VacationSelector

Athens or Inverness?

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

Your match

Athens
✓ Best match
68
match

Wins on good for families and nightlife with your weighting.

Inverness
25
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

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.

AthensInverness
Beaches & swimming. Athens leads by 20 points.20
AthensInverness
Score4828
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km141
Coast distance6 km1 km
Water distance6 km1 km
Places to eat. Athens leads by 48 points.48
AthensInverness
Score6921
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,431114
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2511
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 53 points.53
AthensInverness
Score7320
Museums within 10 km1226
Museums within 2 km of centre785
Share of museums within 2 km %6483
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Athens leads by 66 points.66
AthensInverness
Score8115
Drinking venues within 4 km2,718113
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,35498
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5087
Nightclubs within 4 km1364
Nature & day trips. Athens leads by 36 points.36
AthensInverness
Score459
Protected land share 50 km %512
Landscape blanket share 50 km %011
Land share of disc %5088
Park area within 2 km128 hectares3 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 71 points.71
AthensInverness
Score710
Tourist attractions within 2 km683
Park area within 2 km128 hectares3 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 51 points.51
AthensInverness
Score7524
Notable places within 2 km29116
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 20 points.20
AthensInverness
Score7454
Price level global55.884.9
Daily budget€125—
Year-round weather. Athens leads by 22 points.22
AthensInverness
Score7452
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C6.6 °C to 18.9 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm40 mm to 72 mm
Dry months71
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
Athens
13
14
17
21
27
32
34
35
30
24
19
15
Inverness
7
7
9
12
15
17
19
19
16
13
9
7
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Inverness
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Inverness
50
44
40
42
51
61
60
67
67
72
57
54
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Inverness
7
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
Inverness
2
2
4
5
6
5
5
4
4
3
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Athens: 1991-2020 normals, Athens / Athenai / Pláka (2.2 km from centre). Inverness: 1991-2020 normals, Kinloss (43.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensInverness
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 30 m
€61-96
INV · 12 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 15 m
€202-223
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
INV · 12 km
KerkyraCFU
1 h 10 m
€105-126
ATH · 20 km
3 h 40 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
GenevaGVA
2 h 40 m
€145-194
ATH · 20 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
DublinDUB
4 h 5 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
INV · 12 km
BirminghamBHX
3 h 30 m
no fares
JSI · 134 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
INV · 12 km
ManchesterMAN
3 h 45 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
INV · 12 km
BristolBRS
3 h 30 m
no fares
JSI · 134 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
INV · 12 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 50 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
3 h 5 m
no fares
INV · 12 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 2026-08 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

MeasureAthensInverness
Official languageGreekEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 999
Elevation74 m7 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsInverness Airport (INV)12 km from centre13 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensInverness
City population643,45247,380
People per km²16,4992,289
Museums within 10 km883
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre8215
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Athens or Inverness 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). 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.