VacationSelector

Dublin or Inverness?

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

Your match

Dublin
✓ Best match
55
match

Wins on good for families and places to eat 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.

The verdict

Choose Dublin if the trip is built around eating out, late evenings and museums, with a walkable centre and, with children along, more attractions and 1 theme park within reach.

Choose Inverness if you want countryside and quiet: a small town with the sea 1km from the centre, protected land all around, and spring rain lower than Dublin's.

Scoreboard

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

DublinInverness
Beaches & swimming. Dublin leads by 21 points.21
DublinInverness
Score4928
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km111
Coast distance3 km1 km
Water distance3 km1 km
Places to eat. Dublin leads by 49 points.49
DublinInverness
Score7021
Restaurants within 2 km of centre920114
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3711
Museums & heritage. Dublin leads by 35 points.35
DublinInverness
Score5520
Museums within 10 km476
Museums within 2 km of centre375
Share of museums within 2 km %7983
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Dublin leads by 49 points.49
DublinInverness
Score6415
Drinking venues within 4 km1,239113
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre93498
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7587
Nightclubs within 4 km404
Nature & day trips. Dublin leads by 17 points.17
DublinInverness
Score269
Protected land share 50 km %312
Landscape blanket share 50 km %011
Land share of disc %6288
Park area within 2 km43 hectares3 hectares
Good for families. Dublin leads by 54 points.54
DublinInverness
Score540
Tourist attractions within 2 km413
Park area within 2 km43 hectares3 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Dublin leads by 38 points.38
DublinInverness
Score6224
Notable places within 2 km14116
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dublin leads by 3 points.3
DublinInverness
Score5754
Price level global80.284.9
Daily budget€187—
Year-round weather. Dublin leads by 2 points.2
DublinInverness
Score5452
Monthly daytime high8.2 °C to 19.5 °C6.6 °C to 18.9 °C
Monthly rainfall52 mm to 83 mm40 mm to 72 mm
Dry months01
0255075100

Where they differ

Dublin's centre carries far more restaurants and a wider range of kitchens, far more pubs and clubs, and many more notable places within walking distance. It also has many more museums, a UNESCO-listed site within day-trip reach, and, for families, more attractions and park space near the centre plus 1 theme park.

Inverness answers with open country: 12% of the land around it is protected against 3% around Dublin, and the sea is 1km from the centre rather than 3km. The town itself is small and quiet.

Where they are alike

Year-round weather is where the two are hardest to separate. Both stay cool and damp through the year, Dublin running 8-20°C across the months and Inverness 7-19°C, so neither gives you a hot summer or a hard winter.

They also come out close on value for money, and on swimming: neither has a month with the sea at 21°C or more, both peaking at 14-15°C in August, so bathing is a matter of nerve rather than season.

Which traveller are you?

If the trip is built on eating out and late evenings, Dublin: far more restaurants near the centre, a wider spread of kitchens, and many more pubs and clubs, most of them walkable from where you stay.

Walkers and anyone driving out of town should take Inverness. Protected land makes up 12% of the surroundings, the sea is 1km from the centre, and spring is the driest stretch either city offers.

Travelling with children, Dublin is the practical choice: many more attractions and far more park space near the centre, a theme park within reach, and 11 beaches nearby against Inverness's 1.

What the numbers don't tell you

No daily cost figure exists for Inverness in this dataset, so the two cannot be compared on price at all. Dublin's €187 a day stands on its own, and the value ranking here is built from a separate measure that says nothing about what a day in Inverness costs.

Dublin comes out ahead on nature and day trips, but that rests on park space near the centre; the protected countryside, 12% of the surrounding land, is around Inverness. Dublin's beaches, likewise, are for walking rather than swimming: the sea peaks at 15°C in August and no month is warmer.

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
Dublin
8
9
10
12
15
18
20
19
17
14
10
8
Inverness
7
7
9
12
15
17
19
19
16
13
9
7
Sea temperature, °C
Dublin
9
8
8
9
11
13
15
15
15
13
12
11
Inverness
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Rainfall, mm
Dublin
62
52
52
55
58
65
62
74
61
78
83
72
Inverness
50
44
40
42
51
61
60
67
67
72
57
54
Daylight, hours per day
Dublin
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Inverness
7
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Dublin
2
3
4
5
6
6
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. Dublin: 1991-2020 normals, Dublin Airport (9.3 km from centre). Inverness: 1991-2020 normals, Kinloss (43.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Dublin's best run is June to August, with highs of 18-20°C and 62-74mm of rain a month. Late autumn is the part to skip, when rainfall climbs to 83mm.

Inverness tops out a shade lower, 19°C in July, and it is the drier of the two in spring: 40-42mm in March and April against Dublin's 52-55mm, with highs of 9-12°C. If you want the countryside walkable and the rain at its lowest, that is the window.

Getting there

Flying fromDublinInverness
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 10 m
€33-43
DUB · 9 km
1 h 30 m
€61-96
INV · 12 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 35 m
€80-139
DUB · 9 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
INV · 12 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€43-47
DUB · 9 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 0 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
INV · 12 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 50 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
BirminghamBHX
1 h 5 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
INV · 12 km
EdinburghEDI
1 h 5 m
€39-41
DUB · 9 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
SYY · 149 km
FaroFAO
2 h 50 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
GlasgowGLA, PIK
1 h 0 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
WIC · 127 km
BristolBRS
1 h 5 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
1 h 30 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

MeasureDublinInverness
Official languageEnglish, IrishEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 999
Elevation20 m7 m
Main airportDublin Airport (DUB)9 km from centre201 non-stop destinationsInverness Airport (INV)12 km from centre13 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureDublinInverness
City population592,71347,380
People per km²5,1542,289
Museums within 10 km403
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre7415
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Dublin 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.