Greece or Italy: Italy Is Cheaper From All 26 US Airports We Price

Of the 6 European countries we can compare properly, Greece is the most expensive to reach from the United States, and it is not close. Its median is $945 against Italy's $712, and Italy is the cheaper of the two from every single one of the 26 US gateways that priced both. No other country comparison in our data produces a clean sweep.

Across the 26 US gateways that priced both

Italy is cheaper from 26 of 26

On median the two are $945 and $712, which favors Italy. The two measures agree here, which makes the answer unusually safe to act on.

Greece

Median round trip

$945

Cheapest fare found

$571 from Chicago

Gateways where it is cheaper

0 of 26

Italy

Median round trip

$712

Cheapest fare found

$461 from New York

Gateways where it is cheaper

26 of 26

Its strongest airport

Washington DC by $386

From	Greece	Italy	Cheaper by
New York	$844	$574	Italy by $270
Boston	$839	$594	Italy by $245
Los Angeles	$818	$638	Italy by $180
Chicago	$851	$662	Italy by $189
San Francisco	$917	$636	Italy by $281
Orlando	$936	$628	Italy by $308
Houston	$858	$707	Italy by $151
Seattle	$960	$670	Italy by $290
Miami	$948	$684	Italy by $264
Charlotte	$933	$701	Italy by $232
Tampa	$936	$702	Italy by $234
Detroit	$904	$736	Italy by $168
Las Vegas	$941	$700	Italy by $241
Minneapolis	$937	$730	Italy by $207
Philadelphia	$1,023	$654	Italy by $369
Washington DC	$1,036	$650	Italy by $386
Atlanta	$945	$759	Italy by $186
Phoenix	$949	$775	Italy by $174
Portland	$965	$760	Italy by $205
Raleigh	$952	$775	Italy by $177
Salt Lake City	$962	$767	Italy by $195
Dallas	$980	$750	Italy by $230
Denver	$960	$778	Italy by $182
Nashville	$974	$768	Italy by $206
Austin	$944	$816	Italy by $128
San Diego	$960	$805	Italy by $155

The gap is islands, not distance

The easy explanation is that Athens is further away than Rome. That is true and it is not the main thing.

Greece, city by city	Median	Cheapest found
Athens	$764	$571
Santorini	$945	$818
Mykonos	$965	$826

Our grid prices three Greek destinations, and two of them are islands. Santorini at $945 and Mykonos at $965 are the two most expensive cities in the entire 40-city grid, more expensive than anywhere in Scandinavia, anywhere in the Alps, and anywhere in the British Isles. Athens on its own is $764, which is costly but ordinary, and closer to the expensive end of Italy than to its own islands.

So the country median is telling you something real about Greek travel rather than about Greek airports: the places most people want to go in Greece are islands, and islands are expensive to fly to from another continent.

Fly to Athens, take the ferry

The practical consequence is the cheapest advice on this page. The island premium in our data is larger than the ferry that avoids it.

Santorini is about five hours from Piraeus on the high-speed ferry and costs $945 to reach by air against Athens at $764. Mykonos is about two and a half hours from Rafina and costs $965. Both are swaps we price by the hour on Fly Into a Different City, and both are among the largest savings in that analysis, precisely because the ground leg is long enough that most people never consider it.

Two honest caveats. The ferry ticket is not in our figures, and neither is the night in Athens that a sensible connection needs. And in the shoulder months the fast ferries run less often, so check the schedule before you commit to the routing. What the numbers say is that the premium is large enough to be worth the check, not that the ferry is automatically right.

Italy, for comparison

Italy, city by city	Median	Cheapest found
Rome	$669	$461
Milan	$691	$571
Venice	$712	$574
Naples	$738	$579
Florence	$764	$594

Italy's cheapest city, Rome at $669, has the lowest fare of either country anywhere in our grid: $461 from New York. Even Italy's most expensive city, Florence at $764, is cheaper than Athens. That is the shape of the comparison. It is not that Greece has a weak airport; it is that Italy's whole distribution sits below Greece's.

The widest single gap is from Washington, at $386, which is a difference large enough to pay for a week of the trip. The narrowest is still triple digits. If the two countries are genuinely interchangeable for your trip, this is one of the few destination choices in our data where the fare should decide it.

Which US airport is best for Greece

If Greece is settled and the question is where to leave from, the ordering is not the one you would guess from the national gateway ranking.

Chicago holds the cheapest Athens fare in our grid at $571, ahead of both New York and Boston. Los Angeles prices Greece better than its distance suggests, because the Athens itineraries from the West Coast route through hubs that price the whole leg as one connection rather than as a long add-on. The worst airports for Greece are the ones with no European carrier presence at all, where Athens becomes a two-stop itinerary and the fare reflects it.

Los Angeles is the surprise at the top. Taken across all three Greek destinations it is the cheapest US gateway for Greece in our grid, ahead of Boston and New York, which is not what distance predicts for a city on the wrong ocean. The islands are the reason: the West Coast itineraries into Santorini and Mykonos connect through hubs that price the Athens leg and the island leg as one journey, while the East Coast versions more often stack a cheap transatlantic fare on top of an expensive domestic Greek one. It is a reminder that a country median made of islands measures the routing as much as the destination.

The mechanism is the same one that governs every route on this site. Turkish through Istanbul is the strongest single connector into Athens in our carrier grid, and where Turkish sells your airport, Greece gets meaningfully cheaper. Where it does not, you are relying on a legacy carrier's hub and paying for it. The Deal Alert Setup Wizard lists the European airlines that sell your own airport, which for a destination this thinly served is the single most useful thing to know before you book.

When to pay it anyway

This site's rule is that cheap and worth-paying-for are different judgments, and Greece is the clearest case in our data of a place where the expensive answer may still be the right one. A Cycladic week is not an Italian week. If Greece is the trip, the data should change how you book rather than whether you go.

Three things it says to do. Fly into Athens and go on from there. Price Italy in the same search, so the premium you are paying is a number you chose rather than one you did not see. And treat $571 as the floor: anything at or below it beats every gateway we priced, and the Fare Deal Checker will judge a Greek fare against what your own airport normally pays, which for a country this expensive matters more than the national figure.

One more thing the numbers support. Because Greece is expensive and thinly served, the value of an alert is higher there than almost anywhere else we price. On a competitive route a deal is a modest discount on an already low fare. On a route with two viable itineraries, a drop is the difference between a trip happening and not happening.

For the full ranking Greece sits at the bottom of, see the cheapest countries to fly to in Europe, and for the city-level picture, the cheapest places to fly into in Europe. Our Greece guide goes deeper on which US airport is best for Athens specifically.