VacationSelector
Inverness Castle above the River Ness, Inverness
InvernessInverness Castle above the River Ness
The main beach with the green hills behind, Sayulita
SayulitaThe main beach with the green hills behind

Photos: Inverness by Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped; Sayulita by Luisalvaz, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped.

Inverness or Sayulita?

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

  • live music and the arts
  • culture and sights
  • day trips

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

Choose Sayulita for

  • beaches
  • wellness
  • prices

What lies behind each score is written up on Sayulita’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, Sayulita 80: Sayulita leads by 60 points.
Food & drink. Inverness 36, Sayulita 42: Sayulita leads by 6 points.
Culture & sights. Inverness 27, Sayulita 7: Inverness leads by 20 points.
Nightlife. Inverness 28, Sayulita 33: Sayulita leads by 5 points.
Nature & outdoors. Inverness 84, Sayulita 72: Inverness leads by 12 points.
Day trips. Inverness 56, Sayulita 42: Inverness leads by 14 points.
Good for families. Inverness 55, Sayulita 42: Inverness leads by 13 points.
Getting around. Inverness and Sayulita are level on 48.
Shopping & style. Inverness 30, Sayulita 33: Sayulita leads by 3 points.
Affordability. Inverness 38, Sayulita 45: Sayulita leads by 7 points.
Live music & performing arts. Inverness 33, Sayulita 12: Inverness leads by 21 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Inverness 30, Sayulita 58: Sayulita leads by 28 points.
0255075100

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

Your match

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

Inverness
40match

Wins on live music and the arts and culture and sights with your weighting.

Sayulita
Best match
43match

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

Sayulita in July

29 °Cdaytime high
27 °Cnight-time low
342 mmrain in the month
No recordsunshine a day
30 °Csea
13 hdaylight a day

Daytime high, °C

0°10°20°30°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

0100200300400JFMAMJJASOND
InvernessSayulita

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.

Sayulita 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). Sayulita: 2001-2020 normals, NASA POWER reanalysis grid, no weather station within 90 km.

Before you go

MeasureInvernessSayulita
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 m2 m
Main airportInverness Airport (INV)12 km from centre15 non-stop destinationsPuerto Vallarta International Airport (PVR)29 km from centre52 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days9 days

By the numbers

MeasureInvernessSayulita
City population47,3803,390
People per km²2,289-
Museums within 10 km30
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 Sayulita 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 2026-11-02. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.