Croatia · Adriatic · Hvar Town harbour
Hvar Town has one working waterfront and it does three jobs at once — catamarans to the mainland, taxi boats to the Pakleni islands, and the excursion skippers who load between them.
Quick answer
Nine well-reviewed boats sell seats out of Hvar, from $75 to $163, and the first thing to sort out is which of them leave the island at all. Four are Split departures that happen to call at Hvar or Pakleni: the five-island Blue Cave run at $116, the Blue Lagoon cruise at $80, the Hvar–Brač–Pakleni day at $86 and the luxury four-island boat at $163. Five genuinely cast off from the town harbour.
Of those five, two cross to Biševo for the Blue Cave — $122 by speedboat and $119 on the slower hull — and three stay local: $75, $87 and $110 for Dubovica, the Red Rocks and the Pakleni islands, which sit twenty minutes off the riva and have no scheduled ferry of their own.
The honest comparison for the Pakleni islands is not another tour. It is the public taxi boat from the booths outside the Mlinar bakery, which is roughly €8 to €11 return depending on the island and leaves every twenty to thirty minutes all summer. What it does not do is stop where the road and the ferry cannot reach. The arithmetic is below, and the cash collected at the far end after it.
Compare
The five kinds of day out sold under the Hvar name, each shown with the cheapest well-reviewed example on this page. Prices, ratings and durations are the operators' own figures from the listings below, re-checked in September 2026; the last column is the one that decides it.
| Type of day | Time out | Leaves from | From | What decides it | Book |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pakleni and Dubovica half day | 5 hours | Hvar Town riva | $75 | Coves the taxi boat does not serve | Details |
| Pakleni and Red Rocks, small hull | 4 – 6 hours | Hvar Town riva | $110 | Fewer people, route set on the day | Details |
| Blue Cave and 5 islands from Hvar | 7.5 hours | Hvar Town riva | $119 | Biševo without the Split commute | Details |
| Blue Cave 5-island day | 10 – 11 hours | Split or Trogir | $116 | Most-reviewed boat here, longest day | Details |
| Islands by luxury motor yacht | 10 hours | Split | $163 | Deck space, shade and a small group | Details |
The boats
Every boat below is currently bookable and carries its operator's own rating and review count. Prices are per person. The departure line matters more here than at most ports — four of the nine load in Split or Trogir and reach Hvar mid-morning, so read the spec before the price. Re-checked in September 2026.
4.6★ (7944 reviews) · 10 - 11 hours · from $116
4.7★ (3945 reviews) · 8 hours · from $80
4.4★ (2009 reviews) · 10 hours · from $86
4.8★ (964 reviews) · 7.5 hours · from $122
4.5★ (267 reviews) · 7.5 hours · from $119
4.9★ (89 reviews) · 5 hours · from $75
5★ (50 reviews) · 10 hours · from $163
4.8★ (41 reviews) · 4 - 6 hours · from $110
4.9★ (37 reviews) · 5 hours · from $87
The piers
Hvar Town has no ferry terminal in the ordinary sense. Everything happens along a single stone waterfront, and the failure mode here is not walking to the wrong quay but discovering your voucher starts on the mainland.
The Riva is the whole port. Catamarans tie up in the southeastern corner of the harbour, a two-minute walk from Trg svetog Stjepana, and the same promenade takes the excursion boats, which raft alongside each other and hold a sign with the boat's name at the meeting time. There is no gate, no terminal building and no departures board; the operator's phone number on the voucher is the departures board.
The taxi-boat booths sit further along the same waterfront, outside the Mlinar bakery — a row of small kiosks each covering one Pakleni destination. They are a separate business from the excursion boats and sell single destinations only: there is no service between the islands, so you choose Jerolim, or Ždrilca and Mlini on Marinkovac, or Stipanska for Carpe Diem Beach, or Palmižana, and you come back the way you went.
Car ferries do not call at Hvar Town. Jadrolinija's vehicle line lands at Stari Grad, whose port is about 20 kilometres away across the island and 1.5 kilometres outside Stari Grad itself; the Čazmatrans island buses connect it to Hvar Town. Nothing on this page leaves from there, but a great many people arrive that way and misjudge the transfer on a morning departure.
Then the part that matters most. Four of the nine listings here — tour 1, tour 2, tour 3 and tour 7 — are Split or Trogir departures that use Hvar as a stop or a selling point. They are good boats. They are also a catamaran ride away, and the mainland crossing costs roughly €10 on Jadrolinija's subsidised line 9604 up to about €25 on the direct catamaran 641 or a Krilo Jet, per the operators' published fares. Book one of those from a Hvar hotel and the day starts with a 07:00 sailing off the island.
| Where | What leaves from it | Walk from the main square | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hvar Town riva, southeast corner | Catamarans to Split, Vis, Korčula, Bol and Dubrovnik | 2 minutes | Mooring point rather than a terminal; boarding is on the quay |
| Hvar Town riva, excursion berths | Tours 4, 5, 6, 8 and 9 | 2 – 5 minutes | Boats raft two and three deep; you cross other decks to board |
| Taxi-boat booths by Mlinar bakery | Jerolim, Ždrilca and Mlini, Stipanska, Palmižana | 3 minutes | One booth per island, cash preferred, no inter-island service |
| Split and Trogir quays | Tours 1, 2, 3 and 7 | A catamaran crossing away | 50 – 65 minutes each way, roughly €10 – €25 per person |
| Stari Grad ferry port | Jadrolinija car ferries only | 20 km, Čazmatrans bus | No excursion boat on this page uses it |
The arithmetic
Hvar is the rare Adriatic port where the cheap alternative is not a state ferry but a fleet of private launches, and the sums are worth doing before you book anything.
The Pakleni islands. From the booths on the riva the return fares run at roughly €8 for Jerolim and Stipanska, €9 for Ždrilca and Mlini on Marinkovac and €11 for Palmižana, with the crossing taking ten to fifteen minutes and boats leaving every twenty to thirty minutes through the summer; the Carpe Diem club runs its own dedicated launch to Stipanska at about €10 return. Two people can therefore spend a whole day on Palmižana for around €22, against $75 for the same two seats on the cheapest guided half day.
What the €22 does not buy is everything the boats are actually selling. The taxi boat lands you at one beach and leaves you there — no Dubovica, no Red Rocks, no anchoring in a cove with nobody in it, and no skipper who moves the route when the wind gets up. Swim stops are the product on tour 9 and tour 8; a landing is the product on the taxi boat. If you want a beach club and a book, take the launch. If you want the water between the islands, book the boat.
Dubovica. The same test applied to Hvar's best-known south-coast beach comes out differently again. The Hvar Town–Stari Grad bus stops at Dubovica for about €3.50 each way, and from the roadside parking it is a ten to fifteen minute descent on a steep gravel and stone path. That is €7 return against a boat trip that reaches the same shingle without the climb — which is the reason tour 6 and tour 9 both build a day around it. In August the free parking above the beach fills before mid-morning, so the boat is often the only unhurried way in.
Vis and the Blue Cave. Jadrolinija's seasonal foot-passenger line 9602 crosses from Hvar to Vis Town in 35 to 40 minutes, and on the summer schedule it leaves Hvar at 08:45 and comes back at 19:35 from Vis — two sailings, no third. That is a real day trip, at around €28 each way, but it does not reach Biševo: the Blue Cave is a further boat from Komiža on the far side of Vis, and the return catamaran will not wait. This is why the cave listings here, $122 and $119, cost what they do. They are buying you a hull that goes all the way and comes back the same evening.
The hulls
The Pakleni crossing takes twenty minutes in anything. The Biševo crossing takes ninety, and that is where the choice of boat stops being about comfort and starts being about whether the day works at all.
The rule of thumb on this coast is that hull size decides who sails when the wind turns. A covered cruiser on the Split runs will keep going in conditions that keep the Hvar speedboats tied to the riva, and the boats most likely to be cancelled here are the small local ones — which are also the best of them on a calm day. If your dates are tight and you want the Blue Cave, the longer Split-based crossing in a bigger covered speedboat is the more weather-proof booking, at the cost of a ten to eleven hour day.
| Hull | From | Typical day | Who it suits | The trade-off |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small motor boat, Pakleni loop | $75 | 5 hours | Dubovica, Red Rocks, two or three coves | Little shade and a wet ride when the maestral fills in |
| Small boat, route set with the skipper | $110 | 4 – 6 hours | Choosing your own stops close to town | Priced like a half charter for a short day |
| Motor boat to Biševo | $119 | 7.5 hours | The Blue Cave without a speedboat ride | Slower hull, so less time ashore at the far end |
| Speedboat to Biševo | $122 | 7.5 hours | Five islands and two caves in one day | Ninety minutes of open water each way in a small hull |
| Luxury motor yacht | $163 | 10 hours | Deck space, shade, a crew and a small group | Leaves from Split, so add the catamaran crossing |
Prices
Three bands, drawn from the nine listings on this page rather than from an average of the market. Hvar has fewer boats than Split or Dubrovnik and no cheap end at all — the entry price here is higher than the entry price on either.
Everything that stays within sight of Hvar sits here: $75 for Dubovica and the Pakleni islands with a snack, $87 for the Red Rocks version, and $80 for the Blue Lagoon cruise if you happen to be starting in Split. Five hours, two or three swim stops, back in time for the evening.
The Biševo crossings, $122 by speedboat and $119 on a slower boat, plus $110 for a small local boat with the route set on the day and $116 for the most-reviewed five-island run on the coast. Add the cave ticket to the two Biševo prices — it is collected separately.
The luxury four-island yacht at $163 is the top of the page: a charter-grade hull sold by the seat, ten hours, out of Split. For a group of six or more, a private Hvar boat booked directly on the riva will usually come in under that per head, though without the schedule or the free-cancellation window.
Season
Sea temperatures are the long-term monthly averages published by Climates to Travel for Hvar; the sailing notes are what the season does to this harbour, which runs a shorter timetable than the mainland ports.
Rain does not cancel a boat here. Wind does, and on Hvar it has three names. The bura falls from the northeast off the Biokovo massif on the mainland, arrives with a hard clear sky and flat light, and is the wind that can strand you on the wrong side of the channel — it hits the Split crossing before it hits the Pakleni run. The jugo comes up from the southeast with cloud and a long swell, and it is the one that closes the Blue Cave: the entrance is roughly a metre and a half high at sea level, and the decision to shut it is taken on the morning by the cave's own concession, not by the operator you booked with. The afternoon maestral is the mild, predictable one, which is why the morning departures are the ones that sail — and why the cave itself is at its brightest between about ten and two, when the light comes in under the water.
Hvar's other seasonal fact is the timetable's short spine. The Vis catamaran runs roughly from mid-June to mid-September and the cave reserve from April to the end of October, so a Blue Cave day booked for late October is a booking against a closing window. Where a boat offers two slots, take the early one.
| Month | Sea | Boats running | What it means on the water |
|---|---|---|---|
| April | 15 °C (59 °F) | Blue Cave opens, few local boats | The cave reserve opens on the first of the month at the lower fare |
| May | 18 °C (64 °F) | Timetable filling out | Empty coves and cheap cave tickets; the sea is still a short swim |
| June | 22 °C (72 °F) | Everything | The best balance of the year — warm water, cave fare still at the shoulder rate until the twentieth |
| July | 24.5 °C (76 °F) | Everything, sold out | Book several days ahead; the maestral gets up most afternoons |
| August | 25.5 °C (78 °F) | Everything, sold out | Warmest sea of the year, and the longest queue at Mezuporat |
| September | 23 °C (73 °F) | Everything until mid-month | The month to pick; the Vis catamaran and the cave both drop back around the tenth |
| October | 20 °C (68 °F) | Thinning fast | Still swimmable; the cave reserve closes at the end of the month |
| November – March | 13.5 – 17.5 °C (56 – 64 °F) | Almost none | Excursions stop; the Split catamarans keep running for islanders |
Extras
One charge on this page is large, collected in cash by a body with no connection to the operator, and applies to two of the nine boats. The rest are small, but they are the ones people budget for last.
The cave fee is the one that changes the sum. At €24 a head in high summer it adds nearly a fifth to the $122 speedboat crossing for two people, and it is cash on a small island with no cash machine. The official price list is worth reading before you go for a second reason: the ticket also covers entry to the multimedia exhibition at the Blue Cave Visitor Centre at Mezuporat, which is where you spend the forty-five to sixty minutes you will otherwise queue in the sun — and the concession publishes a live boarding schedule on its own app and website, so the wait is knowable before your skipper ties up. Almost nobody on a tour is told either thing.
| Item | Amount | Who collects it | When it applies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blue Cave entry, Biševo | €24 adult from 20 June to 10 September, €18 from 1 April to 19 June and 11 September to 31 October; children 6–12 pay €12 and €9, under sixes free | The Blue Cave concession at Mezuporat bay on Biševo, per its own published price list | Tours 4 and 5, and the Split-based tour 1 — unless the listing states the ticket is included |
| Taxi boat to the Pakleni islands | About €8 return to Jerolim or Stipanska, €9 to Ždrilca and Mlini, €11 to Palmižana | The taxi-boat operators at the booths by the Mlinar bakery | Only if you go under your own steam — the tours here carry you |
| Bus to Dubovica | About €3.50 each way | Čazmatrans, on the Hvar Town – Stari Grad route | The land alternative to tours 6 and 9 |
| Catamaran to a Split departure | Roughly €10 on Jadrolinija line 9604 up to about €25 on line 641 or a Krilo Jet | Jadrolinija or Kapetan Luka | Tours 1, 2, 3 and 7 if you are staying on Hvar |
| Lunch and drinks ashore | Restaurant prices on Palmižana or in Komiža | The restaurant, not the operator | Listings that say lunch is optional or a snack is included |
| Walking through town in swimwear | €500 – €600 on the spot | Hvar Town, under its public-order ordinance | Stepping off the boat and crossing the square in a bikini or shirtless |
On the water
Everything starts on one waterfront. The Pakleni islands lie twenty minutes west of the riva and have no scheduled ferry; Dubovica is eight kilometres east along the south coast; Biševo, with the Blue Cave, is ninety minutes away by fast boat.
Questions
Five of the nine on this page: $122 and $119 to the Blue Cave on Biševo, and $75, $87 and $110 around Dubovica, the Red Rocks and the Pakleni islands. The other four — tour 1, tour 2, tour 3 and tour 7 — load in Split or Trogir and use Hvar as a stop, so add a catamaran crossing of roughly €10 to €25 each way if you are already on the island.
From a row of small booths on the Hvar Town riva outside the Mlinar bakery, one booth per destination. Returns run at roughly €8 to Jerolim or Stipanska, €9 to Ždrilca and Mlini on Marinkovac and €11 to Palmižana, with departures every twenty to thirty minutes in summer and a ten to fifteen minute crossing. Cash is preferred, and there is no service between the islands — you go back the way you came.
Yes, but only on a boat that is built for it. Biševo is about ninety minutes each way in good conditions, and the two Hvar departures that make the round trip are $122 by speedboat and $119 on a slower hull, both around seven and a half hours. Jadrolinija's Vis catamaran does not get you there: it lands at Vis Town, the cave is a further boat from Komiža, and the return sailing will not wait.
The concession's own price list puts an adult at €24 from 20 June to 10 September and €18 from 1 April to 19 June and again from 11 September to 31 October, with children aged six to twelve at €12 and €9 and under-sixes free. Unless the listing says otherwise it is not included, and it is paid at Mezuporat bay on Biševo, where there is no cash machine. The same ticket covers the Blue Cave Visitor Centre exhibition beside the ticket counter.
For a day on one Pakleni beach, the taxi boat wins outright — about €11 return to Palmižana against $75 a head. For the water between the islands it does not compete: it lands at one place and leaves you there, with no Dubovica, no Red Rocks and no coves reachable only by hull. Book the boat when the stops are the point; take the launch when the beach is.
No. Hvar Town has a catamaran mooring on the riva and nothing else; every vehicle ferry lands at Stari Grad, whose port sits about 20 kilometres away and 1.5 kilometres outside Stari Grad itself, connected by the Čazmatrans island buses. Foot passengers from Split, Vis, Korčula, Bol and Dubrovnik come straight into the town harbour. No excursion boat on this page starts at Stari Grad.
September, then June. September still has a 23 °C sea and the full timetable until about the tenth, when the Vis catamaran and the higher cave fare both drop away. June has a 22 °C sea, boats that are not yet sold out and — until the twentieth — the shoulder-season cave ticket at €18. July and August have the warmest water of the year at 24.5 and 25.5 °C, along with the longest queue at Mezuporat.
The operator refunds or moves you; the listings here also cancel free up to 24 hours ahead. The jugo from the southeast is the wind that closes the Blue Cave, because the entrance is barely a metre and a half above the water, and that call is made on the morning by the cave's own concession rather than your skipper. The bura from the northeast hits the Split crossing hardest. Small local boats stop first, big covered hulls last.
Not through the centre. Hvar Town's public-order ordinance carries on-the-spot fines of roughly €500 to €600 for crossing the main square or the old town in a bikini, trunks alone or shirtless, and the boats tie up a two-minute walk from that square. Bring something to pull on before you step off the deck — it is the single most expensive mistake available on this waterfront.
Nearby
Or browse every boat tour and day cruise by port.
The mainland hub an hour away, and where four of the boats on this page actually start
Island hopping ▸ DubrovnikCroatiaThe Elaphiti islands and a much cheaper entry price for a full day afloat
Island hopping ▸ KotorMontenegroA sheltered bay rather than open water, with sailings that run when the jugo stops Hvar's
Bay & fjord cruising ▸