VacationSelector

Belfast or Inverness?

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

Your match

Belfast
✓ Best match
48
match

Wins on good for families and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Inverness
25
match

Wins on year-round weather with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Belfast if you want a city that fills a few days on its own: more places to eat and drink, more for children, more parkland and 10 beaches within easy reach.

Choose Inverness if you want a much smaller base, quiet evenings and the drier side of a climate the two otherwise share, with spring months down near 40mm of rain.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

BelfastInverness
Beaches & swimming. Belfast leads by 20 points.20
BelfastInverness
Score4828
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km101
Coast distance1 km1 km
Water distance1 km1 km
Places to eat. Belfast leads by 35 points.35
BelfastInverness
Score5621
Restaurants within 2 km of centre432114
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3111
Museums & heritage. Belfast leads by 9 points.9
BelfastInverness
Score2920
Museums within 10 km186
Museums within 2 km of centre65
Share of museums within 2 km %3383
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Belfast leads by 33 points.33
BelfastInverness
Score4815
Drinking venues within 4 km550113
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre34898
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6387
Nightclubs within 4 km294
Nature & day trips. Belfast leads by 44 points.44
BelfastInverness
Score539
Protected land share 50 km %1912
Landscape blanket share 50 km %1311
Land share of disc %6588
Park area within 2 km68 hectares3 hectares
Good for families. Belfast leads by 48 points.48
BelfastInverness
Score480
Tourist attractions within 2 km163
Park area within 2 km68 hectares3 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Belfast leads by 18 points.18
BelfastInverness
Score4224
Notable places within 2 km4316
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Belfast and Inverness are level on 54.
BelfastInverness
Score5454
Price level global84.984.9
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. Inverness leads by 1 points.1
BelfastInverness
Score5152
Monthly daytime high6.9 °C to 19 °C6.6 °C to 18.9 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 89 mm40 mm to 72 mm
Dry months01
0255075100

Where they differ

Belfast is the fuller city: about three times as many restaurants near the centre, many times more bars and clubs, and about three times as many notable places within walking distance. Families get far more attractions and park space, plus 2 theme parks within reach. It also has 10 beaches nearby against 1, and 19% protected land around it against 12%.

Inverness answers on rain. It is drier in all but one month, including a spring month at 40mm that Belfast never matches, and its museums cluster tightly around the centre.

Where they are alike

Weather is where they are hardest to separate. Both run daytime highs of about 7-19°C across the year, both are warmest in July, both fall back to the same winter floor, and their annual sunshine totals are near identical.

The coast and the museums are close too. The sea is 1km from both centres, and neither gets a month with sea reaching 21°C. Neither city is museum-heavy, and in both the collections sit near the centre.

Which traveller are you?

Travelling with children: Belfast, clearly. It has many times as many attractions and as much park space near the centre, 2 theme parks within reach and 10 beaches nearby, where Inverness has 1.

Eating and drinking your way through a weekend: Belfast again, with about three times as many restaurants near the centre, a wider range of kitchens, and many times more bars and clubs, most of them walkable.

Wanting a small, quiet base and dry days rather than a full programme: Inverness. It is drier in almost every month, spring dropping to 40mm, and the town is a fraction of Belfast's size.

What the numbers don't tell you

No cost comparison is possible between these two. The value figure is a national price level, identical for both by construction, and no daily budget exists for either city, so nothing here tells you which trip costs more. Check accommodation and transport yourself.

Belfast's beach count flatters the coast. The sea is 1km from both centres and Belfast has 10 beaches nearby, but neither city gets a month with sea reaching 21°C, so this is coastline for walking rather than swimming. Belfast's warmest months are also among its wettest, with 86mm in August.

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
Belfast
7
8
10
12
15
18
19
19
17
13
10
7
Inverness
7
7
9
12
15
17
19
19
16
13
9
7
Sea temperature, °C
Belfast
9
8
8
8
9
11
12
13
14
14
12
11
Inverness
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Rainfall, mm
Belfast
74
62
60
56
55
65
74
86
67
89
87
85
Inverness
50
44
40
42
51
61
60
67
67
72
57
54
Daylight, hours per day
Belfast
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
7
Inverness
7
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Belfast
2
2
3
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
2
2
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. Belfast: 1991-2020 normals, Belfast / Aldergrove Airport (19.4 km from centre). Inverness: 1991-2020 normals, Kinloss (43.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Belfast is at its best from June to August, with highs of 18-19°C, and its sea is warmest in September at 14°C. The trade-off is rain, since the warm half of the year is also the wetter one, with 86mm falling in August.

Inverness suits spring better. March and April are its driest months, at 40mm and 42mm, with highs of 9-12°C and far less rain than Belfast in the same weeks. Midsummer matches Belfast for warmth and still stays drier.

Getting there

Flying fromBelfastInverness
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 15 m
€72-142
BHD · 4 km
1 h 30 m
€61-96
INV · 12 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 50 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
3 h 5 m
no fares
INV · 12 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 0 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
INV · 12 km
EdinburghEDI
55 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
SYY · 149 km
GlasgowGLA, PIK
50 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
WIC · 127 km
MalagaAGP
3 h 0 m
€135-197
BFS · 20 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 50 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
FaroFAO
3 h 0 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
KrakowKRK
2 h 50 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 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

MeasureBelfastInverness
Official languageEnglishEnglish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112 or 999
Elevation3 m7 m
Main airportGeorge Best Belfast City Airport (BHD)4 km from centre24 non-stop destinationsInverness Airport (INV)12 km from centre13 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureBelfastInverness
City population345,00647,380
People per km²3,0002,289
Museums within 10 km83
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre4415
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Belfast 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). 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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.