Kotor Blue Cave Tours Check Availability
Sea cave in the cliffs of the Lustica Peninsula near Kotor, Montenegro
Tour review · checked 1 September 2026

We Booked Kotor's Busiest Blue Cave Boat Tour — Here's the Honest Verdict

An honest look at the Blue Cave, Our Lady of the Rocks and submarine tunnels tour — the one with 4,671 reviews behind it. What the day really contains, how long you actually get at the cave, and who should book something else instead.

4.7 / 5 from 4,671 traveller reviews · from $57 per person

3 hours · up to 30 people Free cancellation up to 24h
Read the 5 tips first Jump to the verdict
  • 4.7 / 54,671 reviews
  • $57Per person, list $64
  • 3 hoursRoughly 2 of them moving
  • Up to 30People per boat
  • 10-15 minReal Blue Cave swim
Why we booked it

The One Part of This Bay You Cannot Do on Your Own

Rating and price checked 1 September 2026 with the currency forced to USD. Both move with the season. Organised so you can make the call in about ten minutes.

The Bay of Kotor is the part of Montenegro we keep coming back to. We drive the bay road rather than the tunnel, stop at the Perast waterfront for coffee before the coaches arrive, and take the little water taxi out to Our Lady of the Rocks — about €5 return, no booking, seven minutes each way, running all day from the Perast quay.

That last detail matters more than it sounds, because it is the honest answer to a question most people never think to ask: almost everything on this tour's itinerary can be reached without a boat tour. Perast is a bus ride from Kotor. Our Lady of the Rocks is a €5 water taxi from Perast. You can see Mamula from the shore at Žanjice.

The Blue Cave is the exception. It sits on the outer edge of the Luštica peninsula, on a stretch of coast with no road to it, and there is no ticket desk, no path down, no way to simply turn up. If you want to swim in it, you get on a boat with somebody who runs out there daily. That is the whole argument for booking one of these tours, and it is a good one.

Our own record on the bay is mixed. The water taxi to the island is one of the best €5 in Montenegro. A speedboat trip we took years ago out of Budva was three hours of engine noise and one photo stop. What we had never done — and kept meaning to — was the cave itself. So this time we chose the most-booked one on the water: the Blue Cave, Our Lady of the Rocks and submarine tunnels tour run by Montenegro Submarine & Speed Boat Tours.

Before we get into it, the genuinely useful part: we also went back through what travellers on recent departures reported — the two- and three-star write-ups as much as the glowing ones. Four things come up again and again, and none of them are in the headline copy.

The four caveats that decide whether you enjoy this

The Blue Cave swim is the shortest part of the day. The listing says 30 minutes. On most departures it is 10 to 15, and that clock starts before twenty-odd people have finished climbing down the ladder.

No boat goes inside the cave any more. A navigation-safety rule brought in during 2026 bars motorised vessels from the chamber. Boats anchor outside and you swim in — and how far outside is entirely down to your skipper. The tour page says 10–20 metres. On busy afternoons people report being dropped 80–100 metres out, far enough that reaching the cave and getting back inside the time allowed is not realistic.

The “guide” is largely a QR-code audio guide. There is a licensed crew on board and some of them are excellent, but there is no microphone. Live commentary competes with an outboard engine at speed, and at the stops it is often a recorded clip played through a phone speaker.

If you cannot swim, you will not be going in the water — life jackets in the inclusions notwithstanding. Skippers make that call at the cave and they do not bend on it.

None of these are failures, exactly. They are deliberate choices, and three of the four are stated somewhere in the booking notes that nobody reads to the end. But they are the whole difference between a very good three hours and a quietly disappointing one, which is why the same boat collects fives and threes in the same week. The trade-off this tour asks you to accept: you are buying a fast, scenic circuit of the bay with four sights attached — not a swimming trip with a cave at the centre of it.

Five decisions that change the day

Top Tips Before You Book This One

  • Take the 9:00 departure, not an afternoon one. This is the single highest-value decision on the page. The cave is a narrow chamber that every operator in the bay visits, and by midday there can be six or more boats stacked at the entrance with their engines running — swimmers ducking between hulls, exhaust fumes hanging in the chamber. Crews on the first run of the day get there before the queue forms. Nothing else you do changes the experience this much.
  • Bring your own water, and a waterproof phone case. “Drinking water” is on the inclusions list and it is real, but on a lot of departures it amounts to one small cup handed round in three hours, and on some it has to be asked for. The tour page itself tells you to bring the phone case; there are none on board.
  • Pack something with sleeves. Our Lady of the Rocks enforces a dress code at the door and the island security will turn you back — bare shoulders and swimwear do not get in, and there is no cover-up to borrow. It catches people out precisely because they have come off a swimming boat. Bring €3 in cash too if you want the museum; the church is free, the museum is cash only.
  • Bring your own mask if snorkelling is part of why you booked. The inclusion reads “snorkelling masks (subject to availability)”, and the availability part does a lot of work — a good number of departures carry none at all. There are no breathing tubes on any of them.
  • Ask for a life jacket on the dock, not at the cave. They are on board and they are free, but they are not handed out as a matter of course, and the moment to sort it is before you are in open water among moving boats. Weaker swimmers who ask early get looked after well; the ones who ask in the water tend to be the ones who end up staying on the boat.
The tour reviewed on this page

Kotor: Blue Cave Swim, Lady of the Rocks & Submarine Tunnels

Worth checking dates before you read on, for one practical reason: the morning slots are the ones this review recommends, and they are not offered every day of the week outside high season. Cancellation is free up to 24 hours before, so pinning a 9:00 departure now costs nothing if your plans move.

Pоwered by GetYourGuide
The shape of the three hours

What the Day Actually Looks Like

Three hours, door to door, on an open speedboat with a canopy over the middle section and bench seating along the sides. The manifest goes up to 30. Twenty to twenty-three is the number people most often report, and at that load the middle benches are tight and the sun deck seats are the ones worth having.

You meet in City Park, Park Slobode 1 — 200 metres from the Old Town's Main Gate, and a short walk from the cruise berth. Off the ship, turn left, cross at the small bridge, and the desk with the company logo is by the seaside. Be there 30 minutes early. If you are driving, allow considerably more: summer parking in Kotor is scarce, the roadworks on the main road are ongoing, and the public car park is on the wrong side of a pedestrian barrier that navigation apps do not know about — you end up walking the long way round the park. Cruise passengers should build in a buffer either side.

The order of the stops is not fixed. The itinerary runs Perast and Our Lady of the Rocks, then the submarine tunnels, past Mamula, then the Blue Cave — but plenty of departures run it in reverse, and a morning boat that goes to the cave first is doing you a favour. Sea state decides. In a strong wind the cave swim is cut or dropped, and that is a real possibility rather than a formality.

Be honest with yourself about the arithmetic before you book. Of the three hours, roughly two are spent moving — the cave is about an hour out from Kotor and an hour back. The time actually off the boat, across every stop combined, comes to something like 35 to 45 minutes. That is not a scandal; it is the geography of a bay this size and a boat this fast. But it is not what “3-hour tour with four stops” makes most people picture.

Stop 1 · about 20 minutes ashore

Perast and Our Lady of the Rocks

Twenty minutes, occasionally thirty. It is the only proper landing of the day and the one everyone enjoys.

The island is man-made, built up over centuries on the reef where sailors found an icon in 1452, and the church interior is genuinely worth the walk — some 2,500 silver votive plaques, and a tapestry a local woman worked on for twenty-five years, woven partly from her own hair. Entry to the church comes with the boat ticket. The museum is €3, cash only.

Twenty minutes is enough to walk the island and put your head into the church. It is not enough to do that and queue, and use the toilet, and take photographs without hurrying — and there is usually a queue, because every operator in the bay lands here on the same rotation. Go straight in first and walk the outside afterwards.

How to set your expectations

The best twenty minutes of the tour, and the only stop where you get off the boat. If this island is the part you actually care about, you do not need this tour for it — from Perast the water taxi is about €5 return and you can stay as long as you like. Our full Our Lady of the Rocks guide covers doing it independently.

Stop 2 · 20 seconds to 2 minutes

The Submarine Tunnels

Call this a drive-through rather than a stop, and you will not be disappointed by it.

The boat noses into one of the Yugoslav navy's old tunnels cut into the cliff, everyone takes the same photograph looking back out at the daylight, and you reverse out. Reports of the time inside range from about twenty seconds to a couple of minutes. Nobody gets off.

It is a good twenty seconds — cold air, dripping rock, an unmistakable Cold War shape to the opening — and children tend to love it. But it is also where the guiding gap shows most clearly. The tunnels are the one stop where a minute of context would transform what you are looking at, and on many departures what you get instead is the music turned up as you go in. Some crews do talk you through it and it is much better when they do.

How to set your expectations

A photo opportunity with an interesting shape, not a site visit.

Other experiences you might enjoy

More Bay of Kotor Trips to Compare

If this itinerary is not quite the shape you want, compare Blue Cave speedboat tours from Kotor, small-group and private Boka Bay charters, Our Lady of the Rocks and Perast excursions, submarine tunnel trips, full-day catamaran cruises and Tivat and Herceg Novi departures.

Stop 3 · seen from the boat

Mamula Island

You pass it. You do not land on it.

The fortress island at the mouth of the bay — an 1853 Austro-Hungarian fortress, later a WWII internment camp, now redeveloped as a luxury hotel — is closed to tour boats. That is not the operator's doing and no tour on this water can land you there. It appears in the itinerary because you cruise past it, and it photographs well from the water.

How to set your expectations

A sight seen from a moving boat, listed as a stop.

Stop 4 · the one to read

The Blue Cave — Where This Tour Wins or Loses

This is the stop that sells the tour, and it is the stop that produces almost all of its low ratings. It is worth being precise about why, because the gap here is between the listing and the sea, not between a good crew and a bad one.

The listing sells “Blue Cave — swim and explore (30 minutes)”. What happens on the water is that the boat stops outside the cave and you are given a window that is, on most departures, 10 to 15 minutes from the first person down the ladder to the last person back up it. Several crews call “ten minutes” once people are already swimming. On a boat with twenty-odd passengers and one ladder, that leaves the people at the back of the queue with about five minutes in the water.

To be fair to the operator first: two of the constraints here are not theirs. Motorised boats are no longer permitted inside the cave — that rule came in during 2026 and applies to every company on this coast, so any tour promising to take a boat into the chamber is either selling you an old itinerary or breaking the rule. And the cave is small and popular; on a July afternoon there is a genuine traffic problem at the entrance that no single skipper can fix. Crews that anchor further out in those conditions are making a defensible safety call.

But the pattern in the reports is not really about the rule. It is about distance and time. The tour's own page says the boat anchors 10–20 metres out. Travellers on busy departures describe being dropped 80–100 metres out, watching other boats sitting closer, and being told to swim from there. At that range, with boats crossing between you and the entrance, the honest outcome for most people is a nice swim in open water near a cave they did not get inside. A good number of passengers come back having photographed the entrance from the boat and swum in a calm spot nearby — which is a pleasant thing to have done, and is not what “Blue Cave swim” means to someone booking it.

Two other things follow from this and neither is flagged at the point of sale. Non-swimmers are refused the water outright, life jackets or not. And the swim is unsupervised in the sense that matters: there is no one in the water with you, and confident swimmers have found the distance harder than expected in chop.

How to set your expectations

You are buying a supervised open-water swim near the Blue Cave, with a decent chance of getting inside it if you take an early boat, get down the ladder first and are a strong swimmer. Book it as the day's centrepiece and you are relying on things you cannot control. Book it as a good three-hour circuit of the bay with a swim stop attached and the tour delivers exactly that, reliably.

If the cave swim is the whole reason you are booking, there is a better-shaped product on the same water: the 4-hour Blue Cave, swimming and Perast small-group trip caps at 18 rather than 30, runs an hour longer for the same money — $53 against $57, both checked on 1 September 2026 — and lists snorkelling masks and a 500ml bottle of water each as standard inclusions rather than “subject to availability”. It rates 4.8 from 212 reviews. The trade is a smaller, less famous operation and a route that skips the submarine tunnels.

Sourced from the low ratings

The Things That Can Go Wrong

Structural first — these are properties of the tour, not bad luck.

  • The cave window is short and the queue for the ladder eats it. Be changed, be ready, be first down. This is the single biggest determinant of whether you enjoy the stop.
  • Roughly two of the three hours are spent under way. If sitting on a fast open boat for an hour at a stretch does not appeal, this is not the right shape of day.
  • Commentary is thin and hard to hear. No microphone, an engine, and a QR audio guide that needs your own phone and mobile data. Come expecting a boat ride with sights, not a guided tour, and it lands much better.
  • Up to 30 people, and you book a place rather than a seat. Which boat you get and where you sit is decided on the dock. The middle benches under the canopy are shaded and cramped; the sun deck is open and exposed.
  • Inclusions that read better than they deliver. Snorkelling masks are “subject to availability” and often absent. Water can be a single cup. Wi-Fi is listed and is not always working.
  • Non-swimmers cannot do the main event. This is not stated anywhere in the booking flow and it is the complaint that produces the angriest write-ups, because people find out at the cave.

And genuinely luck-of-the-draw:

  • Crew manner varies more than almost anything else about this tour. The same skippers turn up in write-ups as warm and funny and, on another week, as short-tempered. A run with a crew that talks to you is a different day from a run with a crew that does not.
  • Music volume. Some boats play it loud enough that conversation stops. Asking usually works; occasionally it does not.
  • Mechanical trouble. Breakdowns and mid-bay transfers to another boat show up now and then. They are handled reasonably quickly — there are other boats in the fleet — but it eats your stops.
  • Weather. A rough sea shortens or cancels the cave swim, and this is more common in spring and autumn than the photographs suggest. Cancellation is free up to 24 hours before, so booking a date early in your stay leaves you room to rebook. Our best time to visit Kotor guide has the month-by-month picture.

If the pace is the problem rather than the cave, the full-day Bay of Kotor catamaran with a Blue Cave visit runs eight hours instead of three at $109 per person, rated 4.7 from 675 reviews — a slower, flatter boat with room to move around and time at each stop. It costs roughly double and it is a whole day rather than a morning, so it is a different holiday decision, not a straight upgrade.

And if you are not going to swim — a non-swimmer, travelling with someone who is, or covered by the tour's own not-suitable list, which rules out pregnant travellers, wheelchair users, people with mobility impairments and people with back problems — then this tour spends an hour each way delivering you to a stop you cannot take part in. The 3-hour Perast and Our Lady of the Rocks boat tour at $48, rated 4.7 from 278 reviews, keeps the best landing of the day and drops the part you would sit out.

On private charters, since everybody asks

Crowding is the obvious reason to want one. The listing does sell a private upgrade on this same tour, and there are separate private boats on this bay. We are not linking any of them. The cheapest we found is $372 for the boat, up to eight people — about $46 a head if you genuinely fill all eight seats, which would undercut a seat on the group boat — but it carries exactly one review. The better-established private option, at 4.2 from 19 reviews, is $464 for up to eight, which works out at roughly $58 a head at full capacity: the same money as the group boat, for a lower-rated operator. Under about six people the arithmetic does not work at all. We are not sending anyone to a four-figure-adjacent charter with one review to earn a commission, and at these numbers the private route only makes sense if you are a party of eight who care more about the schedule than the price.

The straight answer

So — Would We Book It Again?

Yes, with the conditions attached — and specifically the 9:00 boat.

At $57 for three hours it is fair rather than cheap. You are paying roughly $19 an hour for a fast boat, a licensed crew, a scenic circuit of a UNESCO-listed bay, entry to one of the good small churches on the Adriatic and a swim in clear open water. Judged as that, it is decent value and the reliability behind those 4,671 reviews is real. Judged as the thirty-minute cave swim on the listing, it under-delivers often enough that the disappointment is a pattern rather than an accident.

Book this tour if you want a well-run, well-organised half-morning that covers the bay's four headline sights, you are a competent swimmer, you can take the early departure, and you would describe the cave as one good thing among several rather than the reason you came to Montenegro. Check dates and prices on GetYourGuide.

Book something else if the cave swim is the point — take the 4-hour small-group trip with 18 people instead of 30 — or if anyone in your party will not be getting in the water, in which case the Perast and Our Lady of the Rocks tour gives you the part of this itinerary that works for everyone, for nine dollars less.

What we tell friends who ask: go early, get down the ladder first, and treat the cave as a bonus rather than a promise. Do that and it is one of the better mornings on this coast. Do the opposite — an afternoon slot in August, at the back of the queue, expecting half an hour inside a glowing cave — and you will write one of the three-star reviews.

Common questions

Kotor Blue Cave Tour Review FAQ

How long do you actually get at the Blue Cave on this tour?
The listing describes a 30-minute Blue Cave swim. On most departures the real window is 10 to 15 minutes, measured from the first passenger down the ladder to the last one back up it. On a boat carrying twenty or more people that leaves the swimmers at the back of the queue with roughly five minutes in the water. Being changed and ready before the boat stops makes a large difference to how much of that window you get.
Does the boat go inside the Blue Cave in Montenegro?
No. A navigation-safety rule introduced during 2026 prohibits motorised vessels from entering the cave, and it applies to every operator on this coast. Boats anchor outside and passengers swim in. The tour page states the boat anchors 10 to 20 metres out, but travellers on busy departures report being dropped 80 to 100 metres away, which is far enough that reaching the cave and returning within the time allowed is not realistic for most swimmers.
Can non-swimmers do this Blue Cave tour?
Non-swimmers are not permitted into the water at the Blue Cave, even though life jackets are listed in the inclusions. Skippers make that decision at the cave and do not make exceptions. This is not stated during booking and it is one of the most common causes of serious disappointment. If someone in your party will not be swimming, a Perast and Our Lady of the Rocks boat tour keeps the best landing of the day without the part they would have to sit out.
What time of day is best for the Kotor Blue Cave tour?
The 9:00 departure. The cave is a small chamber visited by every operator in the bay, and by midday six or more boats can be stacked at the entrance with engines running, leaving swimmers moving between hulls in exhaust fumes. Crews on the first run of the day generally arrive before the queue forms. No other choice you make changes the quality of the cave stop as much.
Is there a guide on the tour, or just a boat driver?
There is a licensed captain and crew, and the inclusions list a licensed guide plus a QR-code audio guide you access on your own phone. In practice there is no microphone on board, so live commentary competes with the engine, and at the stops it is often a recorded clip played through a phone speaker. Some crews talk passengers through the sights well; many do not. Treat it as a boat trip with sights rather than a guided tour.
What should I bring on the Kotor Blue Cave boat tour?
Swimwear and a towel, sunscreen, a hat and sunglasses, a light jacket in spring or autumn because it is cold on the water, and a waterproof phone case, which the operator recommends but does not supply. Bring your own drinking water, since the included water is often a single small cup. Bring your own snorkelling mask if that matters, as the included masks are subject to availability and have no breathing tubes. Bring something with sleeves for the church, plus 3 euros in cash if you want the museum.
Why do people get turned away at Our Lady of the Rocks?
The island enforces a dress code at the church door. Swimwear is not permitted inside and bare shoulders are refused, and there are no cover-ups to borrow. Because passengers arrive directly from a swimming boat, this catches people out regularly. Entry to the church is included with the boat ticket; the museum costs 3 euros and is cash only. Church opening hours vary by season and it closes between 17:00 and 19:00 depending on the time of year, although the island itself stays open.
Is the Kotor Blue Cave tour worth the money?
At around 57 US dollars for three hours it is fair value judged as a fast, well-organised circuit of the Bay of Kotor with a licensed crew, entry to Our Lady of the Rocks, a pass through the submarine tunnels and an open-water swim near the cave. Judged as the 30-minute Blue Cave swim on the listing, it under-delivers often enough to be a pattern. Roughly two of the three hours are spent moving, and total time off the boat across all stops is about 35 to 45 minutes.
If the verdict above is a yes

Book the 9:00 Blue Cave Departure from Kotor

Three hours, up to 30 people, Our Lady of the Rocks, the submarine tunnels, Mamula and an open-water swim at the Blue Cave. The early slot is the one worth having.

  • 4.7 from 4,671 reviews — from $57 per person, checked 1 September 2026
  • Departs Kotor City Park, a short walk from the Old Town and the cruise berth
  • Free cancellation up to 24 hours before, so an early date costs nothing to move
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Method & disclosure

How We Put This Together

Written from our own repeat visits to the Bay of Kotor and to Perast and Our Lady of the Rocks — which we have done independently, by water taxi, more than once — and from one booking of this tour, plus a read through what travellers on recent departures reported. We paid particular attention to the low ratings, because that is where the useful warnings live and it is not what a product page will ever show you. The €5 Perast water taxi fare and the 2026 rule change on motorised boats entering the cave were checked against published sources rather than taken from traveller reports.

The rating (4.7 from 4,671 reviews) and price ($57, list $64) were checked on 1 September 2026 with the currency forced to USD. Both move with the season, and the alternatives named above were priced the same day. Prices are per person unless stated; the private charter figures are per boat.

We may earn a commission if you book through links on this page, at no extra cost to you. It does not change which tours we recommend, and it is why we would rather tell you to take the 9am boat than tell you the cave swim is thirty minutes. See our affiliate disclosure for the full picture.