VacationSelector

Reykjavik or San Jose?

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

Your match

Reykjavik
✓ Best match
46
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration with your weighting.

San Jose
39
match

Wins on year-round weather and 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.

ReykjavikSan Jose
Beaches & swimming. Reykjavik leads by 52 points.52
ReykjavikSan Jose
Score608
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km331
Coast distance0 km14 km
Water distance0 km14 km
Places to eat. Reykjavik leads by 8 points.8
ReykjavikSan Jose
Score4941
Restaurants within 2 km of centre261313
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2916
Museums & heritage. Reykjavik leads by 24 points.24
ReykjavikSan Jose
Score5026
Museums within 10 km3420
Museums within 2 km of centre239
Share of museums within 2 km %6845
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. San Jose leads by 4 points.4
ReykjavikSan Jose
Score2731
Drinking venues within 4 km192231
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre16688
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8638
Nightclubs within 4 km1016
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 11 points.11
ReykjavikSan Jose
Score5970
Protected land share 50 km %1626
Landscape blanket share 50 km %02
Land share of disc %5691
Park area within 2 km28 hectares101 hectares
Good for families. Reykjavik leads by 9 points.9
ReykjavikSan Jose
Score4233
Tourist attractions within 2 km212
Park area within 2 km28 hectares101 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Reykjavik leads by 34 points.34
ReykjavikSan Jose
Score4814
Notable places within 2 km619
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Jose leads by 2 points.2
ReykjavikSan Jose
Score4143
Price level global102.8100
Daily budget€243
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 48 points.48
ReykjavikSan Jose
Score3785
Monthly daytime high3.2 °C to 14.9 °C15.4 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall41 mm to 97 mm0 mm to 78 mm
Dry months08
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 Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Rainfall, mm
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Daylight, hours per day
Reykjavik
6
9
12
15
18
21
20
16
13
10
7
4
San Jose
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Reykjavik
1
2
4
5
7
6
6
5
4
3
1
0
San Jose
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 Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromReykjavikSan Jose
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
BostonBOS, PSM
5 h 15 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
5 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
CopenhagenCPH
3 h 10 m
€216-282
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
3 h 30 m
€313-393
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
5 h 35 m
€426-480
KEF · 37 km
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
5 h 55 m
€406-422
KEF · 37 km
5 h 15 m
€252-262
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 0 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 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 Jose
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 m25 m
Main airportKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureReykjavikSan Jose
City population138,7721,013,240
People per km²5692,167
Museums within 10 km2319
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre4230
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

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