Tbilisi to Batumi is now about four hours by train, and second class is 35 lari — a tunnel that opened this summer took an hour off

The Stadler service is the one to recommend. A new tunnel that opened in summer 2026 brought the journey down from about five hours to about four. There are at least two trains a day, with extra services in summer. Second class is 35 lari, first class 75 and business class 125, with business tickets released 24 hours before departure. Tickets are sold online through TKT.GE, which adds a service fee and a transaction fee, and a lari for choosing your seat; you can also buy at the station with cash and a passport. In July and August trains sell out, and the guide suggests booking around twenty days ahead.

Coaches run by several operators take six to seven hours at about 40 to 50 lari, with the guide listing 44; departures are frequent through the day. Marshrutka vans are 35 lari cash, roughly five to six hours, leaving about hourly from Didube in Tbilisi from around 7:15am; a shared taxi is 50 to 60 lari per person. Driving yourself on the Rikoti highway — opened in December 2025 — is about four and a half hours without stops, with five to six hours more realistic in traffic. A private transfer with a driver who will stop where you ask runs roughly 300 to 350 lari for the whole car, and rental cars start from about $35 a day.

The flight is about 45 minutes and costs 150 to 345 lari one way, operated by Vanilla Sky and Georgian Airways; the guide gives four departures a week in the overview and roughly a dozen a week at the height of summer. Door to door, with the drive to the airport and the wait, a flight saves less against the four-hour train than the air time suggests. Where it earns its price is a tight connection, a guest with mobility limits, or the last day of a trip when losing an afternoon costs more than the fare.

For most guests the train is the right default: cheapest of the comfortable options, the most predictable timing, and no mountain road. The one thing worth saying out loud at the time of booking is that tickets go on sale in advance and summer sells out, because a guest who assumes they can turn up at the station in August ends up on a seven-hour coach. If they are travelling with a lot of luggage, or planning stops at Uplistsikhe or the Rikoti roadside markets on the way, the private transfer at 300 to 350 lari for the car is the one to steer a family of three or four towards.