Stiniva is reached by boat or by a steep scramble, not by road. Getting to Vis at all is line 602: €9.10 in season for a foot passenger and €52.00 for a car under five metres, on two sailings a day off-season and three at peak.
The crossing decides the day before the beach does
Vis sits further offshore than the rest of the central Dalmatian islands and it has one state car ferry, line 602, running Vis to Split. That line is the whole of the practical question. It runs two sailings a day between 1 January and 28 May and again from 28 September; two or three a day in the shoulder weeks; and three a day at peak, between 3 July and 20 September.
Two or three sailings is not a timetable you can improvise around. It fixes the length of a visit and it makes a same-day return a matter of arithmetic rather than intention. Before anything about the beach itself is relevant, the boat has already decided whether this is a day trip or a stay.
| Period | Dates | Sailings a day, each way |
|---|---|---|
| Off-season | 1 January – 28 May and 28 September – 31 December | 2 |
| Shoulder | 29 May – 2 July and 21 – 27 September | 2 Monday to Thursday, 3 Friday to Sunday |
| High season | 3 July – 20 September | 3 most days, 2 on Tuesdays |
The high-season pattern is the one to plan against, because it is also the period in which everybody wants the boat. Three rotations a day between the mainland and an island of this size is a genuinely thin service, and it is thin because line 602 exists to serve residents rather than day trippers.
What the crossing costs, and why the car is the wrong call
Line 602 is a car ferry with a published tariff, which makes it one of the few crossings on this coast where the vehicle decision can be priced exactly rather than guessed at. Tariffs change on two fixed dates: the seasonal rate applies from 29 May and reverts on 27 September.
Crossing
Travelling as
Tariff period
Run the vehicle rows against the foot rows and the ratio is stark. In season a foot passenger pays €9.10 and a car under five metres pays €52.00 — nearly six times as much, each way, before anybody has been anywhere. A car over five metres is €88.50. A bicycle costs the same as a foot passenger, €9.10, and a motorcycle €15.50.
€52.00
one way for a car under five metres to Vis in season, against €9.10 on foot — and the beach at the far end has no road to it
The reason that ratio matters on this particular page is that Stiniva is not a beach a car helps with. It sits below a cliff line on the island’s south coast and is reached either by boat or on foot down a steep descent. The vehicle you paid €52.00 each way to bring across gets you to the top of a path, and no further.
Taking a hire car to Vis for a beach that has no road
The arithmetic is the trap. In season the vehicle is charged separately from the people in it: €9.10 a head on foot, and €52.00 for the car on top, each way. Over a return crossing that is €104.00 of tariff for the vehicle alone, spent on something that cannot reach the thing you came for.
There is a second cost that is worse than the first. Vehicle space on a two- or three-sailing-a-day car ferry is the constrained resource in July and August, and a missed vehicle loading is not a two-hour delay, it is a day. Foot passengers are far harder to strand. If the plan is Stiniva and the coast around it, cross on foot and arrange the boat on the island; if the plan is the whole of Vis by road, price the vehicle honestly first.
There is no DHMZ sea-temperature station on Vis, so this page carries no monthly water figure for it and does not borrow one from Split or Hvar. Nor does it carry a bathing-water grade: Croatia monitors roughly 1,010 bathing points and each record holds a grade, a temperature and a salinity reading, but that record set is not pulled here.
What it does carry is the only thing about this beach that a visitor can act on in advance. The crossing runs two or three times a day, it costs between €9.10 and €52.00 depending on a decision you make months earlier, and the beach itself rewards the cheaper of the two. The rest — the boat around from Komiža, the path down — is arranged on the island, and the other reason people come to Vis works the same way.
What do you need to work out next?
The crossing is the decision. These come next.
Where to stay
Day trip or a night on the island?
Two sailings a day off-season, three between 3 July and 20 September.
Getting around
What else is on Vis?
Three services touch the island and one of them carries a vehicle.
When to go
When does the tariff drop?
The seasonal rate ends on 27 September and the off-season rate resumes.
Planning
Is a hire car worth it in Dalmatia?
A car under five metres costs €52.00 one way to Vis in season.
Ferry data: Agencija za obalni linijski pomorski promet (ZOLPP), 2026 state coastal line register and per-line timetables. Bathing water monitoring: Institut za oceanografiju i ribarstvo (IZOR). Climate data: DHMZ (meteo.hr), climate normals 1971–2000.