Tour or hire car? The day-trip maths for Tenerife, Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and Madeira

From Costa Adeje, the cable car day costs two of you 112 euros by car against 184 on the coach, and the tour is Volcano Teide's own, at the price it charges on its own site, 92 euros a head with the guide and the audio guide. From Puerto de la Cruz the car comes to 109 euros. The car park at the base station is free, and Volcano Teide asks drivers to come in the afternoon, because the parking areas in the national park are small.

The Teide and Masca day is where the car saves most, 105 euros, because nothing on the route charges entry. What the jeep buys is the road down to Masca, the TF-436: narrow, steep and full of hairpins, and during a declared fire alert the Cabildo can close it to hire and visitors' cars from 09:00 to 16:00 while letting in authorised small collective vehicles. If Masca matters, book the jeep; if Teide's crater is the point, drive.

The stargazing evening is the tour to book either way. With a car, the self-drive option is the best buy: from 35 euros a head you drive to the sunset viewpoint, follow the group, and get Starlight-certified guides, a 12-inch telescope, a glass of cava and a portrait under the stars, about 94 euros for two with the car and petrol. Without a car, the VIP option picks you up on the south coast between Los Cristianos and Callao Salvaje, with two guides and two telescopes for at most 16 people and a warm jacket lent: 75 euros a head on 18 November 2026, 150 for two. Whale watching from Los Cristianos or Los Gigantes has no car alternative: book the boat.

Lanzarote's classic days are built on the Cabildo's tourist centres, and their tickets cost the same whoever drives you there: Timanfaya 30 euros, Cueva de los Verdes 17, Jameos del Agua from 17, the Jardín de Cactus and the Mirador del Río 9 each, and the Fundación César Manrique 10. That is why the car only saves 22 euros on the volcano and caves day. The tour's 89 euros covers the coach, a guide and all three entries; lunch is extra, about 18 euros at the restaurant, or bring your own. In Timanfaya a car is no disadvantage: you drive your own car to the car park on the Islote de Hilario, without stopping on the way, and the Ruta de los Volcanes is by the park's own coach, included in the ticket. Buy the Timanfaya ticket online for a timed slot, and book a time at Cueva de los Verdes.

The Manrique day saves more, 54 euros, and a car lets you stay as long as you like at the Fundación and Jameos, where the tour gives 50 and 45 minutes.

For La Graciosa, the coach and ferry wins. The ferry from Órzola is 29 euros return for a visitor on Líneas Romero's fares, so driving to the harbour and back costs two of you 82 euros, against 80 for the same Líneas Romero ferry with a bus from the meeting point nearest your hotel. The ferry leaves Órzola at 11:00 and comes back at 16:00, the island is yours on foot in between, and there is no guide. There is no pickup from Playa Blanca on Mondays, Wednesdays and Sundays, and for bookings within 24 hours pickup is not guaranteed, so book a day or more ahead. The catamaran day with lunch, drinks and kayaks is 132 euros for two, a different and longer day out. Papagayo by catamaran and the submarine are boat trips with no car alternative.

Fuerteventura's sights charge nothing at the gate, so the car's saving is almost the whole tour price: 131 euros on a day round Betancuria, Ajuy and the dunes from Corralejo. The minibus of eight buys a guide and someone else on the mountain roads through the Betancuria Rural Park, and that is all.

The island is long. From Morro Jable, a day in the north is 249 km and 4 hours 41 minutes at the wheel before you stop anywhere, which is why we call that one split: the car is 117 euros cheaper, the tour gives you the day back.

Cofete is the tour's. Cofete and the Villa Winter are reached by a gravel track over the mountains, part of more than 20 km of gravel the Cabildo keeps up from Morro Jable to Punta de Jandía and Cofete, and the hire terms we read, Goldcar's, TopCar's, Sixt's and AutoReisen's, either forbid unpaved roads or leave you uninsured on them. Without the tour, Tiadhe's line 111 runs out from Morro Jable at 10:00 and 14:15 for 8.70 euros.

Lobos needs no car from Corralejo: the ferry is 17 euros return, and the catamaran is the trip for paella, drinks and snorkelling. Either way, request the free Lobos permit from the Cabildo five days ahead. The Morro Jable dolphin boat has no car alternative.

Madeira turns the maths round. A car costs more here than on the Canaries, 26.86 euros a day in June with the regional fee, petrol is 2.02 euros a litre, and the tours are cheap: the east of the island is 38.70 euros a head with pickup. Even so, the car comes out ahead on every day trip we priced, by 33 to 62 euros for two.

Two of those wins come with a but. Pico do Arieiro at sunrise means leaving Funchal before dawn and climbing to 1,818 metres on a mountain road in the dark, then driving down tired: the van does that for 62 euros more. The ridge walk on to Pico Ruivo is closed: on IFCN's status page, updated 2 October 2026, PR1 is open only between Pico do Arieiro and the Pedra Rija viewpoint, so book the 4.50 euro slot for that stretch whichever way you go. At Rabaçal, Lido's guided day walks the Risco and 25 Fontes levadas point to point, about 11 km by the operator's figure, with no walk back to a parked car.

Every classified trail needs a timed slot on SIMplifica, 4.50 euros a walk for visitors or 9 euros for two or more in a day, and Cabo Girão's skywalk now costs 5 euros over the age of 12. We put those on both sides of the bill: the western day tour, for one, leaves the Skywalk to pay on site, and lunch is extra. Whale watching and the Santa Maria from Funchal marina have no car alternative.

The tour column is GetYourGuide's from-price for an adult on 27 October 2026, times two. Where a tour leaves out an official fee that you would pay either way, a trail slot in Madeira, Cabo Girão, the Porto Moniz pools or the Villa Winter, we added it to both columns, so the comparison is like for like.

The car is a day's share of a week's hire: the cheapest manual car for seven days at the island's airport on Expedia, divided by seven. We took the dearer of the two weeks we read for each island, February half-term on the Canaries and June on Madeira, so the car is never flattered; in the cheaper week every car figure falls by 2.57 to 12.29 euros. Hiring for a single day costs more per day than this, and the price leaves out the excess and the deposit, which our car-hire pages cover island by island.

Petrol is the island's price on 27 October 2026: the median of every station's 95 octane price on the Spanish government's price service for the three Canary Islands, and the regional maximum for Madeira. We assumed a small petrol car using 6 litres per 100 km, and measured each loop on OpenStreetMap roads from the town most of our hotels are in, at free-flow speeds, so the driving times are the least you will spend at the wheel. Tickets are the official adult prices for visitors on the operators' own sites.