VacationSelector
Inverness Castle above the River Ness, Inverness
InvernessInverness Castle above the River Ness
The opera house on Place de la Comédie, Montpellier
MontpellierThe opera house on Place de la Comédie

Photos: Inverness by Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped; Montpellier by Peter, CC BY 2.0, cropped.

Inverness or Montpellier?

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

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

Choose Montpellier for

  • beaches
  • culture and sights
  • live music and the arts

What lies behind each score is written up on Montpellier’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, Montpellier 64: Montpellier leads by 44 points.
Food & drink. Inverness 36, Montpellier 64: Montpellier leads by 28 points.
Culture & sights. Inverness 27, Montpellier 60: Montpellier leads by 33 points.
Nightlife. Inverness 28, Montpellier 56: Montpellier leads by 28 points.
Nature & outdoors. Inverness 84, Montpellier 72: Inverness leads by 12 points.
Day trips. Inverness 56, Montpellier 85: Montpellier leads by 29 points.
Good for families. Inverness 55, Montpellier 62: Montpellier leads by 7 points.
Getting around. Inverness 48, Montpellier 74: Montpellier leads by 26 points.
Shopping & style. Inverness 30, Montpellier 47: Montpellier leads by 17 points.
Affordability. Inverness 38, Montpellier 50: Montpellier leads by 12 points.
Live music & performing arts. Inverness 33, Montpellier 63: Montpellier leads by 30 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Inverness 30, Montpellier 42: Montpellier leads by 12 points.
0255075100

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

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 with your weighting.

Montpellier
Best match
62match

Wins on beaches and culture and sights 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

Montpellier in July

30 °Cdaytime high
19 °Cnight-time low
17 mmrain in the month
11 hsunshine a day
21 °Csea
15 hdaylight a day

Daytime high, °C

0°10°20°30°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

0255075100125JFMAMJJASOND
InvernessMontpellier

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). Montpellier: 1991-2020 normals, Montpellier (7.8 km from centre).

Before you go

MeasureInvernessMontpellier
Official languageEnglishFrench
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation7 m7 m
Main airportInverness Airport (INV)12 km from centre15 non-stop destinationsMontpellier-Méditerranée Airport (MPL)8 km from centre41 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureInvernessMontpellier
City population47,380310,240
People per km²2,2895,452
Museums within 10 km314
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km02
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Inverness or Montpellier 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 2026-10-31. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.