If you’ve spent any time reading travel articles lately, you’ve probably seen the same storyline repeating: “Santorini is overcrowded.” “Santorini is overpriced.” “Paros or Milos are better now.” It’s a neat headline. It sounds like insider advice. But it completely misunderstands what Santorini actually is.
Paros, Milos, Naxos — they’re all Cycladic islands. Beautiful, charming, absolutely worth visiting. But Santorini is a volcanic caldera carved by one of the most significant eruptions in human history. You can love Paros, you can love Milos, but comparing them to Santorini makes as much sense as comparing a beach holiday to a natural wonder. They are not the same category of destination — and pretending they are is exactly why the conversation online has become so distorted.
1. Santorini Isn’t Competing With Paros or Milos — Because It Can’t Be Recreated
The core misunderstanding in every “Which Greek island is better?” article is that people are comparing islands that were never meant to be compared. Paros and Milos deliver the classic Greek island formula: whitewashed villages, beaches, tavernas, relaxed rhythms. Santorini is something else entirely.
This is a volcanic crater with cliffs layered by ash and fire, villages literally carved into rock, and a landscape formed by an eruption that reshaped the entire region. This isn’t just about looks; it’s structural. Santorini isn’t “better,” it’s simply one of one.
So the idea that you should “swap Santorini for Paros” is flawed from the start. That’s not a swap — it’s a completely different type of trip. If you’re after beaches, go to Paros or Milos. If you’re after a once-in-a-lifetime landscape, come to Santorini. It’s not an upgrade or downgrade. It’s a different category.
2. Yes, Santorini Gets Busy — But Mostly in the Same 400 Metres Everyone Stands On
Let’s be honest: Oia at sunset is crowded. But that’s the photo every article uses to represent “Santorini”, and it’s misleading. Oia is a tiny section of a much larger island.
The real Santorini — the one locals actually live in — looks very different: Pyrgos at sunrise, Megalochori in the afternoons, the quiet lanes of Exo Gonia, winery roads inland, caldera paths early in the morning, small squares where neighbours greet each other. These places are calm, slow, lived-in and genuinely Greek.
Santorini’s issue isn’t island-wide overcrowding. It’s the concentration of visitors into a few famous viewpoints. The rest of the island is still the same Santorini people forget to write about because it doesn’t fit the headline.
3. “Santorini Is Too Expensive” — This Critique Is Years Out of Date
Here’s the truth: Paros, Milos, and even Naxos are no longer “budget alternatives.” Not in 2024, not in 2025. In high season, prices across the Cyclades have risen everywhere. Paros hotel rates now regularly match Santorini, Milos sells out early with premium pricing, restaurants across all islands charge similar rates, and ferries, taxis and car hire cost basically the same no matter which island you choose.
So the idea that Santorini is the only expensive island is simply not accurate. The Cyclades changed. Demand changed. Travel habits changed.
What is different is that Santorini’s premium is based on something that doesn’t exist anywhere else. You’re not paying a markup for hype; you’re paying for a caldera, volcanic architecture, villages built into pumice, and a view shaped by geology, not marketing. If Paros or Milos had a caldera, their prices would be identical — or higher.
4. Santorini Handles Tourism Better Than People Realise
Because Santorini is world-famous, it actually has more infrastructure, more accommodation options, more transport, more restaurants, more distributed villages and more to do beyond beaches. Paros and Milos, with smaller main towns, feel crowded very quickly when demand spikes.
Santorini absorbs visitors better simply because it has the capacity to. The narrative that “Santorini can’t handle tourism” isn’t reflected in the way the island actually functions day to day — only in headlines and carefully cropped photos.
5. The Real Santorini Still Exists — Just Away from the Cliff Edge
People love to claim Santorini “isn’t Greek anymore.” Usually, those people stayed on the cliffs, ate only at tourist restaurants, visited the same two villages and never stepped inland.
The real island is very much alive: family homes with open doors, small squares where locals gather, traditional bakeries at dawn, tiny chapels on hilltops, volcanic vineyards and farmers, tavernas where menus are handwritten and nothing is designed for Instagram. Santorini hasn’t lost its authenticity. People just haven’t bothered to look for it.
6. So… Should You Choose Santorini? Here’s the Honest Breakdown.
Choose Paros or Milos if you want classic beaches, quiet coves, low-key evenings and a traditional island rhythm. Choose Santorini if you want landscapes you won’t see anywhere else in Greece, dramatic cliffs and volcanic views, history carved into the earth, architecture that exists nowhere else, wineries in ancient volcanic soil, and villages that look nothing like the rest of the Cyclades.
In other words: if you want a beach holiday, go elsewhere. If you want a once-in-a-lifetime landscape, come here. Not because it’s famous. Not because it’s expensive. But because it is unique — literally.
Santorini is not competing with Paros. It’s not competing with Milos. It’s not competing with anything. It’s in its own category. And once travellers stop comparing things that were never meant to be compared, the choice becomes simple.
What Big-Name Travel Media Say – And What They’re Missing
SFGate ran a piece bluntly titled “Skip Santorini. It has nothing on this beautiful (and much cheaper) Greek island” about Milos. SFGATE It’s a catchy headline, but it hasn’t aged well. Since then, Milos itself has been pushed as a “go now before it gets too popular” hotspot by outlets like Condé Nast Traveller and others, with nearly a million visitors a year and warnings that it’s rapidly heading down the same overtourism path as the islands it was supposed to “replace.” The Sun In other words: the “cheap, quiet alternative” they sold in 2019 simply doesn’t exist in the same way anymore.
Condé Nast Traveller now regularly talks about “how to escape the crowds on Santorini” and offers guides to the island’s “underrated gems” and lesser-known ways to explore the volcanic landscape. CN Traveller+1 That framing quietly admits two things at once: yes, crowds are real in the famous spots, but also that there is still a very real, very worthwhile Santorini beyond them. Their own coverage of off-season travel and sister-island Thirasia as “Santorini 50 years ago” reinforces the same point: if there wasn’t something uniquely compelling here, they wouldn’t be devoting this much ink to how to experience it better. santairini.gr+1
The Nod Mag went full TikTok-trend in 2024 with “Skip Santorini and Mykonos for this destination dupe” about Chania, selling it as the cheaper, “still authentic” alternative. thenodmag.com The problem isn’t Chania – it’s lovely – the problem is the entire “dupe” logic. Even Fodor’s felt the need to publish “TikTok Is Obsessed With Travel ‘Dupes.’ But It’s Bad Advice,” pointing out that calling one place a “better version” of another flattens destinations and completely ignores what makes them unique in the first place. Fodors Travel Guide Swapping a volcanic caldera for a flat harbour town and calling it a “dupe” is great for engagement, terrible for geography.
The New York Post recently picked up the “overcrowded” angle, quoting a tourist who spent nearly $3,000 on a four-day trip and felt overwhelmed by “hundreds of people trying to see the sunset at once” and a lack of “old school tradition and culture.” New York Post That experience is real, but it’s also very specific: peak-season, peak-sunset, peak-hotspot. The same article notes this is part of a wider overtourism problem across Europe, not something unique to Santorini. Wikipedia Turning one crowded viewpoint into a verdict on an entire island – while ignoring quieter villages, inland life and off-season reality – is a classic example of a narrow lens being presented as the whole picture.
Travel Lemming’s viral piece “Santorini is Overrated, Overcrowded & Overpriced” is still widely shared in Facebook groups, even though it’s now explicitly marked as an archived article. travellemming.com+1 It helped popularise the “skip Santorini” narrative – and, ironically, helped push people toward the very “alternative” islands that are now facing their own crowding and pricing issues. The Cyclades changed; demand shifted everywhere. Using a frozen 2023 opinion to describe a 2025 reality is like using an old ferry timetable and then complaining the boat never showed.
Finally, even The Guardian – which correctly reports on overtourism and quotes Santorini’s own mayor warning that “everywhere [is] jam-packed” and construction must be curbed – is talking about infrastructure and planning, not about the island being “not worth visiting.” The Guardian It highlights a real risk: if the landscape is destroyed, the very reason people come will vanish. That’s a call to manage Santorini better, not an argument that the place itself has somehow lost its value.
Put together, the big-name coverage makes one thing clear: yes, Santorini has pressure points, high prices in certain zones and serious conversations to have about overtourism. But the leap from “this island needs better management” to “this island is overrated, skip it and go to a ‘dupe’ instead” is where the logic breaks. A destination can be both crowded in places and completely irreplaceable. Santorini happens to be exactly that.
