VacationSelector

Reykjavik or Zurich?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Reykjavik
46
match

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

Zurich
44
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.

ReykjavikZurich
Beaches & swimming. Reykjavik leads by 60 points.60
ReykjavikZurich
Score600
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km3323
Coast distance0 km632 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Zurich leads by 18 points.18
ReykjavikZurich
Score4967
Restaurants within 2 km of centre261974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2930
Museums & heritage. Zurich leads by 6 points.6
ReykjavikZurich
Score5056
Museums within 10 km3476
Museums within 2 km of centre2337
Share of museums within 2 km %6849
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Zurich leads by 27 points.27
ReykjavikZurich
Score2754
Drinking venues within 4 km192676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre166553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8682
Nightclubs within 4 km1074
Nature & day trips. Reykjavik leads by 22 points.22
ReykjavikZurich
Score5937
Protected land share 50 km %1616
Landscape blanket share 50 km %09
Land share of disc %56100
Park area within 2 km28 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Reykjavik leads by 6 points.6
ReykjavikZurich
Score4236
Tourist attractions within 2 km218
Park area within 2 km28 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Zurich leads by 11 points.11
ReykjavikZurich
Score4859
Notable places within 2 km61119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Reykjavik leads by 6 points.6
ReykjavikZurich
Score4135
Price level global102.8110.5
Daily budget€243€248
Year-round weather. Zurich leads by 16 points.16
ReykjavikZurich
Score3753
Monthly daytime high3.2 °C to 14.9 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall41 mm to 97 mm60 mm to 128 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
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Zurich
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Reykjavik
6
9
12
15
18
21
20
16
13
10
7
4
Zurich
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
Zurich
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromReykjavikZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
CopenhagenCPH
3 h 10 m
€216-282
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
1 h 45 m
€204-248
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 35 m
€389-592
KEF · 37 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 9 km
BerlinBER
3 h 30 m
€245-365
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
1 h 25 m
€140-176
ZRH · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
3 h 30 m
€313-393
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
OsloOSL, TRF
2 h 45 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
ViennaVIE
4 h 5 m
€281-315
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
1 h 25 m
€174-215
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
4 h 10 m
€224-296
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 9 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

MeasureReykjavikZurich
Official languageIcelandicFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyIceland Krona (ISK)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTCUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation8 m408 m
Main airportKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureReykjavikZurich
City population138,772452,421
People per km²5695,147
Museums within 10 km2363
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre4278
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Reykjavik or Zurich 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.