About this guide
About kos.boats
An independent guide to boat trips, day trips and things to do on Kos, written for people who have already decided to go and now need the practical answer. Here is how it is put together, how it is paid for, and what it cannot do for you.
Who this guide is for
You have a week on Kos, one boat day in the budget and a dozen browser tabs open. This site exists to close most of those tabs. Every page compares the options that actually differ — big steel excursion boat against wooden caique, self-drive rental against skippered charter, public bus against a pre-booked transfer — and says which one suits which traveller.
Where something is not worth the money, the page says so. Where the free version is better than the ticketed one, the page sends you to the free version. That is the whole editorial line, and it is the reason to trust the rest.
How the pages are researched
Each page is built from three kinds of source, in this order of authority:
- Operators' own public listings — what a trip includes, how long it runs, where it boards and what it costs. Every price band on this site comes from here and nowhere else.
- Official and institutional sources for anything factual about a site or a service: the Greek ministry of culture for archaeological sites, port and municipal information for ferries and buses, published geography for distances and elevations.
- What travellers report, read widely — used to work out which questions a page has to answer, never as the source of a hard figure.
When a fact cannot be pinned down, the number is left out and you get told where to check it instead. That is deliberate: a guessed opening time that sends you to a locked gate is worse than no opening time at all. Nothing here is invented for colour either — if a page tells you to walk to the far end of the quay, that is an instruction, not a memoir.
Where the numbers come from, and how fast they go stale
Prices, departure times, schedules and opening hours on Kos change with the season and often within it. Treat every figure written into this site as an order of magnitude, not a quote:
- Tour prices move roughly 20–30% between the shoulder weeks and August, and operators re-price every year.
- Departure times shift when the meltemi blows, and a cancelled sailing is an ordinary summer event.
- Archaeological sites and museums run different summer and winter timetables.
- Ferry timetables are reissued each season, which is why this site does not publish them at all.
The live prices inside the booking widgets come from GetYourGuide and update themselves. The figures typed into the prose do not. Where the two disagree, the booking page is right and this page is out of date — tell us, and it gets fixed.
How the site pays for itself
Booking links point to GetYourGuide, an authorised reseller, and they are affiliate links. If you book after following one, this site may earn a commission. You pay exactly the same price as you would going there directly — the commission comes out of the reseller's margin, not your fare.
The obvious risk in that model is writing whatever earns most. The check on it is visible in the pages: the free thermal pool at Embros Therma, the public beaches and the peacock forest in Plaka get recommended precisely because they cost nothing. Nobody pays to appear. The full statement is on the affiliate disclosure page.
What kos.boats is not
- Not a ticket office. Nothing is sold here.
- Not a tour operator, boat company, ferry line, port authority or attraction, and not the official website of any of them.
- Not a booking system. No reservation is taken, held or processed on this site. There is no account to create and no form to fill in.
- Not a party to your booking. Your contract is with GetYourGuide or with the operator. This site cannot see, alter, cancel or refund it, and holds no customer records at all.
That last point matters. If your trip is cancelled for wind at 07:00, the people who can help are the ones who took your money — see what we can and cannot help with.
Found a mistake? Say so
Corrections are the most useful mail this site gets. If a price band is wrong, a boat has stopped running or a link is dead, email info@kos.boats with the page address and what you saw. Photographers and licences are listed on the image credits page; if an attribution is wrong, it gets corrected or the picture removed.
Otherwise, start at the boat trips home page or the things to do hub and plan from there.