VacationSelector

Inverness or Istanbul?

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

Your match

Inverness
25
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

Istanbul
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on good for families and nightlife with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

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

InvernessIstanbul
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul leads by 15 points.15
InvernessIstanbul
Score2843
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km12
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 49 points.49
InvernessIstanbul
Score2170
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1142,086
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1120
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 46 points.46
InvernessIstanbul
Score2066
Museums within 10 km6145
Museums within 2 km of centre571
Share of museums within 2 km %8349
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 64 points.64
InvernessIstanbul
Score1579
Drinking venues within 4 km1132,266
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre981,176
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8752
Nightclubs within 4 km4221
Nature & day trips. Istanbul leads by 16 points.16
InvernessIstanbul
Score925
Protected land share 50 km %121
Landscape blanket share 50 km %110
Land share of disc %8848
Park area within 2 km3 hectares60 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 67 points.67
InvernessIstanbul
Score067
Tourist attractions within 2 km368
Park area within 2 km3 hectares60 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 51 points.51
InvernessIstanbul
Score2475
Notable places within 2 km16285
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 35 points.35
InvernessIstanbul
Score5489
Price level global84.935.2
Daily budget—€100
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 17 points.17
InvernessIstanbul
Score5269
Monthly daytime high6.6 °C to 18.9 °C9.2 °C to 29.7 °C
Monthly rainfall40 mm to 72 mm23 mm to 101 mm
Dry months14
0255075100

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
Inverness
7
7
9
12
15
17
19
19
16
13
9
7
Istanbul
9
10
12
17
22
27
30
30
26
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Inverness
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Rainfall, mm
Inverness
50
44
40
42
51
61
60
67
67
72
57
54
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Daylight, hours per day
Inverness
7
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Inverness
2
2
4
5
6
5
5
4
4
3
2
1
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Inverness: 1991-2020 normals, Kinloss (43.4 km from centre). Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromInvernessIstanbul
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 30 m
€61-96
INV · 12 km
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 50 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
DalamanDLM
4 h 25 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
1 h 15 m
€53-54
SAW · 30 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 35 m
no fares
INV · 12 km
3 h 15 m
€161-174
IST · 36 km
DublinDUB
1 h 15 m
no fares
INV · 12 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
BirminghamBHX
1 h 20 m
no fares
INV · 12 km
3 h 45 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 15 m
no fares
INV · 12 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
BristolBRS
1 h 30 m
no fares
INV · 12 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
SAW · 30 km
MalagaAGP
3 h 20 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
GenevaGVA
2 h 15 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
IST · 36 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

MeasureInvernessIstanbul
Official languageEnglishTurkish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Turkish Lira (TRY)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+3
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation7 m100 m
Main airportInverness Airport (INV)12 km from centre13 non-stop destinationsİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureInvernessIstanbul
City population47,38015,655,924
People per km²2,2892,930
Museums within 10 km372
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre1562
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Inverness or Istanbul 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.