Start with where you are sleeping
Every trip includes a free two-way hotel transfer, so distance costs you no money — it costs you morning. The further the departure point, the earlier the minibus and the longer the day.
If you are in the Side or Kumköy hotel belt, the two local days are the obvious first look. Kumköy is a six-hour day and the shortest trip we run, which makes it the easy choice if you have plans in the afternoon, small children, or simply no appetite for eight hours at sea. The Side Underwater Museum is seven hours and departs from Side itself.
The other three are eight-hour days: Kemer, Antalya and Alanya. If you are staying near one of those towns, that is your local day and the arithmetic reverses — then it is the Side museum that becomes the long trip. Nobody should choose a dive site by driving time alone, but if you have exactly one free day in a busy week, an earlier finish is worth real money to you. Compare all five side by side on the prices page.
Then choose by what is actually down there
These five days are genuinely different underwater, and this is where the decision is usually made.
- Side Underwater Museum, €45. Around 110 sunken sculptures standing at about twelve metres, plus hand-feeding fish, with three to four divers per instructor. There is nothing else like it on this coast, and it photographs unlike any reef.
- Kemer, €43. The clearest water on this stretch. Reef fish, rock formations, octopus often spotted, PADI-certified instructors. This is also wreck country: the Paris II lies between 21 and 31 metres and the Three Islands and Lighthouse site has a nine-metre tunnel.
- Antalya, €50. Reefs, caves and shoals along the city coast, and the DO-28 aircraft wreck — a 1967 Dornier resting between 19.5 and 23.3 metres.
- Alanya, €43. Caves and rocky reefs in the Cleopatra Beach waters, Alanya Castle looming over the boat, and the Amphora site with its ancient jars only minutes from the harbour.
- Kumköy, €43. The gentlest introduction: a short day, a calm entry, and everything a first-timer needs and nothing they do not.
Wildlife is never a guarantee anywhere — you may see octopus, you may not, and sightings vary with conditions.
Last filter: are you a beginner or a certified diver?
This is the filter people skip, and it is the one that decides whether you actually see the thing you came for.
Beginners and discovery divers do the morning dive at 5 to 8 metres and the second dive to about 13 metres maximum, always with an instructor within arm's reach. That matters for one specific reason: the Side museum sculptures sit at about twelve metres, which is inside that beginner range on the second dive. A first-timer really can see the museum. What a first-timer cannot see is the Paris II or the DO-28 — those sit well below the beginner ceiling and are never a discovery dive.
Certified divers work around 30 metres on standard certified dives and up to 60 metres on the deep sites when suitably qualified, with the logbook signed on board. That opens Kemer and Antalya properly, and it is the honest reason a certified diver should think twice before spending their only day on the shallowest itinerary. If you are still weighing it up, the comparison on our best-diving page lays the five out together.
