Favorite/best online ferry Map of the Greek islands?

Here’s a pretty good one …. https://www.greeceathensaegeaninfo.com/ferry-info-greece/greek-islands-ferry-chart.htm

It's most useful if you're in early planning stage and wanting to go from, say, Milos to Patmos. This will show why you should make a new plan. You'll see it's generally best to stay within one island group (i.e. Cyclades or Dodecanese).

Some islands also have airports. But mostly flights go back and forth from an island to Athens. There are a few flights that connect islands with each other, in season.

I have no idea when this was last updated, but most routes are pretty stable. The exact schedules (days, times) will change and can be found on websites including ferryhopper.com. I use these websites to check routes and times but never buy tickets in advance. I have always purchased them on an island, the day before going to the next island.

Have fun!

(edited)

The ferry route map on the link Charlene provides was certainly useful for a traveler in the 2000s but it is completely outdated and therefore useless, even misleading, for planning an island hopping project.

I see loads of information on this website that is at least 15 years old, lots of ferry routes are missing, the frequency of ferries is wrong, ferry companies that no longer exist are listed, Seajets a major ferry company founded in 2004 is not listed, a Piraeus-Santorini ticket at €39 while it is currently €90, it is also mentioned that a night in Athens costs 50€ and that the metro ticket costs 0.70€. etc etc.

Looking for a map of ferry routes in Greece is like looking for a map of all the air routes in Europe, so, bad news: This map doesn't exist!

To get a better idea of ​​the ferry routes:

1/ Look at this OpenStreetMap map and zoom in to see all the blue dotted lines. These are the main ferry routes.

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=8/37.503/24.033

That said, I realize that unless you're able to locate and identify all the islands on this map at a glance, it's not going to be of much use to you. So, I know what you're going to say: "What can I do?"

Try Ferryhopper

https://www.ferryhopper.com/en/maps/ferries-map

And click on Greece on the map.

Want more info? Go to gtp.gr

A search for all ferry departures on September 18th from the port of Piraeus gives you this:

https://gtp.gr/greekferries_searchresult.asp?Code=EGR1AP70PIRTZE&isDep=True&AskDate=18/9/2025

Clicking on one of the results in the list (on the small blue circle with an arrow) gives information on the ferry company, the name and type of ferry, weekly frequency, schedule, and route map.

For example, for a Piraeus-Syros route:

https://tinyurl.com/2juptxst

The problem is that these routes aren't defined months in advance. So if you search for a route for May 2026, you won't find anything. You need to know the ferry connections that existed in May 2025 to get a good idea of ​​what will be possible in 2026.

That's where openseas.gr comes in.

http://www.openseas.gr/

But that's another story...

Give my regards to the eagle.

Charlene,

This map is great! I can see the impossibility of somethings I have briefly pondered! Helpful in constructing a reasonable itinerary.

I will bookmark it.

Charlene's map hasn't changed since I started using it 10 years ago. It does give you a good overview. But it doesn't show ferries from Greek islands to Turkey; I think they're run by Turkish companies. In 2018, our ferry from Tinos to Santorini stopped at both Naxos and Paros.

Something to note about the chart shared above is it doesn't include the Ionian and Sporades island groups (and I know ferries to these exist because I have taken them!). As JoLui mentions, it's good to consult multiple sources. Lots of ferries leave from Thessaloniki for example.

Yes, this map is incomplete and outdated, but that's the problem with any Greek ferry map as soon as it's published. I wish there were a better one but I couldn't find one.

For me, it's still a great visual aid and can hopefully be useful as one tool in early planning stages.

It is not possible to establish a definitive map of ferry routes between the approximately 120 ports in Greece for the simple reason that these routes can change every year. Ferries in Greece are considered a means of public transportation, just like buses, and the operation of ferry routes is subject to competitive tenders that are renewed every year.

Add to this all the other unsubsidized ferry routes and the seasonal ones dedicated primarily to tourism, whose ports of call, frequency, and schedules can change several times a year.

There are also smaller connections between nearby islands that are managed locally and not listed in ticket booking services like Ferryhopper or others.

So, it's a mess!

Thank you to all who have contributed to this thread so far (and thank you in advance to anyone who adds to it). I appreciate your insights and input.

Yeah, obviously a highly complex set of options, and even if all you're looking for is a snapshot frozen in time, which will immediately be out of date (which is really all you could get) it's still a huge, hot mess. That said, understanding possible ferry route options (and perhaps even more important, what's actually not possible!) is something one needs to plan a trip (at least it's something that I think I need). I'm struggling with that right now.

On a related note, I'm currently putting together a map that lays out all the options for inter-island flights, which in theory should be a LOT simpler to get one's head around. Because there are about 29 airports on Greek islands with commercial air service (if I'm counting correctly), compared to, I dunno, what, maybe a hundred ferry ports? Just plotting out all the inter-island flight routes is almost enough to make heads explode, figuring out all the ferry connections seems like a fool's errand. So I can see why a lot of what you see online that purports to be anything like comprehensive actually falls short of that goal.

Still, it's a starting point, and it beats just trying to figure things out as you go.

Don't waste your time exploding your head trying to list all the island airports to prepare for island hopping. 95% of these airports have flights only to/from Athens (or Thessaloniki).

There are a few flights from the mainland that fly to 2 or 3 islands, as if the islands were bus stops. I took one to go from Thessaloniki to Limnos (in the North Aegean Sea) and another to return from Kalymnos (in the Dodecanese) to Athens. But there are no such flights in the Cyclades.

If you want to consider airports, it's only for flying from Athens to an island with an airport, then going to other island(s) by ferry (if there are ferries) and ending on an island with an airport to return to Athens.

Also note that you can now travel by shared or private helicopter on some islands if you can afford it.

https://flyhoper.com/

If you want to understand the ferry routes, explode your head by reading this:

https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g189398-i192-k13287639-Travelling_by_ferry_in_Greece_Island_hopping-Greece.html

Thanks, JoLui -

I think I'll be giving that helicopter service a hard pass. While I do love me some occasional travel by whirlybird, only under the right conditions. And those conditions include fares that do not run into 4-digits for just a short hop...such helo flights are not impossible to find (have done them before, am doing another soon, actually), but helicopter flights tend to be either expensive, or exceedingly rare and generally obscure...but yeah, those in your link are eye-watering.

Speaking of eye-watering fares, it didn't take me long exploring the links you provided to stumble across what appeared to be standard, even routine, ferry hops, but with price tags north of €130. That's for just a seat, not a stateroom or for taking a vehicle, and not a super-long crossing. Heck, with ferries at that price, I might reconsider the helicopter - nah. But fer cryin' out loud, that's an expensive ferry ride.

I'm taking a slightly unconventional approach to booking transportation for this trip. I'm trying to skip Athens altogether on the inbound (because flying via Athens, I'm finding lots of night-time arrivals, or loooong, overnight connections - or both - most of which look like a pretty miserable way to end your flight to Europe (I'm coming from the far northwestern corner of the USA, which contributes to flight schedule challenges, it takes a full day plus an overnight to reach Athens from where I live, so I don't want to inject a second overnight into "just getting there").

So rather than flying to Athens and getting off the plane, switching to a local carrier, and pushing on through my second night of travel to eventually arrive at an island, I'm looking at connecting somewhere else on the continent and then flying directly to an island - in fact, all the way to "the end of Greece" in the far south/southeast, eg possibly Crete or Rhodes (I've been surprised to find more options to do that than I had first expected). Once we get there, and start the actual time in Greece, we would work our way back with some island hopping, possibly a combination of short direct flights (which as you correctly point out, are indeed limited, but some do seem to exist) and of course filling in the gaps with ferries when flight options are crazy or non-existent (which I know is most of the time).

I am loathe to fly from one island to another by first flying back to Athens, that seems crazy - but I am learning that crazy is not unheard of in this corner of Europe. After the island hopping, we would head back to Athens (not sure of flight or ferry, haven't decided on our island list yet), then spend the last bit of the trip on the mainland, including (but maybe not limited to) Athens. Flying out of Athens after that.

I'm still in the very early stages of figuring things out. And yes, the ferry links are definitely head-explosion material. We'll see how this goes, but I'm starting to get a general sense of the flight options; but I'm still just scratching the surface on the ferry options. When I saw those €130 ferry tickets it was definitely a coffee-spewing moment.

I'm probably going to step away from the Greece trip planning for a few weeks (we have a trip to Italy coming up in two weeks, and I need to wrap up some stuff for that and start packing). Will pick back up the Greece planning in October after we get home.

Thanks again for sharing insights and resources.

Yes, from many European cities, you'll find flights to the most touristy islands with international airports, such as Rhodes and Crete. (In eastern Greece, there's also the island of Kos, which has an international airport.) Most of the time, these are seasonal flights operated roughly from mid-April to late September by budget airlines.

But be aware that with these airlines, the price of a single piece of checked baggage can cost three times more than the price of a basic flight ticket.

The basic rule when traveling in Greece is: Less is More.

So, trying to avoid wasting time with late-arriving flights or flying via a European city is generally a huge mistake if you haven't completed the "How to Travel in Greece" level 3 trainning .

And I don't think you've even started Level 1 yet :)

By the way, I've never seen a ferry ticket at that price of €130. I wonder where you found it.