VacationSelector
Inverness Castle above the River Ness, Inverness
InvernessInverness Castle above the River Ness
Elizabeth Quay and the centre of Perth, Perth
PerthElizabeth Quay and the centre of Perth

Photos: Inverness by Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped; Perth by Samuel Wiki, CC BY 4.0, cropped.

Inverness or Perth?

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
  • prices
  • day trips

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

Choose Perth for

  • beaches
  • food and drink
  • families

What lies behind each score is written up on Perth’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, Perth 86: Perth leads by 66 points.
Food & drink. Inverness 36, Perth 58: Perth leads by 22 points.
Culture & sights. Inverness 27, Perth 42: Perth leads by 15 points.
Nightlife. Inverness 28, Perth 42: Perth leads by 14 points.
Nature & outdoors. Inverness 84, Perth 72: Inverness leads by 12 points.
Day trips. Inverness 56, Perth 48: Inverness leads by 8 points.
Good for families. Inverness 55, Perth 74: Perth leads by 19 points.
Getting around. Inverness 48, Perth 55: Perth leads by 7 points.
Shopping & style. Inverness 30, Perth 44: Perth leads by 14 points.
Affordability. Inverness 38, Perth 28: Inverness leads by 10 points.
Live music & performing arts. Inverness 33, Perth 50: Perth leads by 17 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Inverness 30, Perth 38: Perth leads by 8 points.
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What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Inverness and Perth.

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 prices with your weighting.

Perth
Best match
53match

Wins on beaches and food and drink 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

Perth in July

19 °Cdaytime high
8 °Cnight-time low
145 mmrain in the month
6 hsunshine a day
20 °Csea
10 hdaylight a day

Daytime high, °C

0°10°20°30°40°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

050100150JFMAMJJASOND
InvernessPerth

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). Perth: 1991-2020 normals, Perth (7.3 km from centre).

Before you go

MeasureInvernessPerth
Official languageEnglishEnglish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Australian Dollar (AUD)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzI230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+8
Emergency number112 or 999000
Elevation7 m2 m
Main airportInverness Airport (INV)12 km from centre15 non-stop destinationsPerth International Airport (PER)10 km from centre49 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureInvernessPerth
City population47,3802,141,834
People per km²2,289334
Museums within 10 km315
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone5 months

Where else could you go?

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