Boat trips
Day trips
The island
Kos sells five completely different kinds of excursion, and they are not interchangeable. This page puts every format side by side by duration, price band and physical effort — then tells you how many actually fit in a week. Two or three. Not five.
Bookable now
What you're seeing: real departures for the coming weeks, pulled from GetYourGuide. Sort by duration, rating or price, then open the listing to read the operator's own inclusions, pickup arrangements and cancellation terms.
Quick summary
The practical answers before you open a booking page. Prices are the entry point of a range and move with season, boat size and catering.
| Price from | Short cruises and sunset transfers from about €20–30. Full-day sea trips typically €35–60, the volcano €45–75, private boats €120+ per boat. |
|---|---|
| Departure times | Full-day trips board around 09:00; hotel pickups start 60–90 minutes earlier. Sunset tours leave mid to late afternoon, timed to the season. |
| Advance booking needed? | Yes in July–August — the flagship cruises and volcano trips often sell out 2–5 days ahead. In May, June and late September the evening before usually works. |
| Time to allow | Short cruise 1.5–3 h · land tour 4–7 h · full-day sea trip 8–9 h · Nisyros 9–10 h · Bodrum 8–11 h |
| How many in a week? | Two or three. Each full day costs you an early start and a tired evening. Four is possible; five stops being a holiday. |
| Main departure points | Kos Town harbour for most sea trips and the Bodrum ferry; Kardamena for many Nisyros sailings; Mastichari for Kalymnos ferries. |
| Hotel pickup | Included or optional on most land tours and many sea trips. It is convenient but adds roughly an hour to each end of your day. |
| Weather cancellations | Sea trips get called off when the meltemi makes the crossing unsafe, usually decided the evening before or at dawn. Land tours almost always run. |
| Season | Excursions run roughly May to October. Outside that, scheduled ferries operate but organised trips largely stop. |
| Is there a combined pass? | No. Kos has no island-wide sightseeing pass. Savings come from operator combos — cruise plus transfer, entry plus pickup. |
Read this before you book
The listed duration is boat time, not your time. A "9-hour" trip with hotel pickup is realistically an 11-hour day door to door. Count that before you book two long trips back to back.
The comparison
Read the effort column before the price column. Most disappointment on Kos comes from booking a nine-hour day for a three-year-old, or a crater walk in flip-flops.
| Excursion format | Duration | Price band | Effort | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Short glass-bottom or sunset cruise | 1.5–3 h | € | None | Toddlers, non-swimmers, a spare evening |
| Full-day 3-island cruise | 8–9 h | €€ | Low — ladder swims | First-timers and couples; the best value day at sea |
| Pirate ship or party boat | 8–9 h | €€ | Low, loud | Ages 5–12, and groups who want music |
| Snorkelling cruise | 4–6 h | €€ | Moderate swimming | Confident swimmers, calm mornings |
| Nisyros volcano day trip | 9–10 h | €€–€€€ | Moderate — hot crater floor | The one day people still talk about; proper shoes |
| Bodrum return ferry day | 8–11 h | €€–€€€ | Low, lots of walking | Passport holders who want a second country |
| Scheduled ferry, self-organised | Flexible | €–€€ | You plan it | Independent travellers; Kalymnos and Nisyros |
| Zia sunset tour or transfer | 4–5 h | €–€€ | Low, cobbled slope | Everyone, once. Transfer-only is the cheap version |
| Island bus tour | 6–8 h | €€ | Very low | Non-drivers wanting orientation on a longer stay |
| Jeep or quad off-road tour | 4–7 h | €€–€€€ | Moderate, dusty | Active travellers and teenagers |
| Guided Asklepion or archaeology tour | 2–3 h | €–€€ | Low, stepped site | History-minded visitors; go early for shade |
| Wine or olive oil tasting | 2–4 h | €–€€ | None | Slow days; someone else drives |
| Hop-on hop-off sightseeing bus | Half day up | €–€€ | None | Short stays, cruise callers, mobility limits |
| Water park entry with transfer | Half–full day | €€ | Active | Families with children who have had enough ruins |
| Private charter or self-drive rental | 3 h–full day | €€€€ | Yours to set | Groups of six plus, babies, mobility or diet needs |
Durations and price bands reflect publicly listed operator information on GetYourGuide for the current season. Individual departures differ — confirm on the booking page. How we source numbers.
Ticket comparison
Whatever the format, excursions are sold three ways. The route is rarely the difference — the difference is how many people share it and how much of the day you control.
Option 1
€25–60 / adult
Pick this if you want the classic day out at the lowest per-person cost and don't mind a schedule.
Option 2
€45–95 / adult
Pick this if you would rather learn something than tick something off. The biggest jump in quality per euro on Kos.
Option 3
€120–800+ / per boat or car
Pick this if you're a group of six or more, or travelling with anyone who needs a toilet, shade or a nap on demand.
The trap in the small print
"Lunch included" can mean a barbecue on a beach or a bread roll and a slice of watermelon, and two trips on the same route can differ by €25 purely on catering. On the volcano trip, the crater entrance fee is often separate. Read the inclusions list rather than the headline price.
The five formats
Format 1
A boat leaves Kos Town around 09:00, anchors in two or three bays for swims and serves lunch aboard. The default Kos excursion, and the one the wind can cancel.
Routes and boat typesFormat 2
A different island or country for the day: the Nisyros crater, Bodrum across the strait, or Kalymnos under your own steam by ferry. Longest days, biggest payoff.
Border rules and crossingsFormat 3
Coach, minivan, jeep or quad, inland and uphill. These run when boats don't, which makes them the sensible booking for a windy forecast.
The sunset run comparedFormat 4
Half-days built around one subject — a winery, an olive press, the archaeology of the Asklepion. Small groups, indoors or shaded, and no early start.
Asklepion with a guideFormat 5
Charter a boat with a skipper, drive a small one yourself without a licence, or ride a hop-on hop-off bus. You set the pace and pay per vehicle rather than per head.
Self-drive rules and costsAlso worth knowing
Scheduled ferries are transport, not excursions: no swim stops, no guide, one-way tickets. For Kalymnos from Mastichari, that is often the better day.
Routes and ticketingHow to get there
Pickup is the most misunderstood line on a Kos voucher. It saves you a taxi and costs you time, because a minibus collects a dozen hotels in sequence and you are rarely last.
Your voucher gives a pickup window rather than a fixed minute. Be in the lobby at the start of it, ready to leave — drivers wait a couple of minutes, not ten.
The bus works along the coast, filling up. If you're staying in Kefalos or Kardamena and the boat leaves Kos Town, expect to be collected first and to sit through every other stop.
You're dropped at the quay or a square, not at the boarding ladder. Allow 15 minutes to find the right vessel — several sail from the same stretch of Kos Town harbour.
The same loop runs backwards, so the first collected is often the last dropped. On a nine-hour trip that turns into an eleven-hour day.
If you're in or near town, skip pickup and walk. Outside it, compare a pre-booked transfer or taxi against the pickup fee — for four people it is often close, and you get the hour back.
Insider: where to stand
Once at the quay, board 20–25 minutes before departure. Group boats use open seating, and the shaded upper-deck benches and stern tables are gone within ten minutes of the gangway opening.
The over-booking mistake
Booking five excursions in seven days means five early alarms, five late returns and no day when you simply swim. It also stacks your weather risk: if two sea days are cancelled you have nowhere to move them to.
How many to book
Two or three. That is not caution — it is arithmetic. A full-day trip with pickup runs about eleven hours door to door, and the evening after it is a shower and a quiet dinner, not a night out.
A week that works looks like this: one sea day (a cruise or the volcano), one land or themed half-day, and optionally one off-island day if you badly want Bodrum or Nisyros as well as a cruise. Everything else is beaches, town and the free things on the things to do list.
Put sea trips in the first half of your stay. The meltemi decides whether boats sail, and a cancellation on day six has nowhere to go. Land tours run in almost any weather, so they are your safe late-week booking.
Nisyros and Bodrum back to back is a mistake — both are 9 to 11 hours with an early start. Put a beach day between them, or drop one and spend the money on a private boat instead.
Under-fives do not enjoy a nine-hour cruise, whatever the listing says. A 1.5-hour glass-bottom trip, a waterslide boat and the water park beat one long day — Kos with kids sets out which ages suit which trip.
Timing
In July and August, book the flagship cruises and volcano trips two to five days ahead; the best small-group tastings and jeep tours go earlier still because they cap numbers. In May, June and late September the evening before is normally enough, and you can walk the harbour comparing boards.
Booking online has one advantage regardless of season: you see the cancellation terms before you pay, which a harbour kiosk will not show you in writing.
Operators cancel sea trips when the meltemi makes the crossing unsafe, usually deciding the evening before or at dawn, and the standard remedy is a rebooking on the next sailing or a refund. Exact terms are the operator's, stated on the listing — read them rather than assuming. Scheduled ferries are more robust than excursion boats but not immune.
Two practical consequences. Keep one spare day at the end of your stay so a cancelled trip can move. And on a windy morning, switch rather than sulk: a jeep tour, the Asklepion or a hot springs run all work when the sea doesn't.
How to save on excursions
Children are priced below adults on almost every trip and infants often go free, though the age bands differ by operator. Beyond that: book the "lunch not included" version and buy food at a bakery; travel in the shoulder weeks, where the same seat can drop 20–30% between August and late September; and choose transfer-only options where the destination needs no guide — Zia and the west-end beaches are the obvious two.
Do it yourself instead
Some of the best days out are not sold as excursions at all. Embros Therma is free, the Plaka peacock forest and the Alikes flamingo lake cost nothing, and a public bus to Tigaki is a couple of euros. There is no island-wide Kos pass — anything marketed as one is not official.
Bodrum needs a passport
The Turkey day trip is a border crossing: a valid passport is required and a national ID card is not enough. Entry requirements depend on your nationality — check your own government's advice and Turkey's official e-visa site rather than a tour listing. Details on the Bodrum page.
Context
Kos sits in the Dodecanese, in the eastern Aegean, close enough to Turkey that Bodrum's coast is visible from the eastern beaches on a clear morning. Within a short sail there is a sponge-diving island, an uninhabited swimming islet, an active volcano and a second country — which is why one small island supports four genuinely different day trips rather than four versions of the same one.
The neighbours do the work. Kalymnos made its money from sponge diving and now draws climbers to its limestone walls. Pserimos has one sandy bay and a population you could count in an afternoon, and Plati is a bare islet used purely as a swim stop. Nisyros, to the south, is one of Greece's active volcanoes: its Stefanos crater has a floor you can walk on, with hydrothermal vents hissing and the sulphur smell to prove it. Most volcano sailings leave from Kardamena rather than Kos Town.
Land excursions exist for a different reason: the island is long. It is roughly 40 km from Kos Town to the Kefalos peninsula, and about 45 minutes' drive, so an organised trip is often the practical way to reach the far end without hiring a car. The same logic makes the Zia sunset run the island's most-booked land tour — it is a mountain village at altitude with one great westward view, awkward to reach at dusk and awkward to park at.
The themed tours draw on what Kos actually is rather than what tourism invented. Hippocrates was born here in the 5th century BC and the terraced Asklepion above town is where the healing tradition attached to his name was practised, which is why guided archaeology sells well. Inland vineyards and olive groves support the tastings. And Neratzia Castle, built by the Knights of St John at the harbour mouth, still stands over the quay every excursion boat uses. If you are still deciding what the week looks like, start with the ranked things to do or the boat trips overview; if you already know you want a resort within walking distance of a pickup point, the resort comparison covers that.
Every excursion, by page
FAQ
Five broad formats: sea day trips such as the 3-island cruise to Kalymnos, Pserimos and Plati; off-island days to the Nisyros volcano or to Bodrum in Turkey; land tours by coach, jeep or quad including the Zia sunset run; themed half-days built around wine, olive oil or archaeology; and private or self-guided options such as a charter, a self-drive boat or a hop-on hop-off bus.
Two or three. A full-day trip with hotel pickup runs about eleven hours door to door, so five in seven days turns the holiday into a commute. One sea day, one land or themed half-day and at most one off-island day is the pattern that works, with the sea trips booked early in the week so wind cancellations still have somewhere to move to.
Short cruises and transfer-only trips start around €20–30. Full-day sea trips typically run €35–60 per adult, the Nisyros volcano day trip €45–75, and private boats are priced per boat from roughly €120 before fuel. Prices rise in July and August and vary with catering, so confirm the current figure on the operator's booking page.
Most land tours and many sea trips offer it, either included or as a paid extra, and the voucher gives a pickup window rather than an exact time. It is convenient, but a minibus collects a dozen hotels in sequence and runs the same loop in reverse afterwards, so it typically adds around an hour to each end of your day. If you are staying in or near Kos Town, walking to the quay is faster.
In July and August, two to five days ahead for the flagship cruises and volcano trips, and earlier for small-group tastings and jeep tours because they cap numbers. In May, June and late September the previous evening is usually enough. Booking online has one advantage in any month: you can read the cancellation terms before you pay.
Operators call off sea trips when the meltemi wind makes the crossing unsafe, usually deciding the evening before or at dawn, and the standard remedy is a rebooking on the next sailing or a refund. The exact terms belong to the operator and are stated on the listing, so read them before you book. Land tours almost always run, which makes them the safer choice late in a stay.
Not the nine-hour cruise. A glass-bottom boat trip of about 1.5 hours suits toddlers far better, a pirate-themed boat with a waterslide works well for ages five to twelve, and the water park at Mastichari is the reliable win on a difficult day. For a full day at sea with a baby, a private boat with shade and a toilet is worth the premium.
Check live availability, prices and cancellation terms for every Kos excursion on GetYourGuide — the authorised reseller we link to throughout this guide.
