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Iceland

Photo: Olga Ernst · CC BY SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Iceland

Icelandic · ISK · Greenwich Mean Time

How it scores for living there

Facts, not judgements

Colour says whether a figure is good for someone moving in, not whether it is high: cheap is green and expensive is red. Every coloured box carries the reason for its colour, the bar under it repeats the score as a width, and boxes with no data are not drawn.

Nomads in Iceland

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Who can help you in Iceland

Vetted partners for the move: immigration and tax lawyers, relocation services, banking and eSIM, guides and local experts. One Gold partner and up to three standard listings per country.

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Climate and cost by city

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Sea off Reykjavik: warmest July at 12°C, coolest January at 4°C.

Average monthly temperature and rainfall from Open-Meteo ERA5 (2019-2023 mean, CC BY 4.0). Sea surface temperature from Open-Meteo Marine. Price level from the World Bank ICP survey, same-year pairing, omitted where the survey does not cover the country.

Cost of living and lifestyle

Day to day, Iceland costs about 118% of the US level, on a World Bank income of $83k per person (PPP, 2025).

That percentage is measured against your country, not against ours. It follows the country picker in the header, or your account if you are signed in. With neither, it falls back to the United States, which is the 100 of the World Bank index, and the sentence says so.

World Bank ICP price level (US=100) and GNI per capita PPP, CC BY 4.0. It is a national average: a capital runs above it and a small town below it.

Getting to Iceland

Its main airport has non-stop service to 33 airports in the OpenFlights route database.

Keflavik KEFReykjavik RKV

Airports and non-stop routes from OpenFlights (Open Database License). Fares and flight times are cached one-way economy prices from Travelpayouts, the cheapest seen recently rather than a live quote or an average. They move; treat them as an order of magnitude.

What to see in Iceland

Ordered by how many people looked each place up over the last twelve months, so the list is measured interest and not our taste.

Photo credits

The practical basics

Currency codes ISO 4217; plugs and voltage from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0); time zone and flag from the countries-states-cities database (ODbL 1.0); travel advice from the UK FCDO (Open Government Licence v3).

How many people visit

Iceland logged 488,000 international arrivals in 2020, the last year the World Bank series covers. That is a pandemic year and it is not what a normal year looks like: in 2019 the same series counted 2.2 million.

World Bank indicator ST.INT.ARVL, international tourism arrivals, CC BY 4.0. Arrivals count trips, not people: the same visitor twice in a year counts twice.

Tax in Iceland, in one line

Personal income tax runs up to 46.29 per cent, but a new arrival who qualifies for the Foreign expert incentive (25% exempt) regime is taxed at 30 per cent. Capital gains: 22% (capital income tax, separate from the employment band).

All Iceland taxes →Income taxCapital gainsCrypto taxCorporate tax

Tax figures are compiled by us and are being re-verified against primary sources. General information, not tax advice.

Data: World Bank, Open-Meteo, M-Lab, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons, under open licences. General information, not tax or legal advice.