Santorini Greece Tours — Frequently Asked Questions
The questions people actually send us, answered with the figures we checked rather than the ones that circulate. Where a fare or an opening time is involved, the source is named at the foot of the visitor information page. Several are really questions about the Santorini boat tours, which is where most of the money and most of the worry goes.
How much do Santorini Greece tours cost?
Fares here start at $34 for a coach shore excursion and run to $207 for a private vehicle for the day, with most half-day trips landing between $58 and $110. A catamaran day with a meal and an open bar sits around $106 to $166, and a three-winery tasting afternoon around $177. The spread is wide because the fares cover very different things, which is what the comparison table further up the page is for.
Do I need to book Santorini Greece tours in advance?
Yes, and further ahead than most islands. Between June and September the catamarans and the sunset trips fill days out, and the cruise excursions are capped at eighteen or nineteen people against ships carrying thousands. Three to five days ahead is usually enough in the shoulder months; a week or more from late June to early September.
Can I cancel a Santorini Greece tour?
Every tour listed here refunds in full if you cancel at least 24 hours before it starts. Several operators also reserve the right to cancel for bad weather or too few bookings, and in those cases you get the money back rather than a credit. Because the boats go out in open water, a weather cancellation is a real possibility in July and August, and that policy is the thing that makes booking early safe.
Are Santorini Greece guided tours worth it?
It depends what you would otherwise do. If you were going to hire a car and drive the rim yourself, a guided day mostly buys you the parking problem going away. If you were going to take the bus, a guided day buys you four or five villages instead of one, and on a boat it buys you water you cannot reach any other way.
Which tour should I book if I only have one day?
Take a boat. The caldera is the thing that makes this island different from every other one in the Cyclades, and you cannot see it properly from the rim you are standing on. A five-hour catamaran with a meal covers the volcano, the hot springs and the coloured beaches; a full-day boat adds Thirasia and the sunset from Oia.
Are these your tours?
No. Every trip listed here is run by a local operator and sold through a booking platform, and we earn a commission when you book through a link here. The prices, ratings and review counts belong to those operators and appear as they do on their own listings.
Do the tours pick up from my hotel?
Most do, and the card says so. The catamarans and the wine tours generally include a minibus from your hotel or Airbnb; the cruise excursions meet at the port or the top of the cable car instead. Two exceptions are worth knowing: the farm cooking class charges 25 euros a head for pickup, and the horse-riding stable expects you to reach Vlychada yourself.
What happens if my tour is cancelled for weather?
You get a full refund. Operators here cancel rather than sail when the meltemi is up, and several say so in writing on their own listings. If your dates are tight, book the boat day early in your stay so there is room to rebook.
How many people will be on my tour?
It ranges from six to a hundred, and the number is on every card. The horse-riding runs to six, the catamarans to between eighteen and twenty-two, the small-group land tours to twelve, and one coach shore excursion runs to fifty or a hundred depending which option you pick. Private tours carry only your own group.
Do I need to tip?
Tipping is not built into any of these fares and several listings exclude gratuities explicitly. Ten per cent for a guide and five for a driver is what one operator here suggests in writing. Nobody will chase you for it.
Do I have to use the cable car?
Only if you arrive by cruise ship. Tenders land at the Old Port below Fira, and there is no road up from there, so the ways up are the cable car, the footpath or a mule. If you arrive by ferry at Athinios or by air at Monolithos you never touch it.
How much is the Santorini cable car?
A one-way adult ticket is 10 euros, a child ticket 5 euros, and luggage another 5 euros a piece, all VAT included. Those are the 2025 prices published by the operator; the fare was 6 euros from 2017 to 2024, which is why a great deal of the web still says six. Prices can change without notice, so check the current list before you travel.
How long is the cable car queue?
The cable car is rated at 1,200 people an hour in both directions, and a single large ship can put three thousand ashore in a morning. On a heavy day the wait at the bottom runs past two hours, and it is worst in the last hour before all-aboard when everyone goes down at once. A couple of the shore excursions here get round it by boat, and one includes the fare in its price.
Where do the ferries dock?
At Athinios, on the south-west shore of the caldera, which is a road port with a switchback climb out of it. Cruise ships do not use Athinios; they anchor in the caldera and tender passengers to the Old Port below Fira. The airport is on the other side of the island at Monolithos.
Can I walk up from the Old Port?
You can, and it is about 590 steps up the cliff to Fira. It is shared with the mules, so it is not clean and it is not quick, and in August it is hot work with a ship's departure time in your head. Most people take the cable car and budget the queue.
Should I ride a mule up the cliff?
We do not recommend it and no tour here sells it. The mule traffic on the Fira steps has drawn sustained criticism from animal-welfare organisations. The cable car covers the same climb in three minutes.
Can you walk on the Santorini volcano?
Yes. Nea Kameni, the dark islet in the middle of the caldera, is a national geological park and you walk up a gravel path to the crater rim. Boats moor at a landing on its shore, and it is the only way to get there. Wear closed shoes: the surface is loose volcanic scree and there is no shade at all.
How much does it cost to land on Nea Kameni?
The national geological park charges 5 euros a head, collected in cash at the landing. It is almost never inside a boat fare, and there is no card machine on the rock, so carry coins or a small note. One of the boat trips listed here names that fee in its own exclusions, which is a good sign of an operator being straight with you.
Are the hot springs actually hot?
Warm rather than hot. The water off Palea Kameni runs a few degrees above the sea around it, and boats moor about fifty metres out because they cannot go closer, so you swim in. The iron in the water stains fabric, so wear a dark or old swimsuit rather than a white one.
Will the wind cancel my boat tour?
It might, and July and August are the likeliest months. Three days in four blow from the north in July, and the wind here settles in for a fortnight rather than an afternoon. Operators reroute more often than they cancel, and when they do cancel you are refunded in full.
Is the water cold?
Warmer than most of the Aegean in late summer and cool in spring. May and June are swimmable but bracing, July through September are comfortable, and October still works. The hot springs are the exception in both directions: warmer than the sea, and shallow enough to stand in.
Do I need to be able to swim?
For the catamarans, yes in practice. The swim stops are the point of the day and you go in off the boat rather than from a beach, so a non-swimmer spends the stops on deck. The land tours, the wine tours and the cruise excursions ask nothing of you in the water.
How much is a ticket to Akrotiri?
Adult admission to the Akrotiri excavation is 20 euros, and it is not included in any tour fare here. Citizens of the EU under 25 go in free all year, and EU citizens over 65 pay half between 1 October and 31 May. One operator prices the archaeological entry separately at 20 euros a head in its own exclusions, which matches.
When is Akrotiri open?
In the summer season it opens 08:00 to 20:00 on most days, and 08:30 to 15:30 on Mondays and Thursdays. Last admission is twenty minutes before closing. The excavation sits under a modern roof, so it is one of the few places on the island that works in the rain or in the middle of a July afternoon.
Were people killed at Akrotiri?
No human remains have ever been found there, which is the most surprising thing about the site. Ash layers weathered by winter rain between deposits show the volcano gave months of warning, and the town appears to have been evacuated. Pompeii it is not, and that difference is worth carrying round the site with you.
When did the volcano actually erupt?
Nobody agrees, and anybody who gives you one date is picking a side. Archaeological chronology, built on Bronze Age material culture, points to around 1500 BC; radiocarbon points to somewhere between 1645 and 1600 BC; tree rings give 1628 BC. The gap between those methods is more than a century and it has not closed.
Is Akrotiri included in Santorini tours?
The transport is, on some; the ticket is not, on any. Two of the land tours here put Akrotiri in their published route and one prices the entry separately at 20 euros. If the excavation is your reason for coming, check that the option you book actually stops there rather than passing the headland.
What else is ticketed on the island?
Four other things. Ancient Thera on Mesa Vouno and the Museum of Prehistoric Thera in Fira are 10 euros each, the Archaeological Museum of Thera is 10 euros, and the collection of icons at Pyrgos is 5. Each has its own closed day, so check before you build a morning around one.
What is Assyrtiko?
Assyrtiko is the white grape the island is built on, and a wine that has to be at least 75 per cent of anything sold as PDO Santorini, with Athiri or Aidani making up the rest. It grows on vines trained low into a basket called a kouloura, which shelters the fruit from the wind and the sun. The island has no phylloxera, so many of the vines are ungrafted and their root systems are old.
Are Santorini wine tours worth it?
If you like wine, yes, and for a reason that has nothing to do with the view. The vineyards here are genuinely unlike anywhere else: no clay in the soil, no phylloxera, vines coiled on the ground against the wind, and a harvest that has collapsed from 2,500 tonnes in 2022 to about 500 in 2025. Seeing that in the ground explains what you are drinking.
Can children come on a wine tour?
Not on three of the four. The two twelve-tasting afternoons and the winery lunch all set a minimum age of eighteen. The farm cooking class is the exception and takes children from seven, accompanied.
What time is sunset in Santorini Greece?
It moves by about three and a half hours across the year. In mid-June the sun goes down at roughly 20:39 and at the solstice about 20:41; by mid-August it is 20:11, by mid-October 18:44, and in December just after 17:00. That is why a sunset cruise leaves at three in May and earlier in October, and why two operators here say in writing that their winter departures start earlier.
Is Oia the only place to watch the sunset?
No, and on a busy evening it is the worst of the good options. Imerovigli and Firostefani look at the same horizon with a fraction of the people, the cliff-top winery at Pyrgos sells you a glass with it, and from a boat you get the whole caldera rim lit up instead of the back of somebody's head. Oia is worth doing once, early.
When is Santorini least crowded?
Late April, May, and the second half of October. The weather works, the boats run, the sites are on summer hours, and the cruise calendar is thinner. November to March is quieter still, but the cable car drops to two short windows a day and much of the tour list stops running.
Still deciding which trip fits your days? The Santorini Greece Tours home page lays every one of them out with its price, its length and what the fare covers, and the best-time page handles the season.