VacationSelector
Inverness Castle above the River Ness, Inverness
InvernessInverness Castle above the River Ness
The Big Buddha on the hill above Phuket, Phuket
PhuketThe Big Buddha on the hill above Phuket

Photos: Inverness by Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped; Phuket by Mussi Katz, CC0.

Inverness or Phuket?

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

  • getting around
  • live music and the arts
  • day trips

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

Choose Phuket for

  • beaches
  • wellness
  • nightlife

What lies behind each score is written up on Phuket’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, Phuket 90: Phuket leads by 70 points.
Food & drink. Inverness 36, Phuket 66: Phuket leads by 30 points.
Culture & sights. Inverness 27, Phuket 35: Phuket leads by 8 points.
Nightlife. Inverness 28, Phuket 72: Phuket leads by 44 points.
Nature & outdoors. Inverness 84, Phuket 80: Inverness leads by 4 points.
Day trips. Inverness 56, Phuket 45: Inverness leads by 11 points.
Good for families. Inverness 55, Phuket 65: Phuket leads by 10 points.
Getting around. Inverness 48, Phuket 22: Inverness leads by 26 points.
Shopping & style. Inverness 30, Phuket 42: Phuket leads by 12 points.
Affordability. Inverness 38, Phuket 68: Phuket leads by 30 points.
Live music & performing arts. Inverness 33, Phuket 20: Inverness leads by 13 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Inverness 30, Phuket 82: Phuket leads by 52 points.
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What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Inverness and Phuket.

Your match

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

Inverness
40match

Wins on getting around and live music and the arts with your weighting.

Phuket
Best match
57match

Wins on beaches and wellness 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

Phuket in July

32 °Cdaytime high
24 °Cnight-time low
287 mmrain in the month
No recordsunshine a day
30 °Csea
13 hdaylight a day

Daytime high, °C

0°10°20°30°40°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

0100200300400JFMAMJJASOND
InvernessPhuket

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.

Phuket's temperatures are measured 27 km from the centre, at Phuket Airport.

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). Phuket: 1991-2020 (rainfall 1961-1990) normals, Phuket Airport (26.9 km from centre).

Before you go

MeasureInvernessPhuket
Official languageEnglishThai
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Baht (THB)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzABCF220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+7
Emergency number112 or 999Police 191, ambulance 1669, fire 199
Elevation7 m19 m
Main airportInverness Airport (INV)12 km from centre15 non-stop destinationsPhuket International Airport (HKT)27 km from centre85 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days-

By the numbers

MeasureInvernessPhuket
City population47,38077,610
People per km²2,2896,468
Museums within 10 km32
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
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 Phuket 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.