Santorini to Ios Ferry: Times, Boats and the Day Trip

Santorini to Ios ferry times: how long, and when the boats leave

The crossing is about 21 nautical miles, and the boat decides how long it takes. The Seajets jets do it in 35 to 40 minutes, Golden Star in 45 to 50, Blue Star in about an hour, and the small conventional ferries of Fast Ferries and Maistros in 1 h 15. A few sailings call at another island first and stretch to nearly two hours, so read the arrival time on the sailing you book rather than the route average.

Here is a typical high-season day, 12 August 2026, as the companies published it. The grid changes from week to week and some boats skip a day or two, but the shape holds through July and August: an early conventional ship, a morning jet, a cluster of jets after lunch, and two evening departures.

Nothing leaves Santorini between 08:10 and 13:15, and the evening departures at 19:30 and 19:40 are one-way only, since there is no boat back from Ios that late. Timetables for summer 2027 are not out yet: Greek operators usually publish them in late winter or spring, so check your actual date before you build a plan around a time.

Santorini to Ios day trip: the sailings that work and the ones that don't

Going to Ios for the day makes sense. It is 35 minutes away, Chora is a whitewashed village without the Santorini crowds, and Mylopotas beats any beach on the volcanic island. The catch is that the boats are not spaced for it, and the whole plan hangs on the 20:30 jet out of Ios, the last boat back to Santorini on a summer evening. Time on the island in the table runs from the moment you land to the moment the return leaves, so take off half an hour each end for the bus and for being at the quay early.

The 08:10 out and the 20:30 back is the combination to book. You land at 08:45, have breakfast in the port, take the bus up to Chora before the heat, spend the afternoon at Mylopotas and eat in the village before walking down to the quay. If the fare matters more than the speed, take the 17:00 slow ferry home instead: it costs a tenth of the jet and you are back at Athinios by 18:15, in time for the sunset on the caldera.

The pairs that fail all fail the same way. The morning jets coming back from Ios at 11:25 and 11:55 are there for people leaving the island, not for day-trippers, and an 08:10 arrival followed by an 11:25 departure is two and a half hours, most of it spent getting to and from the port. Anything leaving Santorini after 19:00 is a one-way trip.

The weather risk on a Santorini to Ios day trip

Every boat in the winning combination is a jet, and jets are the first boats cancelled when the meltemi blows in July and August. If the 20:30 is cancelled, you sleep on Ios. Check the forecast the evening before, keep the slow ferries in mind as a fallback (they sail in wind that stops the jets), and do not do this trip the day before a flight out of Santorini.

Santorini to Ios ferry in October and out of season

The route runs all year, but the day trip does not. We checked the live departures on Ferryhopper on 2 October 2026. On Sunday 4 October, the 08:10 jet out (in at 08:45) and the 20:30 jet back (in at 21:10) were both still running, so the long day still works on that date, with a slow 09:00 Fast Ferries boat and a 12:55 jet as alternatives on the way out. On Wednesday 7 October there were only two departures from Santorini, the 13:15 jet and the 15:30 Blue Star.

By Wednesday 21 October there was a single boat from Santorini to Ios, the 15:30 Blue Star, and no direct boat at all in the other direction. From mid-October onwards, plan on at least one night on Ios, and expect a few sailings a week rather than a few a day through the winter. In the off season the boat names shift too: in October the Blue Star sailing is the Blue Star Delos, not the Blue Star 1 of the summer timetable.

Ios to Santorini ferry, and a day on Santorini from Ios

People based on Ios make the trip in the other direction to see the caldera, and the return ferry from Ios to Santorini follows the mirror image of the outbound grid. Here is the same August day:

The boats back to Ios that evening leave Athinios at 19:30 (slow ferry) and 19:40 (jet). The realistic day is the 11:25 jet over, landing at noon, and the 19:30 or 19:40 back, which gives about seven and a half hours on Santorini, minus the bus up to Fira and back. The 08:10 out makes for a longer day if you can face the hour. What you cannot do is stay for the sunset in Oia: in August the sun goes down after 20:00, when you are already on the water. If the Oia sunset is the reason for going, spend the night, and use the map of Santorini to work out whether to base yourself on the caldera or the beach side.

Santorini to Ios ferry price, and the same-day return discount

The price depends almost entirely on the boat. At 2026 prices for one adult on foot: €6.50 on Fast Ferries, €10 on Maistros, €19.50 on Blue Star, and €58.50 to €64.70 on the Seajets and Golden Star jets. The jets cost more because they are the only boats at the times people actually want. A day trip by jet both ways is around €130 per person at full fare.

Seajets advertises a 40% discount for a same-day return on its jets between the two islands, which is exactly the day-trip ticket. It showed on the Ferryhopper results we checked in October 2026. Book both legs together and make sure the discount shows before you pay, since it does not apply to every boat or every date. Children aged 5 to 10, and travellers with disabilities, get up to 50% off with most companies; under-fives travel free.

Seajets, Blue Star and the other ferry companies from Santorini to Ios

Five companies run the crossing, and they are not interchangeable.

• Seajets runs most of the sailings, with high-speed catamarans such as the Champion Jet 1 and Eurochampion Jet 2. Fastest and most expensive, and the first to stop in a strong wind.
• Golden Star Ferries sends a high-speed boat across in 45 to 50 minutes at the same price as Seajets, daily in summer and about once a week by October.
• Blue Star Ferries runs a large conventional ship on its way along the Cyclades line, an hour across for €19.50. It sails in weather that grounds the jets, but its times are set by the Piraeus schedule, which is why one of them leaves Santorini at 06:15 in summer.
• Fast Ferries (also sold as Cyclades Fast Ferries) runs the Dionisios Solomos, a small conventional ferry, 1 h 15 for €6.50. The cheapest seat on the route, sometimes at odd hours, including after midnight in the off season.
• Maistros Santorini, a local company, runs a 1 h 14 crossing for about €10 on a couple of days a week.

The guide to Greek ferry companies compares them across the whole network, and explains why the hull matters more than the name on the ticket.

From Athinios port to Ios port: buses and transfers at each end

On Santorini every boat leaves from Athinios, a strip of quay at the foot of the caldera cliff, 8 km south of Fira and 9 km from the airport. The KTEL bus from Fira costs €2.70, takes about 25 minutes and has no fixed timetable: it runs to meet the ferries, so ask at the Fira bus station the day before which bus matches your sailing. The road down is a series of hairpins that jams in summer, which is why the companies ask you to be at the port 45 minutes early.

Ios is easier. The ferry docks at the port, Gialos, on the west coast, with cafés, bakeries, car and scooter rental and an ATM along the quay. Chora is a 20-minute walk uphill or about ten minutes by bus. The KTEL Ios bus runs port to Chora to Mylopotas beach for €2.20 a ride. On the autumn timetable that starts on 28 September 2026, the first bus leaves the port at 08:00 and the last at 22:00, which matters if you arrive on the 06:15 Blue Star: you land at 07:25, half an hour before the first bus.

What to do on Ios in a day from Santorini

With eight to twelve hours on the island, three things fit comfortably. Walk up to Chora in the morning, before the heat, for the lanes, the windmills on the ridge and the climb to the Panagia Gremiotissa church above the village, which has the view back over the bay and, on a clear day, the line of Santorini on the horizon. Then take the bus to Mylopotas, a long sandy beach with clear water and sunbeds, for the afternoon. Come back up to Chora for an early dinner and walk or ride down to the port for the 20:30.

Manganari, on the south coast, is the beach people come back raving about, but it is a long ride and hard to fit between two fixed ferry times. The same goes for Homer's tomb in the north, which needs a car or a scooter. If those are on your list, or if the night out is the point, stay on Ios: the guide to hotels on Ios explains how far from the bars to sleep in Chora, Mylopotas and the port.

Santorini to Ios by helicopter, flight or water taxi

There is no flight from Santorini to Ios, because Ios has no airport. A helicopter is possible only as a private charter, at a price that has nothing in common with a ferry ticket. Private boats and yachts, sometimes sold as a water taxi, run from Santorini to Ios as a transfer or as a full-day cruise with swimming stops, for small groups who would rather not follow the ferry timetable. A few organised day cruises from Santorini to Ios exist, but they run irregularly and none had public dates when we checked in October 2026. For one person or a couple, the jet is faster and much cheaper than all of them.

Ios sits in the middle of the Cyclades line, so the same port connects onward to Naxos, Paros and Piraeus. If you came down from the mainland, the Athens to Santorini ferry calls at Ios on the way, and the guide to the Cyclades shows how the islands chain together if you are planning more than one stop.

Header photo: Ios harbour by Charles Haynes, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped.