VacationSelector
Inverness Castle above the River Ness, Inverness
InvernessInverness Castle above the River Ness
Kek Lok Si temple on the hillside, Penang
PenangKek Lok Si temple on the hillside

Photos: Inverness by Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped; Penang by Supanut Arunoprayote, CC BY 4.0, cropped.

Inverness or Penang?

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
  • day trips
  • getting around

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

Choose Penang for

  • food and drink
  • culture and sights
  • prices

What lies behind each score is written up on Penang’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, Penang 44: Penang leads by 24 points.
Food & drink. Inverness 36, Penang 86: Penang leads by 50 points.
Culture & sights. Inverness 27, Penang 70: Penang leads by 43 points.
Nightlife. Inverness 28, Penang 40: Penang leads by 12 points.
Nature & outdoors. Inverness 84, Penang 55: Inverness leads by 29 points.
Day trips. Inverness 56, Penang 42: Inverness leads by 14 points.
Good for families. Inverness 55, Penang 52: Inverness leads by 3 points.
Getting around. Inverness 48, Penang 40: Inverness leads by 8 points.
Shopping & style. Inverness 30, Penang 42: Penang leads by 12 points.
Affordability. Inverness 38, Penang 78: Penang leads by 40 points.
Live music & performing arts. Inverness 33, Penang 30: Inverness leads by 3 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Inverness 30, Penang 42: Penang leads by 12 points.
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What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Inverness and Penang.

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 day trips with your weighting.

Penang
Best match
52match

Wins on food and drink 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

Penang in July

32 °Cdaytime high
25 °Cnight-time low
189 mmrain in the month
No recordsunshine a day
30 °Csea
12 hdaylight a day

Daytime high, °C

0°10°20°30°40°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

0100200300400JFMAMJJASOND
InvernessPenang

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). Penang: 1991-2020 normals, Penang / Bayan Lepas (14.5 km from centre).

Before you go

MeasureInvernessPenang
Official languageEnglishMalay
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Malaysian Ringgit (MYR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzG240 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+8
Emergency number112 or 999999
Elevation7 m4 m
Main airportInverness Airport (INV)12 km from centre15 non-stop destinationsPenang International Airport (PEN)14 km from centre32 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days-

By the numbers

MeasureInvernessPenang
City population47,380794,313
People per km²2,289-
Museums within 10 km39
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone12 months

Where else could you go?

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