VacationSelector

Inverness or Reykjavik?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Inverness
25
match

Wins on year-round weather and value for money with your weighting.

Reykjavik
✓ Best match
46
match

Wins on nature & day trips and good for families with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

InvernessReykjavik
Beaches & swimming. Reykjavik leads by 32 points.32
InvernessReykjavik
Score2860
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km133
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Reykjavik leads by 28 points.28
InvernessReykjavik
Score2149
Restaurants within 2 km of centre114261
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1129
Museums & heritage. Reykjavik leads by 30 points.30
InvernessReykjavik
Score2050
Museums within 10 km634
Museums within 2 km of centre523
Share of museums within 2 km %8368
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Reykjavik leads by 12 points.12
InvernessReykjavik
Score1527
Drinking venues within 4 km113192
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre98166
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8786
Nightclubs within 4 km410
Nature & day trips. Reykjavik leads by 50 points.50
InvernessReykjavik
Score959
Protected land share 50 km %1216
Landscape blanket share 50 km %110
Land share of disc %8856
Park area within 2 km3 hectares28 hectares
Good for families. Reykjavik leads by 42 points.42
InvernessReykjavik
Score042
Tourist attractions within 2 km321
Park area within 2 km3 hectares28 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Reykjavik leads by 24 points.24
InvernessReykjavik
Score2448
Notable places within 2 km1661
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Inverness leads by 13 points.13
InvernessReykjavik
Score5441
Price level global84.9102.8
Daily budget—€243
Year-round weather. Inverness leads by 15 points.15
InvernessReykjavik
Score5237
Monthly daytime high6.6 °C to 18.9 °C3.2 °C to 14.9 °C
Monthly rainfall40 mm to 72 mm41 mm to 97 mm
Dry months10
0255075100

When should you go?

The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Inverness
7
7
9
12
15
17
19
19
16
13
9
7
Reykjavik
3
3
4
7
10
13
15
14
11
8
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Inverness
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Reykjavik
5
5
5
6
7
10
11
11
10
8
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Inverness
50
44
40
42
51
61
60
67
67
72
57
54
Reykjavik
86
87
84
56
49
41
50
66
87
80
86
97
Daylight, hours per day
Inverness
7
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7
Reykjavik
6
9
12
15
18
21
20
16
13
10
7
4
Sunshine, hours per day
Inverness
2
2
4
5
6
5
5
4
4
3
2
1
Reykjavik
1
2
4
5
7
6
6
5
4
3
1
0

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Inverness: 1991-2020 normals, Kinloss (43.4 km from centre). Reykjavik: 1991-2020 normals, Reykjavik (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromInvernessReykjavik
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 30 m
€61-96
INV · 12 km
2 h 55 m
€245-283
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 50 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
3 h 20 m
€247-346
1 stop
KEF · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 35 m
no fares
INV · 12 km
3 h 5 m
€293-407
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 15 m
no fares
INV · 12 km
2 h 35 m
€227-256
KEF · 37 km
DublinDUB
1 h 15 m
no fares
INV · 12 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 40 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
5 h 25 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
AlicanteALC
3 h 10 m
no fares
ABZ · 126 km
4 h 25 m
€240-369
2 stops
KEF · 37 km
GlasgowGLA, PIK
1 h 0 m
no fares
WIC · 127 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
BirminghamBHX
1 h 20 m
no fares
INV · 12 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km
BristolBRS
1 h 30 m
no fares
INV · 12 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
KEF · 37 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-08 to 2026-10, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasureInvernessReykjavik
Official languageEnglishIcelandic
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Iceland Krona (ISK)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation7 m8 m
Main airportInverness Airport (INV)12 km from centre13 non-stop destinationsKeflavik International Airport (KEF)37 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureInvernessReykjavik
City population47,380138,772
People per km²2,289569
Museums within 10 km323
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre1542
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

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

Browse every destination we have measured

Sources

© OpenStreetMap contributors, data available under the Open Database Licence. Place counts include data from Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA Permissive 2.0), assembled from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and other providers. Notable-place counts from Wikidata (CC0), weighted by Wikipedia language editions. 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. 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. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.