VacationSelector

Edinburgh or Inverness?

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

Your match

Edinburgh
✓ Best match
58
match

Wins on good for families and places to eat 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 Edinburgh if the city itself is the trip: many times more restaurants, bars, museums and attractions near the centre, with 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach.

Choose Inverness if the town is a base and the country around it is the point. The sea is 1km from the centre, a larger share of the surrounding land is protected, and the centre is small enough to cross on foot.

Scoreboard

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

EdinburghInverness
Beaches & swimming. Edinburgh leads by 27 points.27
EdinburghInverness
Score5528
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km201
Coast distance3 km1 km
Water distance3 km1 km
Places to eat. Edinburgh leads by 49 points.49
EdinburghInverness
Score7021
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,023114
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3511
Museums & heritage. Edinburgh leads by 37 points.37
EdinburghInverness
Score5720
Museums within 10 km306
Museums within 2 km of centre225
Share of museums within 2 km %7383
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Edinburgh leads by 49 points.49
EdinburghInverness
Score6415
Drinking venues within 4 km1,193113
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre88498
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7487
Nightclubs within 4 km654
Nature & day trips. Edinburgh leads by 26 points.26
EdinburghInverness
Score359
Protected land share 50 km %212
Landscape blanket share 50 km %111
Land share of disc %8588
Park area within 2 km166 hectares3 hectares
Good for families. Edinburgh leads by 72 points.72
EdinburghInverness
Score720
Tourist attractions within 2 km873
Park area within 2 km166 hectares3 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Edinburgh leads by 36 points.36
EdinburghInverness
Score6024
Notable places within 2 km12616
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Edinburgh and Inverness are level on 54.
EdinburghInverness
Score5454
Price level global84.984.9
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. Inverness leads by 1 points.1
EdinburghInverness
Score5152
Monthly daytime high6.6 °C to 18.8 °C6.6 °C to 18.9 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 80 mm40 mm to 72 mm
Dry months01
0255075100

Where they differ

Edinburgh has many times as many restaurants near the centre, and a wider range of kitchens. It also has many times as many bars and clubs, most of them central, many times as many museums, and 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach where Inverness has none. Attractions and park space near the centre follow the same pattern; neither has a theme park.

Around Inverness, 12% of the land is protected against 2% around Edinburgh, and the sea is 1km from the centre rather than 3km.

Where they are alike

The weather is much the same in each. Highs run about 7-19°C across the year, July is the warmest month in both at 19°C, and the coldest weeks sit at 7°C.

Both are coastal, and the water behaves the same way: 14°C at its August peak and never 21°C, so a swim is a decision rather than a habit. Both also have open ground within reach, arranged differently, parkland close to Edinburgh's centre, protected land spread around Inverness.

Which traveller are you?

Food and nightlife point to Edinburgh: many times as many restaurants and a wider range of kitchens, many times as many bars and clubs, and most of them within walking distance of the centre.

Families too. Edinburgh has many times as many attractions and much more park space near the centre. Neither city has a theme park, so wet days fall to museums, where Edinburgh again has many more.

Walkers and quiet-seekers should take Inverness. 12% of the land around it is protected against 2% around Edinburgh, the sea is 1km from the centre, and the built-up area ends quickly.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figure is a national price level, identical for both cities by construction, so it says nothing about which costs less. There is no daily budget figure for either city, so no cost comparison between them is possible; plan on accommodation and travel instead.

Edinburgh's 20 nearby beaches flatter the coast: the sea peaks at 14°C in August and never reaches 21°C, so this is coast for walking rather than swimming. The family and sights figures also count what sits near the centre, which is why small Inverness reads so thinly, and they say nothing about the country beyond it.

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
Edinburgh
7
7
9
12
14
17
19
19
17
13
9
7
Inverness
7
7
9
12
15
17
19
19
16
13
9
7
Sea temperature, °C
Edinburgh
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Inverness
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Rainfall, mm
Edinburgh
62
47
47
43
49
63
65
69
55
80
68
63
Inverness
50
44
40
42
51
61
60
67
67
72
57
54
Daylight, hours per day
Edinburgh
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
Inverness
7
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Edinburgh
2
3
4
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
3
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. Edinburgh: 1991-2020 normals, Edinburgh Airport (10 km from centre). Inverness: 1991-2020 normals, Kinloss (43.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Edinburgh's window is May to September, with highs of 14-19°C and September the better shoulder month here, at 55mm of rain against Inverness's 67mm. October is the wettest month at 80mm.

Inverness is the drier choice in late winter and spring, with 40mm in March and 44mm in February against 47mm in Edinburgh in both. July matches Edinburgh at 19°C, and December is the weakest month of the year. October is wet in both, at 72mm here.

Getting there

Flying fromEdinburghInverness
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
€41-45
EDI · 11 km
1 h 30 m
€61-96
INV · 12 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
3 h 5 m
no fares
INV · 12 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€78-108
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
KerkyraCFU
3 h 35 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
3 h 40 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
BelfastBFS, BHD
55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
INV · 12 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 30 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
MalagaAGP
3 h 10 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
Las PalmasLPA
4 h 30 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
INV · 12 km
AlicanteALC
3 h 0 m
€106
EDI · 11 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
DalamanDLM
4 h 25 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
4 h 25 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

MeasureEdinburghInverness
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
Elevation47 m7 m
Main airportEdinburgh Airport (EDI)11 km from centre158 non-stop destinationsInverness Airport (INV)12 km from centre13 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureEdinburghInverness
City population488,05047,380
People per km²1,8842,289
Museums within 10 km323
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre7815
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

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