VacationSelector

Reykjavik or Shanghai?

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 beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Shanghai
✓ Best match
54
match

Wins on good for families and value for money 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.

ReykjavikShanghai
Beaches & swimming. Reykjavik leads by 43 points.43
ReykjavikShanghai
Score6017
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km330
Coast distance0 km18 km
Water distance0 km18 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Museums & heritage. Reykjavik leads by 5 points.5
ReykjavikShanghai
Score5045
Museums within 10 km34108
Museums within 2 km of centre2328
Share of museums within 2 km %6826
Unesco sites within 50 km10
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Nature & day trips. Reykjavik leads by 17 points.17
ReykjavikShanghai
Score5942
Protected land share 50 km %169
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5682
Park area within 2 km28 hectares83 hectares
Good for families. Shanghai leads by 39 points.39
ReykjavikShanghai
Score4281
Tourist attractions within 2 km2186
Park area within 2 km28 hectares83 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km110
Sights concentration. Shanghai leads by 3 points.3
ReykjavikShanghai
Score4851
Notable places within 2 km6173
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Shanghai leads by 38 points.38
ReykjavikShanghai
Score4179
Price level global102.849
Daily budget€243
Year-round weather. Shanghai leads by 28 points.28
ReykjavikShanghai
Score3765
Monthly daytime high3.2 °C to 14.9 °C8.5 °C to 33.2 °C
Monthly rainfall41 mm to 97 mm43 mm to 216 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
Shanghai
9
11
15
21
26
28
33
33
29
23
18
12
Sea temperature, °C
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Shanghai
8
7
10
14
19
22
26
28
26
21
17
12
Rainfall, mm
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Shanghai
69
65
88
72
84
192
151
216
97
64
53
43
Daylight, hours per day
Reykjavik
6
9
12
15
18
21
20
16
13
10
7
4
Shanghai
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
Shanghai
4
4
5
5
6
4
6
6
5
5
4
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre). Shanghai: 1991-2020 normals, Shanghai / Hongqiao (8.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromReykjavikShanghai
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
11 h 30 m
€528-630
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
CopenhagenCPH
3 h 10 m
€216-282
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
14 h 40 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 0 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
2 h 0 m
€150-154
PVG · 33 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
3 h 30 m
€313-393
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
11 h 5 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
5 h 35 m
€426-480
KEF · 37 km
14 h 5 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 35 m
€227-256
KEF · 37 km
11 h 30 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
DublinDUB
2 h 25 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
PVG · 33 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

MeasureReykjavikShanghai
Official languageIcelandicPutonghua
CurrencyIceland Krona (ISK)Yuan Renminbi (CNY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzACI220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTCUTC+8
Emergency number112Police 110, ambulance 120, fire 119
Elevation8 m4 m
Main airportKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsShanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)33 km from centre200 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days6 days

By the numbers

MeasureReykjavikShanghai
City population138,77224,870,895
People per km²5693,922
Museums within 10 km2344
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre4264
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone5 months

Where else could you go?

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