Gozo in One Day: Jeep, Quad, Coach – or the Ferry on Your Own
Updated September 30, 2026 · 6 min read
Gozo is twenty-five minutes away and still the hardest day to plan on Malta. Not because getting there is difficult – it is the cheapest boat ride in the country – but because four very different products are sold under the same headline, and the price differences between them have almost nothing to do with the island itself.
The crossing is the cheap part
Gozo Channel runs the car ferry between Ċirkewwa on Malta’s northern tip and Mġarr on Gozo. The company gives the crossing as approximately 25 minutes and the service as daily; the timetable currently in force runs from 19 May 2025 to 8 November 2026, and departures from Mġarr are listed right through the night, starting at midnight.
The standard passenger fare is €4.65; the €4.05 you may see quoted is the night fare, and it applies only to sailings leaving Mġarr after 20:00 between November and March. Children from 3 to 12 pay €1.15, and children under 3 travel free. There is one detail worth knowing before you queue: Gozo Channel sells vehicle-and-driver tickets online or at the Mġarr ticket booths on Gozo only, and child fares only at the Mġarr booths. In other words, the money changes hands on the Gozo side, not at Ċirkewwa.
There is a second boat. A high-speed catamaran links Valletta directly with Mġarr in 45 minutes, and in our stock it starts at €7.50 with 4.6 stars from 993 reviews. It costs more than the car ferry and saves you the drive to the northern tip – which is the whole point if you are staying in Valletta, Sliema or St Julian’s.
The off-road tours: what the price does and does not cover
The single most reviewed off-road trip in our stock is a full-day UTV tour of Gozo at €80, 8 hours, 4.6 stars from 4,943 reviews. Hotel pick-up and drop-off, the ferry tickets, lunch, a swim stop and a 20-minute boat ride back to Malta past the Blue Lagoon and the Comino caves – weather permitting – are all inside that figure.
Two things may not be, and here the booking page argues with itself. Its “what’s included” list names the entrance fee to the Ġgantija temple complex and the boat ride on the Inland Sea at Dwejja; further down, the same page says “The entrance fee to the Ġgantija temple complex is not included in the price of the tour” and “Boat ride in Dwejja fee is not included in the price of the tour.” Ġgantija is a Heritage Malta site and the adult ticket is €10, with €8 for 12- to 17-year-olds, over-60s and concessions, and €6 for children from 6 to 11. Budget the €10 and get it in writing before you travel: as the page stands, the €80 day is either €80 or €90, and the only person who can tell you which is the one selling it.
The same island, the same tracks, different vehicles:
| Vehicle | Price from | Duration | Reviews |
|---|---|---|---|
| UTV, six-seater | €80 | 8 hours | 4,943 |
| Jeep, with lunch and transfers | €85 | 8 hours | 1,224 |
| Quad, with private round-trip boat | €97.50 | 6 hours | 1,985 |
| Buggy, with lunch and boat ride | €97.50 | 6 hours | 786 |
Our whole jeep and quad category for Gozo holds 31 offers starting at €50, with a median of €92. That median is the honest number: these are not cheap days out, and the ones under €60 are usually shorter or start on Gozo rather than at your hotel.
Who they suit: people who want to drive something, tolerate dust and full sun for most of the day, and do not mind that the stops are short. The UTV operator states the tour is suitable for all ages, which is unusual for this category – but sitting in an open vehicle from breakfast until late afternoon is a different question from being allowed on board.
The coach day trip, and why it is often the better deal
A guided coach day trip to Gozo runs 9 hours at €80 with 4.3 stars from 2,947 reviews, and it includes both lunch and the Ġgantija ticket. Against the UTV tour at the same headline price, that is €10 of temple entry already paid, air conditioning between stops, and someone explaining what you are looking at. Heritage Malta lists Ġgantija as fully accessible, which none of the off-road options can offer.
What you give up is the thing people book Gozo for: the empty tracks, the salt pans, the stops nobody else is at.
There is also a hop-on hop-off bus on Gozo at €22 – by some distance the cheapest guided option here, and the lowest rated of the group at 4.2 stars from 1,285 reviews. It is a reasonable way to see Victoria, the coast road and a couple of villages if the rest of the budget is going on boat trips.
Doing it yourself
The self-organised version costs €4.65 for the ferry and €2.50 for a single bus journey on Malta’s day routes in summer, €2.00 in winter, valid for two hours either way; night routes are €3.00. A seven-day Explore Child card for 4- to 10-year-olds is €7, and under-4s travel free.
The catch is not the price, it is the geography. The places the tours are sold for – the salt pans above Marsalforn, Dwejra on the west coast, the bays at Xlendi and San Blas – are scattered around the edges of the island, and stringing them together by bus eats the day you came for. The car ferry takes cars for exactly this reason, and if you are doing Gozo under your own steam it is worth comparing hire cars for Malta and Gozo before you commit to a tour price that is mostly transport.
Which one fits whom
- First visit, one day, no driving: the coach trip. The temple ticket is in the price and you will see the Citadel, Victoria and a coastal stop without planning anything.
- You want the island, not the highlights: UTV, jeep or buggy. Budget €10 on top for Ġgantija unless the operator confirms in writing that it is included and accept that you will finish the day covered in dust.
- Travelling with someone who tires easily: the coach, or the fast catamaran from Valletta plus a fixed base in Victoria. Ġgantija is the one major site on the island that Heritage Malta describes as fully accessible.
- Two days or more: ferry, hire car, and skip the day trips entirely. That is also the only version where the Blue Lagoon and Comino fits in without being a twenty-minute drive-past.
One last thing that catches people out: almost every Gozo day trip sold from Malta ends with a boat leg back, and almost every one of them adds weather permitting. On a windy day you get the ferry instead and the itinerary shortens. That is not a bad operator – it is the channel between the islands, and it is the same reason the temples and history make a safer bad-weather plan than anything sold with a swim stop in it.
