VacationSelector
Inverness Castle above the River Ness, Inverness
InvernessInverness Castle above the River Ness
The Winchester Mystery House, San Jose
San JoseThe Winchester Mystery House

Photos: Inverness by Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped; San Jose by Roxanna Salceda, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped.

Inverness or San Jose?

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
  • prices
  • nature and the outdoors

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

Choose San Jose for

  • day trips
  • food and drink
  • shopping

What lies behind each score is written up on San Jose’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 Jose 30: San Jose leads by 10 points.
Food & drink. Inverness 36, San Jose 56: San Jose leads by 20 points.
Culture & sights. Inverness 27, San Jose 36: San Jose leads by 9 points.
Nightlife. Inverness 28, San Jose 33: San Jose leads by 5 points.
Nature & outdoors. Inverness 84, San Jose 72: Inverness leads by 12 points.
Day trips. Inverness 56, San Jose 78: San Jose leads by 22 points.
Good for families. Inverness 55, San Jose 65: San Jose leads by 10 points.
Getting around. Inverness 48, San Jose 30: Inverness leads by 18 points.
Shopping & style. Inverness 30, San Jose 48: San Jose leads by 18 points.
Affordability. Inverness 38, San Jose 20: Inverness leads by 18 points.
Live music & performing arts. Inverness 33, San Jose 38: San Jose leads by 5 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Inverness and San Jose are level on 30.
0255075100

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

Your match

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

Inverness
40match

Wins on getting around and prices with your weighting.

San Jose
Best match
45match

Wins on day trips 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

San Jose in July

27 °Cdaytime high
15 °Cnight-time low
0 mmrain in the month
No recordsunshine a day
14 °Csea
15 hdaylight a day

Daytime high, °C

0°10°20°30°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

0255075100125JFMAMJJASOND
InvernessSan Jose

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 Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

Before you go

MeasureInvernessSan Jose
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 m25 m
Main airportInverness Airport (INV)12 km from centre15 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre38 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureInvernessSan Jose
City population47,3801,013,240
People per km²2,2892,167
Museums within 10 km319
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 Jose 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.