VacationSelector

Glasgow or Inverness?

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

Your match

Glasgow
✓ Best match
48
match

Wins on nightlife 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 Glasgow if the trip is about eating, going out and filling days indoors: many times more restaurants with a wider range of kitchens, many more bars and clubs, more museums, and the attractions and park space a family weekend needs.

Choose Inverness if dry days matter more than choice: the same 7-19°C highs, far less rain, and the sea 1km from the centre.

Scoreboard

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

GlasgowInverness
Beaches & swimming. Glasgow leads by 8 points.8
GlasgowInverness
Score3628
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km31
Coast distance3 km1 km
Water distance3 km1 km
Places to eat. Glasgow leads by 42 points.42
GlasgowInverness
Score6321
Restaurants within 2 km of centre740114
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2911
Museums & heritage. Glasgow leads by 25 points.25
GlasgowInverness
Score4520
Museums within 10 km326
Museums within 2 km of centre135
Share of museums within 2 km %4183
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Glasgow leads by 48 points.48
GlasgowInverness
Score6315
Drinking venues within 4 km1,078113
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre65498
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6187
Nightclubs within 4 km734
Nature & day trips. Glasgow leads by 29 points.29
GlasgowInverness
Score389
Protected land share 50 km %1612
Landscape blanket share 50 km %1211
Land share of disc %9188
Park area within 2 km56 hectares3 hectares
Good for families. Glasgow leads by 41 points.41
GlasgowInverness
Score410
Tourist attractions within 2 km133
Park area within 2 km56 hectares3 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Glasgow leads by 29 points.29
GlasgowInverness
Score5324
Notable places within 2 km8016
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Glasgow and Inverness are level on 54.
GlasgowInverness
Score5454
Price level global84.984.9
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. Inverness leads by 9 points.9
GlasgowInverness
Score4352
Monthly daytime high6.6 °C to 18.9 °C6.6 °C to 18.9 °C
Monthly rainfall102 mm to 207 mm40 mm to 72 mm
Dry months01
0255075100

Where they differ

Glasgow has many times as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider range of kitchens, many times as many bars and nightclubs, and many times as many attractions and notable places within walking distance. It also has more museums, 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach where Inverness has none, and 1 theme park.

Inverness's counter is weather. Highs match, but rain is far lighter, with one month at 40mm or less where Glasgow has none, and the sea lies 1km from the centre against 3km.

Where they are alike

Neither is a place to swim. The water never reaches 21°C in either, peaking at 14-15°C in August, so the coast is for walking rather than bathing; Glasgow has a few more beaches, Inverness has the sea closer to its centre.

Temperature is the other common ground: both run highs of about 7-19°C across the year, both warmest in July, both cool at either end. Neither has a hot month, nor a truly cold one.

Which traveller are you?

A weekend of eating and going out: Glasgow, with many times as many restaurants and a much wider range of kitchens, and many times as many bars and clubs, most of them near the centre.

Families with children: Glasgow again. It has many times as many attractions and much more park space near the centre, plus 1 theme park within reach, where Inverness has nothing of that kind.

Walkers who want dry days: Inverness, where rainfall runs 40-72mm a month against Glasgow's 102-207mm and the sea is 1km from the centre, though Glasgow has more protected land around it, 16% against 12%.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figure here is a national price level, identical for both cities by construction, so it tells you nothing about which costs less. There is also no daily budget figure for either city, so no cost comparison between these two is possible at all.

Coastal closeness is not swimming: Inverness's centre sits 1km from the sea, but the water tops out at 14°C. And Glasgow's strongest months are not its driest, with rain rising again through July and August to 129-145mm while April and May sit nearer 102mm.

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
Glasgow
7
7
9
12
15
18
19
19
16
13
9
7
Inverness
7
7
9
12
15
17
19
19
16
13
9
7
Sea temperature, °C
Glasgow
8
7
7
8
10
13
15
15
14
12
11
9
Inverness
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Rainfall, mm
Glasgow
207
170
147
102
103
111
129
145
132
185
190
205
Inverness
50
44
40
42
51
61
60
67
67
72
57
54
Daylight, hours per day
Glasgow
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
Glasgow
1
2
3
4
5
4
4
4
3
2
2
1
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. Glasgow: 1991-2020 normals, Glasgow Airport (11.5 km from centre). Inverness: 1991-2020 normals, Kinloss (43.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Glasgow is at its best from May to August, when highs reach 15-19°C and monthly rain eases to 102-145mm. Either side of that the wet season dominates, with winter months carrying 170-207mm.

Inverness holds a longer usable season, roughly April to September, with the same 12-19°C daytime range but a fraction of the rain, 42-67mm. Its wettest month reaches only 72mm, and March is its driest at 40mm. Winter is equally cool at 7°C, but much drier.

Getting there

Flying fromGlasgowInverness
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
€38-45
GLA · 11 km
1 h 30 m
€61-96
INV · 12 km
MalagaAGP
3 h 10 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 55 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
3 h 5 m
no fares
INV · 12 km
AlicanteALC
3 h 0 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 30 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
Las PalmasLPA
4 h 30 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
INV · 12 km
DalamanDLM
4 h 30 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
4 h 25 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
ReusREU
2 h 40 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
FaroFAO
3 h 10 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
BelfastBFS, BHD
50 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
1 h 5 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

MeasureGlasgowInverness
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
Elevation21 m7 m
Main airportGlasgow Airport (GLA)11 km from centre95 non-stop destinationsInverness Airport (INV)12 km from centre13 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureGlasgowInverness
City population626,41047,380
People per km²1902,289
Museums within 10 km293
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre5415
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Glasgow 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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. 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.