An independent trip cost and conditions tool for Iceland. It is paid for by travellers — the calculator and overview are free, the full report is $15 — and by nobody else: no commission, no affiliate links, no advertising, and we do not sell or book travel. That is why it can tell you to drive the Golden Circle yourself or skip the lagoon.
Accommodation: a census of 208 refundable double rooms on booking engines, one-night queries for each night of a fixed October week, in Reykjavík, the mid-coast and Vík, with the matching July nights for summer rates. Medians, not asking prices from a few hotels.
Food: an explicit shopping list priced at Krónan, and restaurant menus. Vehicles: live quotes from rental booking engines, insurance included. Fuel: 70 stations on the route. Road tax: the state's rates and 16 rental companies' own published terms. Driving distances: measured on the road network, airport to airport.
Each number carries a tag: live quote (a price we observed, as a traveller would see it), verified (checked against a named source), derived (calculated from other figures), reconciled (sources that differ slightly) or estimate (our judgement). Every figure the site uses, with its source, is on one page. The report is arithmetic over these figures: nothing in it is generated or guessed.
Every figure is re-measured each quarter from the same fixed sources, and the Cost of Iceland Index is repriced on the same basket. The current edition is shown on every report.
If a figure is wrong, tell us at support@iskland.com. Every change and correction after publication is logged, dated, on the changes page — never made by quietly editing a page.