VacationSelector
The entrance to the Big Lagoon, El Nido
El NidoThe entrance to the Big Lagoon
Inverness Castle above the River Ness, Inverness
InvernessInverness Castle above the River Ness

Photos: El Nido by nennnn, CC BY 2.0, cropped; Inverness by Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped.

El Nido 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 El Nido for

  • beaches
  • prices
  • wellness

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

Choose Inverness for

  • day trips
  • getting around
  • live music and the arts

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. El Nido 92, Inverness 20: El Nido leads by 72 points.
Food & drink. El Nido 27, Inverness 36: Inverness leads by 9 points.
Culture & sights. El Nido 4, Inverness 27: Inverness leads by 23 points.
Nightlife. El Nido 30, Inverness 28: El Nido leads by 2 points.
Nature & outdoors. El Nido 87, Inverness 84: El Nido leads by 3 points.
Day trips. El Nido 8, Inverness 56: Inverness leads by 48 points.
Good for families. El Nido 40, Inverness 55: Inverness leads by 15 points.
Getting around. El Nido 22, Inverness 48: Inverness leads by 26 points.
Shopping & style. El Nido 7, Inverness 30: Inverness leads by 23 points.
Affordability. El Nido 64, Inverness 38: El Nido leads by 26 points.
Live music & performing arts. El Nido 7, Inverness 33: Inverness leads by 26 points.
Wellness & relaxation. El Nido 46, Inverness 30: El Nido leads by 16 points.
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What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: El Nido and Inverness.

Your match

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

El Nido
36match

Wins on beaches and prices with your weighting.

Inverness
Best match
40match

Wins on day trips and getting around with your weighting.

What matters to you?

When should you go?

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

El Nido in July

29 °Cdaytime high
27 °Cnight-time low
368 mmrain in the month
No recordsunshine a day
29 °Csea
13 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

0100200300400JFMAMJJASOND
El NidoInverness

Where the figures come from

El Nido has no weather station within reach, so its figures come from a gridded climate model rather than a measured record, and read a broad area rather than the city itself.

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. El Nido: 2001-2020 normals, NASA POWER reanalysis grid, no weather station within 90 km. Inverness: 2005-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Inverness / Dalcross (11.9 km from centre).

Before you go

MeasureEl NidoInverness
Official languageEnglish, Filipino, TaglishEnglish
CurrencyPhilippine Peso (PHP)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsABC220 V, 60 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+8UTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number911112 or 999
Elevation35 m7 m
Main airportEl Nido Airport (ENI)4 km from centre5 non-stop destinationsInverness Airport (INV)12 km from centre15 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year18 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureEl NidoInverness
City population51,36747,380
People per km²562,289
Museums within 10 km03
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
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 El Nido or Inverness somewhere new.

Browse every destination

Sources

Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Temperature and rainfall for destinations with no weather station are from the NASA POWER 2001-2020 climatology, derived from MERRA-2. 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. Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. 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 2026-11-02. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.