

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Reykjavik or San Diego 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. 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.