VacationSelector
Inverness Castle above the River Ness, Inverness
InvernessInverness Castle above the River Ness
The Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco
San FranciscoThe Golden Gate Bridge

Photos: Inverness by Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped; San Francisco by Elijah Cobb, Pexels License.

Inverness or San Francisco?

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

  • prices
  • nature and the outdoors

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

Choose San Francisco for

  • food and drink
  • live music and the arts
  • culture and sights

What lies behind each score is written up on San Francisco’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, San Francisco 25: San Francisco leads by 5 points.
Food & drink. Inverness 36, San Francisco 82: San Francisco leads by 46 points.
Culture & sights. Inverness 27, San Francisco 68: San Francisco leads by 41 points.
Nightlife. Inverness 28, San Francisco 58: San Francisco leads by 30 points.
Nature & outdoors. Inverness 84, San Francisco 80: Inverness leads by 4 points.
Day trips. Inverness 56, San Francisco 72: San Francisco leads by 16 points.
Good for families. Inverness 55, San Francisco 66: San Francisco leads by 11 points.
Getting around. Inverness 48, San Francisco 70: San Francisco leads by 22 points.
Shopping & style. Inverness 30, San Francisco 58: San Francisco leads by 28 points.
Affordability. Inverness 38, San Francisco 14: Inverness leads by 24 points.
Live music & performing arts. Inverness 33, San Francisco 76: San Francisco leads by 43 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Inverness 30, San Francisco 42: San Francisco leads by 12 points.
0255075100

What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Inverness and San Francisco.

Your match

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

Inverness
40match

Wins on prices and nature and the outdoors with your weighting.

San Francisco
Best match
59match

Wins on food and drink and live music and the arts 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

San Francisco in July

22 °Cdaytime high
14 °Cnight-time low
0 mmrain in the month
No recordsunshine a day
13 °Csea
15 hdaylight a day

Daytime high, °C

0°5°10°15°20°25°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

0255075100125JFMAMJJASOND
InvernessSan Francisco

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). San Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre).

Before you go

MeasureInvernessSan Francisco
Official languageEnglish-
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999911
Elevation7 m16 m
Main airportInverness Airport (INV)12 km from centre15 non-stop destinationsSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureInvernessSan Francisco
City population47,380873,965
People per km²2,2891,455
Museums within 10 km351
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
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 San Francisco 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.