VacationSelector
Durban
Inverness Castle above the River Ness, Inverness
InvernessInverness Castle above the River Ness

Photos: Inverness by Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped.

Durban 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 Durban for

  • beaches
  • prices
  • food and drink

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

Choose Inverness for

  • getting around
  • day trips
  • nature and the outdoors

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. Durban 80, Inverness 20: Durban leads by 60 points.
Food & drink. Durban 60, Inverness 36: Durban leads by 24 points.
Culture & sights. Durban 38, Inverness 27: Durban leads by 11 points.
Nightlife. Durban 40, Inverness 28: Durban leads by 12 points.
Nature & outdoors. Durban 68, Inverness 84: Inverness leads by 16 points.
Day trips. Durban 38, Inverness 56: Inverness leads by 18 points.
Good for families. Durban 60, Inverness 55: Durban leads by 5 points.
Getting around. Durban 20, Inverness 48: Inverness leads by 28 points.
Shopping & style. Durban 42, Inverness 30: Durban leads by 12 points.
Affordability. Durban 72, Inverness 38: Durban leads by 34 points.
Live music & performing arts. Durban 40, Inverness 33: Durban leads by 7 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Durban and Inverness are level on 30.
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What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Durban and Inverness.

Your match

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

Durban
Best match
49match

Wins on beaches and prices with your weighting.

Inverness
40match

Wins on getting around and day trips with your weighting.

What matters to you?

When should you go?

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

Durban in July

23 °Cdaytime high
11 °Cnight-time low
44 mmrain in the month
8 hsunshine a day
22 °Csea
10 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°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

050100150JFMAMJJASOND
DurbanInverness

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. Durban: 1991-2020 normals, Durban, Durban International Airport (14.1 km from centre). Inverness: 2005-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Inverness / Dalcross (11.9 km from centre).

Before you go

MeasureDurbanInverness
Official languageEnglish, Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans, Venda, Northern Sotho, Swazi, Tswana, Tsonga, Sesotho, Southern Ndebele, South African Sign LanguageEnglish
CurrencyRand (ZAR)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsCMN230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC+2UTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 999
Elevation22 m7 m
Main airportKing Shaka International Airport (DUR)29 km from centre13 non-stop destinationsInverness Airport (INV)12 km from centre15 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureDurbanInverness
City population595,06147,380
People per km²2,6342,289
Museums within 10 km13
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Durban 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 2026-11-01. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.