The two ferries to Cres

Cres is served by two car ferries. One comes from the island of Krk, the other from the Istrian coast, and they land at opposite ends of a long, thin island.

Where you start decides most of it

Coming south on the motorway past Rijeka, Krk is the natural approach. The Krk Bridge carries the D102 and has been free since 15 June 2020, so the crossing to Merag is the only thing you pay for on that route. The turn-off to the port is the D104.

Coming from Istria, Pula or the Slovenian border, Brestova is much closer and reaching Valbiska would mean a long detour around the head of the Kvarner.

Where you are going decides the rest

Porozina sits at the northern tip of Cres, Merag roughly halfway down its eastern side. For the town of Cres, Merag is much the shorter run: 15 km against 32 km, or 22 min against 56 min. For Mali Lošinj the gap is 87 km and about 2 hrs from Porozina against 70 km and roughly 1 hr 25 min from Merag.

That drive is single-carriageway island road, so the gap in kilometres is a bigger gap in minutes than it looks.

Neither one can be reserved

This is worth stating because it removes a reason people pick one over the other. Line 334 carries the same rule as line 332: a ticket is valid for any departure on the date printed on it, and vehicles board in the order they reach the port.

So there is no version of this journey where you hold a place in advance. The queue and boarding page applies to both.

The seasons do not line up

One detail matters in September. High season on the Merag line runs from 3 July to 30 September. On the Porozina line it ends on 20 September.

Between those dates the two ferries are on different calendars, and a September traveller who checked one timetable and assumed the other matched will be reading the wrong schedule at the wrong port.

Frequency

Both lines run twelve or thirteen sailings a day depending on the season, so neither has a clear advantage in frequency. Porozina starts earlier in high season, with a 05:00 departure, and Brestova has a 00:30 sailing that has no equivalent on the Merag line.

The Valbiska line carries far more traffic, close to half a million vehicles a year, which shows up as a longer queue rather than a fuller timetable.