Amalfi Coast boat tours look alike in the photographs and behave very differently in practice. The same search results hold a two-hour trip at €36 and a private charter at €750, the slow wooden gozzo and the speedboat, the day that starts in Positano and the day that starts in Naples with three hours of coach travel built into it.
This page lines the formats up side by side with prices seen on GetYourGuide, and says for each one who it suits and where the catch is. If you already know which port you are leaving from, skip straight to that page.
The comparison table
| Format | Price | Length | Departs | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Short shared | €36 per person | 2 h | Amalfi | Half a day free, tight budget, first time on the water |
| Classic shared | €86 per person | 4–8 h | Amalfi | Grottoes, coves and drinks on board without overspending |
| Shared with snorkelling | €95 per person | 4–8 h | Positano | Long swim stops with kit included |
| Shared with transfers | price on GetYourGuide | 8 h | Sorrento | Staying in Sorrento and not wanting to think about transfers |
| Shared for cruise passengers | €149 per person | 6 h | Salerno | A fixed window between docking and all-aboard |
| Private speedboat | €360 per boat | 2 h | Positano / Praiano | Couples short on time, covering a lot of coast quickly |
| Private half day | €680 per boat | 4 h | Positano | Families and groups up to 8, route to order |
| Private full day | €715–750 per boat | 6–7 h | Amalfi / Positano | Groups of 6 or more, and anyone who wants Capri too |
| Coach plus boat | price on GetYourGuide | 9 h | Naples | Sleeping in Naples with only one day to spare |
The two products with no price shown were not displaying a "from" fare on the day we checked: the figure appears once you open the listing on GetYourGuide.
The wooden gozzo is the coast's own boat: slow, stable, with a canvas awning over the stern.
Shared tours: what you are actually buying
Shared tours are 90% of the market. Eight to fourteen passengers, a skipper, often a second crew member pouring prosecco and limoncello, two swim stops of twenty to thirty minutes, a run past the Fiordo di Furore and the Grotta dello Smeraldo (Emerald Grotto). The grotto entry ticket (€7.00) is not normally included.
The two benchmarks on the coast are the Positano tour with snorkelling and drinks at €95 (4.9 from 2,429 reviews) and the Amalfi tour with grottoes and drinks at €86 (4.9 from 1,154 reviews). They run more or less the same route in opposite directions, so the choice comes down to where you are sleeping. Both are sold and run in English, as are almost all shared departures on this coast.
Under €40 there is exactly one verified option, the 2-hour run from Amalfi to the Fiordo di Furore at €36, with one swim stop. It is short and it does not reach Positano, but it is the cheapest way to get on the water here.
Private tours: the per-group arithmetic
Private boats are priced per vessel, and the sum changes everything. The €715 private tour from Amalfi split eight ways is about €89 a head, which undercuts the €95 shared trip; split two ways it is €357. On almost every product, the point at which private stops being a luxury falls between five and six people.
What you buy with a private boat is not only space, it is control of the clock and the route. You can leave at 08:30 instead of 10:00, spend forty minutes at Li Galli instead of fifteen, or skip the stop ashore altogether. The full calculation, format by format, is on the private boat tours page; for larger crewed vessels see yacht charter.
Above €750 a day you are into crewed charters: a different category, with different pricing rules.
Speedboat, catamaran, gozzo
Three hulls, three experiences. The speedboat covers Positano to the Fiordo di Furore and back in two hours, costs €360 per boat and has no shade: fast, loud and wet. The gozzo is slow and steady, and the only one genuinely comfortable with children or with anyone prone to seasickness. The catamaran has the best shade and a stern platform, but on this coast it motors out almost every morning, because the thermal breeze only fills in during the afternoon.
More on each hull: speedboat tours, catamaran and sailing, sunset cruises.
Doing it yourself: ferries and rentals
Not everyone needs a tour. If the point is simply to move along the coast, the scheduled ferries cover the same water at a tenth of the price: €10.00 Positano–Amalfi, €12.00 Salerno–Amalfi, €17.00 Salerno–Positano on the fares published by Travelmar, and €23.00 Amalfi–Capri with Alicost. Timetables, piers and journey times are collected on the getting there page.
If you would rather drive yourself, renting without a licence is legal up to 40.8 hp within 6 miles of the coast. Lucibello in Positano publishes half days from €350 for a four-seater up to €600 for a ten-person gozzo. Deposit, fuel and mooring fees come on top. The rules and the limits are on the boat rental page.
The scheduled ferry is the cheapest way to move between the coastal towns, but it does not stop for a swim.
What is included and what is not
The price gap between two apparently identical products almost always sits in the items below. It is worth reading them on the listing before you compare the headline figures.
- Nearly always included: skipper, fuel, insurance, water on board, the awning on a gozzo.
- Often included above €80: drinks on board (prosecco, limoncello, soft drinks), snorkelling kit, towels.
- Almost never included: the Grotta dello Smeraldo ticket, €7.00 per person paid on the spot; the Capri landing tax, €5.00 from 1 April to 31 October; lunch ashore; the skipper's tip, which local operators put at around 5–10% on private charters.
- Never included: parking at the departure port, and sunloungers if you stop at a beach (€25–40 per person at Positano's Spiaggia Grande, from €15 at Fornillo).
A €95 shared tour with drinks and kit included can therefore work out cheaper than an €86 one with twenty euros of extras bolted on. Do the sum on the whole day, not on the ticket.
How to read a product listing
Five checks that head off most of the disappointments:
- The real duration. If it says"4–8 h", the listing sells two options: pick the right one at checkout and look at the return time, not just the departure time.
- The exact boarding point."Positano" is not enough: you want the Spiaggia Grande jetty. Some products board at Marina di Praia, or start with a transfer from another town.
- The maximum passenger count. Eight people on a gozzo and fourteen on the same gozzo are two different days out at the same price.
- The stops as stated."Pass by" is not "stop at". Capri often appears as a possible extension without being guaranteed.
- The cancellation policy. Free cancellation up to 24 hours ahead is standard on most GetYourGuide products, but not on all of them, and on this coast the weather decides.
Getting to the right format
- Half a day free and you are in Amalfi: the 2-hour shared trip, €36.
- A full day and there are two of you: classic shared tour, €86–95, morning departure.
- Four or more of you: get a quote for a private boat before you buy individual tickets.
- Mainly here to swim: pick a product with kit included and read the snorkelling page.
- You want Capri: book a product that explicitly includes it, as set out in Capri from Amalfi.
- Arriving by cruise ship: leave from Salerno and read the cruise passengers page for the margin you need on all-aboard.
Choosing between Amalfi Coast boat tours mostly means fixing three things: the port, the real duration and the number of people paying. Once those are settled, all that is left is to check live availability and pricing across the Amalfi Coast tour selection and lock in the morning departure, which is always the better one.
