VacationSelector
Inverness Castle above the River Ness, Inverness
InvernessInverness Castle above the River Ness
Playa de los Muertos below the green hills, Puerto Vallarta
Puerto VallartaPlaya de los Muertos below the green hills

Photos: Inverness by Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped; Puerto Vallarta by RL0919, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped.

Inverness or Puerto Vallarta?

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
  • getting around
  • day trips

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

Choose Puerto Vallarta for

  • beaches
  • nightlife
  • food and drink

What lies behind each score is written up on Puerto Vallarta’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, Puerto Vallarta 85: Puerto Vallarta leads by 65 points.
Food & drink. Inverness 36, Puerto Vallarta 62: Puerto Vallarta leads by 26 points.
Culture & sights. Inverness 27, Puerto Vallarta 28: Puerto Vallarta leads by 1 points.
Nightlife. Inverness 28, Puerto Vallarta 66: Puerto Vallarta leads by 38 points.
Nature & outdoors. Inverness 84, Puerto Vallarta 76: Inverness leads by 8 points.
Day trips. Inverness 56, Puerto Vallarta 55: Inverness leads by 1 points.
Good for families. Inverness 55, Puerto Vallarta 65: Puerto Vallarta leads by 10 points.
Getting around. Inverness 48, Puerto Vallarta 45: Inverness leads by 3 points.
Shopping & style. Inverness 30, Puerto Vallarta 42: Puerto Vallarta leads by 12 points.
Affordability. Inverness 38, Puerto Vallarta 60: Puerto Vallarta leads by 22 points.
Live music & performing arts. Inverness 33, Puerto Vallarta 32: Inverness leads by 1 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Inverness 30, Puerto Vallarta 52: Puerto Vallarta leads by 22 points.
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What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Inverness and Puerto Vallarta.

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 getting around with your weighting.

Puerto Vallarta
Best match
56match

Wins on beaches 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

Puerto Vallarta in July

34 °Cdaytime high
24 °Cnight-time low
209 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

0100200300JFMAMJJASOND
InvernessPuerto Vallarta

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.

Puerto Vallarta has no weather station within reach, so its figures come from a gridded climate model rather than a measured record, and read a broad area rather than the city itself.

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). Puerto Vallarta: 1991-2020 normals, TerraClimate 4 km grid at the town, no weather station within 90 km.

Before you go

MeasureInvernessPuerto Vallarta
Official languageEnglishSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec Maya
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Mexican Peso (MXN)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzAB127 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC-6
Emergency number112 or 999911
Elevation7 m101 m
Main airportInverness Airport (INV)12 km from centre15 non-stop destinationsPuerto Vallarta International Airport (PVR)5 km from centre52 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days9 days

By the numbers

MeasureInvernessPuerto Vallarta
City population47,380224,166
People per km²2,2894,311
Museums within 10 km32
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 Puerto Vallarta 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. Temperature and rainfall for destinations with no weather station are from the NASA POWER 2001-2020 climatology, derived from MERRA-2. 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.