Both are North Atlantic islands with cliffs, waterfalls, sheep and weather that changes four times before lunch. From the outside they look like the same holiday.
They are not, and the difference is not really about the scenery. It is about how many other people are standing next to you, how hard it is to get there, and how much of your budget disappears before you have done anything.
Here is the honest comparison for a UK traveller.
The short answer
Book Iceland if it is your first trip to the North Atlantic, you want variety, you are travelling with people who need things to be easy, or you are flying from anywhere other than Edinburgh or London.
Book the Faroes if you have done Iceland already, you want somewhere genuinely quiet, you are happy for the weather to cancel your plans, and you can work around a flight that leaves twice a week.
If you only take one thing from this: Iceland is the better first trip, the Faroes is the better second one.
Getting there is the biggest difference
This is where most comparisons wave a hand, and it is the single fact that shapes everything else.
Iceland has around 29 direct flights a day from the UK, across roughly 13 airports. Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Newcastle, London and more, with easyJet, Icelandair, Jet2 and British Airways all competing. Edinburgh to Keflavík is about two and a half hours. Fares start in the £40 to £60 range if you are flexible.
The Faroes have one direct route from the UK: Edinburgh to Vágar with Atlantic Airways, twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays, March to December, plus a seasonal Gatwick service from late May. Flight time is about an hour and twenty. Fares start around £200.
Read that again, because it is not just a price gap. Two departures a week means your trip is three nights, four nights, or a full week. There is no such thing as a two-night Faroes break. If a flight cancels, the next one is three or four days later.
Iceland you can book on a Tuesday and fly on a Friday from your nearest airport. The Faroes needs planning, and for most of the UK it needs getting to Edinburgh first. The tactics in our guide to finding cheap flights work well on Iceland and barely at all on the Faroes, because one airline on one route does not discount.
Crowds: the gap is enormous
Iceland had just under 2.3 million foreign overnight visitors in 2025, according to the Icelandic Tourist Board. Recent estimates put the Faroes at around 130,000 a year.
That is roughly seventeen visitors to Iceland for every one to the Faroes, spread over a country that is far bigger.
In practice, at Gullfoss or Seljalandsfoss in July you are in a car park with coaches. It is still spectacular. You are just sharing it. Iceland's answer is to go further, to the Westfjords or the east, which is genuinely quiet but costs you days of driving.
In the Faroes you can stand above Saksun on a Tuesday in June and see nobody. The islands are small enough that the quiet is not something you have to drive four hours to reach.
That is changing, though, and the Faroes know it. There is now a nightly sustainability fee, and several of the best-known walks charge for access.
What it costs on the ground
Both are expensive. They are expensive in different shapes.
Iceland. Accommodation and food are the big ones. Budget around £85 to £150 a night outside Reykjavík in summer, and £30 to £50 a day per person on food if you mix supermarket lunches with one meal out. Bónus is the cheap supermarket and it will save you a fortune.
The 2026 change worth knowing: from 1 January, Iceland replaced most fuel duty with a per-kilometre road charge. Standard cars pay 6.95 krónur a kilometre, and rental companies bill it, sometimes with an admin fee on top. Fuel at the pump is cheaper as a result. It is roughly a wash on a short trip, but on a full Ring Road lap of about 1,330 km it adds somewhere near £55 before fuel. Check whether your rental quotes it as a daily rate or per kilometre.
Add the paid attractions. The Blue Lagoon uses dynamic pricing and the basic tier is not cheap, so check the date you actually want. The Sky Lagoon is around half the price. Municipal swimming pools with hot pots are a few pounds and are better value than either.
The Faroes. Rooms run about £120 to £180 a night and there is far less competition, so the low end barely exists. Restaurant prices are steep and alcohol is heavily taxed. Car hire runs roughly £20 to £80 a day.
Then the fees that catch people out. Subsea tunnel tolls are charged to your hire car, about 100 krone for a return through the Vágar tunnel and 175 krone one way through the Eysturoy tunnel. Walking access is charged at several of the headline spots: 200 krone for Trælanípa unguided, 200 for the Kallur lighthouse, 600 for Drangarnir which is guided only. Mykines is 500 krone in season, or 400 booked online, and includes a mandatory guide.
Since 1 February 2026 there has also been a 20 krone nightly sustainability fee for visitors aged 16 and over, capped at 200 krone. Worth watching this one: in summer 2026 the government said it intends to scrap the fee and rework countryside access, and that was still a proposal at the time of writing.
Rough verdict on cost. Iceland is cheaper to reach and cheaper to sleep in. The Faroes are cheaper once you are moving, because most of what you do is drive and walk. Over a week they land closer together than the flight prices suggest.
What you actually do there
Iceland is a country. Glaciers, geysers, black sand, lava fields, ice caves, whale watching, puffins, hot springs, a real capital city with restaurants and bars. You can do a different landscape every day for two weeks and not repeat yourself. There is a tour for everything and the infrastructure works.
The Faroes are variations on one theme, and the theme is very good. Cliffs, fjords, waterfalls falling into the sea, turf-roofed villages of forty people, tunnels bored under the seabed including one with a roundabout in it. What you do is drive, walk, look, and wait for cloud to move.
Iceland has more sights. The Faroes have more atmosphere per square mile. Which of those you want is genuinely the whole decision, and if it is the second one, the rest of our remote holiday destinations in Europe are worth a look before you commit.
Getting around
Iceland wants a hire car and gives you the Ring Road to use it on. Roads are good, the network is proper, and there are domestic flights and coach tours if you would rather not drive. Distances are the catch. Reykjavík to Höfn is about five hours. People routinely underestimate this and end up spending a holiday in the car.
The Faroes are the opposite problem. Nowhere is more than about 90 minutes from the airport, so the driving is short, but it is single track, steep, foggy and full of sheep with legal right of way. Mountain roads close. Ferries get cancelled by sea state. You need to hold your plans loosely.
You can do the Faroes without a car on the SSL bus and ferry network, and a four-day travel card is 500 krone. What you lose is timing, and timing is most of the trip when the weather turns over four times an afternoon.
How long you need
Iceland: five days for Reykjavík, the Golden Circle and the south coast. Eight to ten for the Ring Road, and do not try it in less.
The Faroes: four nights is right, and the Thursday to Monday flight pairing gives you exactly that. A week is generous unless you are walking every day.
Can you do both?
Yes, and it is underrated. Atlantic Airways flies between Vágar and Reykjavík, so you can pair them into one trip rather than choosing.
There is also the Norröna, the Smyril Line ferry that sails from Hirtshals in Denmark via the Faroes to Iceland, seasonally. It takes days rather than hours and you can bring your own car, which puts it in the same category as the routes in our guide to holidays without flying from the UK.
For most people the honest answer is still one or the other. Two weeks split between them means a lot of the fortnight spent in transit.
Weather, and why it matters more than you think
Neither is cold in summer. Both are wet and windy in a way that shapes the trip.
Faroese summer highs sit around 13°C, and the wind is the real story. Fog closes in on cliff paths and takes away the visual cues that tell you where the edge is. Check weather.fo on the morning of a walk rather than the night before.
Iceland is marginally warmer in the south and considerably more variable across the country, which is an advantage: if the south is socked in you can drive out of it. In the Faroes you cannot, because there is nowhere further to go.
If the appeal is cool weather rather than drama, our coolcation destinations for 2026 cover easier options at lower cost. And if what you actually want is emptiness without leaving Britain, the far north west of Scotland gets you a surprising amount of the way there, which we cover in our wild camping in Scotland guide.
Paperwork and money
Iceland is in Schengen. The Faroe Islands are not in the EU or in Schengen, so ETIAS will not apply there. Entry rules for UK travellers are straightforward for both, but check GOV.UK before you book because this is the sort of thing that changes.
Iceland uses the Icelandic króna, the Faroes use the Danish krone. Both are effectively cashless. Take a card with no foreign transaction fees and you will barely touch a note in either.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Faroe Islands cheaper than Iceland?
No, not overall. Flights are far dearer and rooms cost more because there is less competition. The Faroes are cheaper once you are there, because the main activities are driving and walking rather than paid tours.
Are the Faroe Islands better than Iceland?
For emptiness and atmosphere, yes. For variety, ease and value, no. Iceland is the stronger first trip and the Faroes reward you more if you have already done that kind of landscape once.
Which has fewer tourists, the Faroe Islands or Iceland?
The Faroes, by an enormous margin. Around 130,000 visitors a year against Iceland's 2.3 million.
Can you fly direct to the Faroe Islands from the UK?
From Edinburgh, twice a week with Atlantic Airways, March to December, plus a seasonal Gatwick route from late May. That is the whole list.
Is Iceland or the Faroe Islands better for hiking?
The Faroes for cliff and coastal walking, and it is more accessible because everything is close together. Iceland for glacier and volcanic terrain, and for range. Note that several headline Faroese walks now charge for access.
How many days do you need for each?
Four nights for the Faroes, which fits the flight schedule. Five for a short Iceland trip, eight to ten for the Ring Road.