Prometheus Cave: 40 lari to enter, 30 more for the boat, and it shuts at five
The cave sits at Kumistavi in Tskaltubo municipality, about half an hour from Kutaisi, and is run by Georgia's Agency of Protected Areas. Foreign visitors pay 40 lari to enter and 14 to 30 lari more for the underground boat ride, which has to be bought at the same time as the entrance ticket. Georgian citizens and residents pay 16 lari and 14. It opens daily, year-round, from 10:00 to 17:00, and the guide is included in the ticket.
What you pay
Entry is 40 lari for foreign visitors and 16 lari for Georgian citizens and residents, in both cases for adults. Children aged six to eighteen pay 5.50 lari and under-sixes go free. The boat ride on the underground river is 30 lari for foreigners and 14 for citizens and residents, and the agency's page is explicit that boat tickets must be bought in advance together with the entrance ticket. Reduced-price tickets require an ID card or passport at the entrance. Tickets are not refundable.
What the hour inside involves
The standard tour runs about an hour and covers six halls, finishing with a walking or boat section on the underground Kumi River that takes roughly fifteen minutes. Guide service is included in the ticket price, so there is no separate guiding fee to negotiate at the entrance. Boating is suspended when the water level rises, which is worth bearing in mind if you have paid for it in advance during a wet spell.
The options most people miss
Two services sit on the same tariff sheet and rarely get mentioned. A VIP visit costs 230 lari and buys entry and ticketed services at a time of your choosing within working hours, with a personal guide and no queue — which for a family arriving in a mid-August crush may be the difference between seeing the cave and seeing the back of a tour group. A civil marriage ceremony inside the cave is priced at 115 lari. One teacher accompanying a school or college group enters free, and agency guides enter free under a signed agreement with the Agency of Protected Areas.
Planning the day around it
The hard constraint is the 17:00 close. Visitors arriving from Tbilisi by road, or combining the cave with a canyon in the same day, routinely underestimate how long the drive and the queue together take, and reach Kumistavi with the ticket desk closing. The cave is open every day of the year, which makes it one of the few outdoor-adjacent attractions in Imereti that works in February as well as July — a point worth knowing for anyone building a low-season itinerary.
Written by us from the source linked above, not investment, legal or tax advice. Figures and rules change — confirm anything that matters before acting on it.
