Ask what the best dining app in Greece is and you get a list of names, most of which will have changed within a year. The more durable question is what kind of app you need, because the categories are stable even when the logos are not.
There are four, they solve different problems, and most people need two or three of them. Here is what each is genuinely good at, and where each stops being useful.
Which booking apps get you a table?
The basic job: find a restaurant, see whether it has space, reserve it. In Greece this matters less on a Tuesday and enormously on a summer Friday, when the good places in Athens and on the islands are genuinely full.
What to look for is real availability rather than a request form that emails the restaurant and hopes. If the app cannot tell you whether nine o'clock exists, it is a directory with a contact button.
Read nextHow do you book a restaurant in Athens and pay less?
Which discount booking apps are worth it?
A subset of the above that sells the restaurant's off-peak hours at a discount. This is where the actual money is: the early-evening table is worth little to a Greek restaurant, which is why it can be sold at half price.
Filotimo is built entirely on this model — book a partner restaurant before its peak hours and the food bill is halved, with drinks paid as normal and a service fee starting at six euros for one person. Coverage is deepest in Athens and expanding across the country, which is the thing to check before relying on it for a trip.
- Best for: a proper restaurant dinner at a lower price.
- Worst for: last-minute Friday night at nine, which is never discounted.
- Check first: whether your destination is actually covered.
Read nextComparing restaurant discount apps: what to look at
What do delivery apps really cost?
Delivery in Greece is well developed and the coverage in cities is excellent. It is also the most expensive way to eat: delivery fee, service fee, higher menu prices and a tip, on food that arrives worse than it left.
It is the right tool for a specific job — bad weather, a late arrival, a hotel room with no ambitions — and the wrong default. If you find yourself using it three nights in a row on holiday in Greece, something has gone wrong with the holiday.
How far should you trust maps and reviews?
Maps are indispensable for finding what is open and near you. Reviews are more complicated: in tourist areas, the score is heavily weighted by people who ate once, ordered badly, and were charmed or annoyed by the service rather than the food.
A useful trick is to read the language of the reviews rather than the number. A restaurant reviewed mostly in Greek is being judged by people who will come back. One reviewed in eight languages with a 4.6 average is being judged by people who will not.
What should you actually keep on your phone?
For a visitor: a map, one discount booking app for the city you are in, and delivery only if you expect to need it. That is enough, and it keeps you making decisions rather than scrolling through them.
For a resident: the same, plus a membership if the arithmetic works. Divide the annual cost of any subscription by the fee it saves per booking; if the resulting number of meals is larger than the number of times you eat out in a year, skip it.
| Kind | What it does well | What it costs you |
|---|---|---|
| Booking | Gets a table at a busy place | Nothing, usually |
| Discount booking | Half off food at off-peak hours | A per-booking fee |
| Delivery | Food without leaving the flat | 20–40% over the menu price |
| Maps and reviews | Finding the room in the first place | Your attention, and some bad advice |
Three apps is plenty in Greece: a map, one discount booking app for the hours restaurants cannot fill, and delivery for the night it rains. Everything else is a way of spending time you could spend eating.
How this guide is kept honest
Written in Athens by the team behind Filotimo, from the menus, prices and bookings we see across our partner restaurants. Prices move with the season and the street, so every figure here is a working range rather than a quote.