VacationSelector
Inverness Castle above the River Ness, Inverness
InvernessInverness Castle above the River Ness
The Royal Palace, Madrid
MadridThe Royal Palace

Photos: Inverness by Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped; Madrid by Mert Ocak, Pexels License.

Inverness or Madrid?

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 Inverness for

  • nature and the outdoors
  • beaches

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

Choose Madrid for

  • culture and sights
  • nightlife
  • shopping

What lies behind each score is written up on Madrid’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. Inverness 20, Madrid 5: Inverness leads by 15 points.
Food & drink. Inverness 36, Madrid 80: Madrid leads by 44 points.
Culture & sights. Inverness 27, Madrid 86: Madrid leads by 59 points.
Nightlife. Inverness 28, Madrid 85: Madrid leads by 57 points.
Nature & outdoors. Inverness 84, Madrid 60: Inverness leads by 24 points.
Day trips. Inverness 56, Madrid 89: Madrid leads by 33 points.
Good for families. Inverness 55, Madrid 68: Madrid leads by 13 points.
Getting around. Inverness 48, Madrid 84: Madrid leads by 36 points.
Shopping & style. Inverness 30, Madrid 75: Madrid leads by 45 points.
Affordability. Inverness 38, Madrid 50: Madrid leads by 12 points.
Live music & performing arts. Inverness 33, Madrid 77: Madrid leads by 44 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Inverness 30, Madrid 36: Madrid leads by 6 points.
0255075100

What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Inverness and Madrid.

Your match

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

Inverness
40match

Wins on nature and the outdoors and beaches with your weighting.

Madrid
Best match
66match

Wins on culture and sights and nightlife with your weighting.

What matters to you?

When should you go?

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

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

Madrid in July

33 °Cdaytime high
20 °Cnight-time low
9 mmrain in the month
12 hsunshine a day
No seasea
15 hdaylight a day

Daytime high, °C

0°10°20°30°40°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

0255075100125JFMAMJJASOND
InvernessMadrid

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. Inverness: 2005-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Inverness / Dalcross (11.9 km from centre). Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre).

Before you go

MeasureInvernessMadrid
Official languageEnglishSpanish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation7 m663 m
Main airportInverness Airport (INV)12 km from centre15 non-stop destinationsAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre239 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureInvernessMadrid
City population47,3803,506,730
People per km²2,2895,801
Museums within 10 km388
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km04
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone-

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Inverness or Madrid somewhere new.

Browse every destination

Sources

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. 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. 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.

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.