VacationSelector

Reykjavik or Seattle?

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 nature & day trips and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Seattle
✓ Best match
52
match

Wins on nightlife and places to eat 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.

ReykjavikSeattle
Beaches & swimming. Reykjavik and Seattle are level on 60.
ReykjavikSeattle
Score6060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km33100
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. Seattle leads by 26 points.26
ReykjavikSeattle
Score4975
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2611,460
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2935
Museums & heritage. Reykjavik leads by 14 points.14
ReykjavikSeattle
Score5036
Museums within 10 km3428
Museums within 2 km of centre2317
Share of museums within 2 km %6861
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Seattle leads by 30 points.30
ReykjavikSeattle
Score2757
Drinking venues within 4 km192873
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre166696
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8680
Nightclubs within 4 km1034
Nature & day trips. Reykjavik leads by 19 points.19
ReykjavikSeattle
Score5940
Protected land share 50 km %169
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5680
Park area within 2 km28 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Seattle leads by 4 points.4
ReykjavikSeattle
Score4246
Tourist attractions within 2 km2117
Park area within 2 km28 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Seattle leads by 4 points.4
ReykjavikSeattle
Score4852
Notable places within 2 km6176
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Seattle leads by 2 points.2
ReykjavikSeattle
Score4143
Price level global102.8100
Daily budget€243
Year-round weather. Seattle leads by 24 points.24
ReykjavikSeattle
Score3761
Monthly daytime high3.2 °C to 14.9 °C7.8 °C to 24.9 °C
Monthly rainfall41 mm to 97 mm15 mm to 160 mm
Dry months03
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
Seattle
8
10
12
15
19
21
25
25
22
15
11
8
Sea temperature, °C
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Seattle
8
8
8
9
10
11
12
12
11
10
9
9
Rainfall, mm
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Seattle
147
96
106
81
48
37
15
25
41
99
160
147
Daylight, hours per day
Reykjavik
6
9
12
15
18
21
20
16
13
10
7
4
Seattle
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Reykjavik
1
2
4
5
7
6
6
5
4
3
1
0
Seattle
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). Seattle: 1991-2020 normals, Seattle-Tacoma Airport (17.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromReykjavikSeattle
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
5 h 15 m
€300-424
SEA · 18 km
BostonBOS, PSM
5 h 15 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
5 h 25 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
5 h 55 m
€406-422
KEF · 37 km
5 h 0 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
6 h 15 m
€415-534
KEF · 37 km
3 h 55 m
€257-317
1 stop
SEA · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
10 h 10 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
DenverDEN, APA
7 h 25 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
9 h 55 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
3 h 30 m
€313-393
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
10 h 20 m
€554-583
1 stop
SEA · 18 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 0 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
10 h 55 m
no fares
SEA · 18 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

MeasureReykjavikSeattle
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 m40 m
Main airportKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsSeattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)18 km from centre135 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureReykjavikSeattle
City population138,772737,015
People per km²5691,996
Museums within 10 km2327
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre4278
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 Seattle 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.