VacationSelector
The pastel houses of Rainbow Row, Charleston
CharlestonThe pastel houses of Rainbow Row
Inverness Castle above the River Ness, Inverness
InvernessInverness Castle above the River Ness

Photos: Charleston by NealVickers, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped; Inverness by Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped.

Charleston or Inverness?

Our verdict in twelve categories, each scored against the same fixed benchmark cities, and the climate month by month, so you can choose for your trip.

Choose Charleston for

  • beaches
  • culture and sights
  • food and drink

What lies behind each score is written up on Charleston’s own page.

Choose Inverness for

  • nature and the outdoors
  • prices
  • getting around

What lies behind each score is written up on Inverness’s own page.

Scoreboard

Twelve categories on one fixed scale from 0 to 100. The shaded stretch is the gap between the two.

Beaches & swimming. Charleston 72, Inverness 20: Charleston leads by 52 points.
Food & drink. Charleston 72, Inverness 36: Charleston leads by 36 points.
Culture & sights. Charleston 64, Inverness 27: Charleston leads by 37 points.
Nightlife. Charleston 44, Inverness 28: Charleston leads by 16 points.
Nature & outdoors. Charleston 55, Inverness 84: Inverness leads by 29 points.
Day trips. Charleston 62, Inverness 56: Charleston leads by 6 points.
Good for families. Charleston 60, Inverness 55: Charleston leads by 5 points.
Getting around. Charleston 46, Inverness 48: Inverness leads by 2 points.
Shopping & style. Charleston 55, Inverness 30: Charleston leads by 25 points.
Affordability. Charleston 27, Inverness 38: Inverness leads by 11 points.
Live music & performing arts. Charleston 42, Inverness 33: Charleston leads by 9 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Charleston 40, Inverness 30: Charleston leads by 10 points.
0255075100

What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Charleston and Inverness.

Your match

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders, and both match scores follow your weighting.

Charleston
Best match
53match

Wins on beaches and culture and sights with your weighting.

Inverness
40match

Wins on nature and the outdoors and prices with your weighting.

What matters to you?

When should you go?

Pick your month. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.

Charleston in July

33 °Cdaytime high
23 °Cnight-time low
167 mmrain in the month
No recordsunshine a day
28 °Csea
14 hdaylight a day

Inverness in July

19 °Cdaytime high
11 °Cnight-time low
69 mmrain in the month
5 hsunshine a day
14 °Csea
17 hdaylight a day

Daytime high, °C

0°10°20°30°40°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

050100150200JFMAMJJASOND
CharlestonInverness

Where the figures come from

Inverness has no rain gauge within 25 km of the centre, so its rainfall comes from a gridded climate dataset read at the city rather than from a gauge further away.

Inverness's sunshine is measured 43 km from the centre, at Kinloss.

Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Charleston: 1991-2020 normals, Charleston Airport (16.1 km from centre). Inverness: 2005-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Inverness / Dalcross (11.9 km from centre).

Before you go

MeasureCharlestonInverness
Official language-English
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number911112 or 999
Elevation6 m7 m
Main airportCharleston International Airport (CHS)16 km from centre56 non-stop destinationsInverness Airport (INV)12 km from centre15 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureCharlestonInverness
City population150,22747,380
People per km²5322,289
Museums within 10 km193
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Swim season, months above 21 °C6 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Charleston or Inverness somewhere new.

Browse every destination

Sources

Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Rainfall where no rain gauge is within 25 km is from the TerraClimate 1991-2020 climatology (Abatzoglou et al. 2018, Scientific Data), read at the city. 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.

Category scores are our editorial verdict under rubric v3, each placed against the same fixed benchmark cities; the climate figures are measured. How the scores are set. Snapshot generated 2026-10-31. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.