Italy · Italy & the Tyrrhenian · Marina Grande
One harbour, numbered berths, and two separate payments before you see the Blue Grotto — the boat that carries you there and the rowing boat that takes you in are different companies with different tills.
Quick answer
Twelve well-reviewed boats work this island, and the cheapest of them — the island loop with the grottoes at $29 for one to two hours — is also the one that catches most people out. Its price buys the run around the coast. The Grotta Azzurra itself is charged separately at a floating ticket booth bobbing at the cave mouth: about €19 a head, of which roughly €12 is the rowing boat and the rest the entry, according to the island's tourist board at capritourism.com and the guide at capri.net.
Everything shared leaves from Marina Grande, and the berths are numbered. Motoscafisti di Capri work Molo 0, a few metres from where the hydrofoils spill their passengers; Laser Capri sell from Molo 21 and board at Molo 23. Get the number wrong and you are walking the length of a working port with a boat pulling away behind you.
If you are coming over for the day, the arithmetic against the public ferry is worth two minutes: the crossing, the funicular at €2.40 and a walk-up island ticket add up to less than most guided day trips from the mainland, and considerably less fun in a month when the cave is shut.
Compare
The five ways of getting round this island by sea, each represented by its cheapest well-reviewed listing here. Durations and prices are the operators' own, re-checked in September 2026, and none of these figures includes the Grotta Azzurra fee collected at the cave.
| Kind of trip | Time afloat | Swim stops | From | What decides it | Book |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Island loop from Marina Grande | 1 – 2 hours | None | $29 | Cheapest lap of the coast, grotto stop optional | Details |
| Small-group grotto cruise | 2 hours | One | $58 | You get in the water; twelve people, not eighty | Details |
| Day trip from the mainland | 8 hours | None | $126 | Hydrofoil, Anacapri and a guide, no swimming | Details |
| Full day by sea from the coast | 6 – 8 hours | Two or more | $149 | Snorkelling plus free time ashore in Capri town | Details |
| Private charter | 2 – 6 hours | As many as you like | $418 | Priced per boat; the caves without a queue | Details |
The boats
Every boat below is bookable now and carries its operator's own rating and review count. Prices are per person unless the card says private, in which case the figure buys the whole hull. None of them includes the Grotta Azzurra ticket, which is cash at the cave. Re-checked in September 2026.
4.3★ (5902 reviews) · 1 - 2 hours · from $29
4.7★ (3627 reviews) · 8 hours · from $126
4.9★ (1163 reviews) · 4 - 8 hours · from $122
4.7★ (907 reviews) · 2 hours · from $58
4.8★ (465 reviews) · 6 hours · from $149
4.9★ (460 reviews) · 6 - 8 hours · from $149
4.6★ (439 reviews) · 10 hours · from $179
4.8★ (322 reviews) · 6 - 8 hours · from $231
4.7★ (222 reviews) · 2 hours · from $58
4.8★ (168 reviews) · 3 hours · from $464
4.9★ (142 reviews) · 2 - 6 hours · from $418
4.9★ (57 reviews) · 6 - 9 hours · from $814
The piers
Capri has a single ferry port, which sounds simple until you are standing on it with a printed voucher. The quay is a few hundred metres of numbered moli, and the two big shared-boat operators are at opposite ends of it.
Molo 0 is the first berth in the port, a short walk from where the hydrofoils unload, and it belongs to Motoscafisti di Capri. Their own site gives the address as dock number 0 and runs departures for the Blue Grotto and the island lap roughly every half hour through the morning, on the first available boat; tickets are sold at the kiosk minutes before boarding.
Molo 21 and Molo 23 are Laser Capri's: the office is at 21, the boats moor at 23, departures about every thirty minutes from nine until four. Laser's own site is blunt about what the fare covers — the price is sea transport only, and "does not include the entry fee or the rowboat needed to visit the Blue Grotto itself, which must be paid to another operator".
The ferry berths in between take Caremar, SNAV, NLG and Alilauro. Marina Piccola, under the Faraglioni on the south side, is a separate harbour and not walkable from the port: it sends the tenders for the Fontelina and Da Luigi beach clubs, reached by bus or taxi over the saddle from Capri town.
Up to Capri town is the funicular from the quayside station — €2.40 a single, four minutes to Piazza Umberto, roughly every quarter hour on the timetables published by capri.net and capritourism.com. The same fare buys an island bus single; walking is twenty-five minutes uphill, and taxis run fixed at around €17 for up to four.
| Berth | Who works it | What leaves from it | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Molo 0, Marina Grande | Motoscafisti di Capri | Island loop, Blue Grotto transfers | First pier in the port, closest to the hydrofoil arrivals; tickets on the spot |
| Molo 21 (office) / Molo 23 (boats) | Laser Capri | Island tour with and without the grotto, swim-stop loop | Buy at 21, board at 23 — two different numbers, same company |
| Ferry berths, Marina Grande | Caremar, SNAV, NLG, Alilauro | Naples, Sorrento, Positano, Amalfi, Ischia | The landing tax is already inside the ticket price |
| Marina Piccola | Beach-club tenders, some charters | Fontelina and Da Luigi boats, private pickups | South side of the island — bus or taxi from Capri town, never a walk from the port |
| The floating booth, Grotta Azzurra | The rowing-boat cooperative | Nothing — it is where you pay | Cash only, no card, no signal under the cliff |
The arithmetic
Every guided trip here competes with a public hydrofoil, a €2.40 funicular and a walk-up ticket at Molo 0. Here is that sum done honestly, and what it leaves out.
Start from Naples. Caremar's conventional ferry is €14 for about eighty-five minutes; the fast craft is around €25.30, and the SNAV and NLG hydrofoils €26.50 to €31 for fifty, on the fares capri.com publishes. Return on the same class, add the funicular both ways at €4.80, a walk-up island tour of €24 to €25 at Molo 0 or Molo 21 and about €19 at the cave, and a self-assembled Naples day lands near €76 at the ferry end and €111 at the hydrofoil end. The guided version is $126 with the crossing, a guide and Anacapri inside it — closer than most people expect, and the gap is largely the price of not queueing at Beverello at seven in the morning.
From Sorrento the maths shifts. Caremar quotes about €16.40, Alilauro €19 to €21, SNAV €20 and NLG €22 one way for twenty to thirty minutes; round trip, funicular, island lap and grotto ticket comes to roughly €70 to €80. The Sorrento boat day is $149 for six hours with snorkelling gear and swim stops, and that gap is the honest one — you are buying time in the water, which no scheduled ferry sells.
From Positano and Amalfi the public option is weaker again: roughly €26 to €28 each way, sailing only from about mid-April into October, and among the first services cancelled when the sea gets up. Hence the Positano day boat at $231 and the ten-hour coastal version at $179 — a skipper who can move the route is worth more here than on the Naples crossing. One line never changes: the Grotta Azzurra is inside none of it.
The Blue Grotto
This is the fact that generates the arguments at the cave mouth, and it is worth understanding before you are floating in a queue of boats with no phone signal.
Your operator sells you transport to the mouth of the cave; it cannot sell you entry. That happens at a floating ticket point moored outside the opening, where you transfer into a small wooden rowing boat carrying four passengers and rowed in by a licensed boatman. Capritourism.com, the island's own tourism site, and capri.net both put the total at €19 per person, of which around €12 is the rowing boat and the balance the site entry; operators specialising in the cave publish the split as €14 to the boatmen and €4 shared between the comuni of Capri and Anacapri and the culture ministry.
It has to be cash — not as a preference but as a consequence of geography. The cave sits under a cliff on the north-west shore where, as the specialist operators put it, there is no telephone or data signal, so no card terminal at the booth can reach a bank.
The entrance is about two metres wide and a metre high at low water, which is why you lie flat as the boat goes under; inside is five to six minutes, and swimming is forbidden while the boats work. Under-sixes go free, EU citizens under eighteen pay the boat service only, and EU citizens of eighteen to twenty-five get a reduced entry.
Arriving by land saves the transfer fare and nothing else: a bus from Piazza della Pace in Anacapri reaches the Grotta Azzurra stop in about fifteen minutes on a €2.40 ticket, and both routes then join the same queue, which capri.net warns can reach two hours in high season.
| What you pay for | Roughly | Paid to | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Transfer from Marina Grande and back | €25 | Laser Capri or Motoscafisti | Molo 21 or Molo 0, by card or cash |
| Island loop with a grotto stop | €24 – €25 | The same two operators | The pier ticket office |
| Rowing boat into the cave | ≈ €12 – €14 | The boatmen's cooperative | The floating booth — cash |
| Site entry | ≈ €4 – €7 | Comuni of Capri and Anacapri, culture ministry | The same booth, same transaction |
| Bus, Anacapri to the grotto | €2.40 | The island bus company | Piazza della Pace, Anacapri |
The boats
Four kinds of vessel work this island and they are not interchangeable. The choice sets how close you get to the rock, how long the swim stops last and whether anyone hears the skipper.
The economics flip at about four people. The private Faraglioni and caves charter at $418 is indefensible for a couple and sensible for six, and the three-hour private grotto boat at $464 buys the one thing money genuinely fixes here — reaching the cave when the skipper judges the queue shortest.
At the other end, understand what $29 buys. The island loop is the most-reviewed boat here at 5,902 ratings and 4.3★, the lowest rating on this page, for a reason the reviews repeat: big boat, one lap, grotto extra. As ninety minutes of coastline it is good value; as a Blue Grotto ticket it never was.
| Type | Typical trip | Carries | From | What it is good at |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Large open launch | The 1 – 2 hour island lap | 60 – 80 | $29 | Cheap and frequent, from Molo 0 and Molo 21 |
| Traditional gozzo | Two-hour grotto and swim cruise | 8 – 12 | $58 | Slips into caves the launches pass; one real swim stop |
| Motor boat, snorkel gear | Six to eight hours from the coast | 10 – 20 | $149 | Time in the water and free hours ashore |
| Hydrofoil plus land tour | The eight-hour day from Naples | Scheduled | $126 | Anacapri and Villa San Michele, no swimming |
| Private charter | Three to nine hours, your route | 8 – 12 | $418 | The grotto before the queue, and the arch for as long as you like |
Prices
Three bands, taken from the twelve listings on this page rather than from a market average — and remember that every one of them sits on top of the cave charge.
The two-hour small-group grottoes cruises at $58 and $58, both leaving Marina Grande with a swim stop, and the coastal lap at $29. This band exists only if you are already on Capri — nothing with a crossing inside it lands here.
The Naples hydrofoil day at $126, the Amalfi coast boat at $122, and the two full sea days at $149 and $149. The ten-hour Positano version at $179 adds a light lunch. The crossing is inside all of these; the cave is not.
Private starts at $418 and $464, rising to $814 for a six- to nine-hour day picked up from the mainland. Divide before dismissing: at six people the $418 boat costs less a head than the $231 group day from Positano.
Season
Sea temperatures are the monthly averages published by seatemperature.info for Capri; the grotto hours are the official ones from capritourism.com, which change three times a year.
Rain does not stop a boat here. Wind and swell do, and they close the Grotta Azzurra first. The opening is a metre high at low water, so it takes very little sea: the boatmen gather at the mouth around nine each morning, read the conditions and decide, and on an unsettled day the cave can open and shut more than once before lunch. The winds that end it are the northerlies — the tramontana from the north and the maestrale from the north-west, both pushing swell onto exactly the shore the cave sits on. A clear blue sky is no evidence at all. The scirocco from the south-east leaves the grotto alone and instead flattens the crossings from Positano and Amalfi.
Tide matters more here than almost anywhere in the Mediterranean, for the same reason: the range is small, but against a metre-high entrance it decides whether the boat goes under. Hence the official line that the cave opens "each day with favourable sea conditions" rather than at a fixed hour, and hence no operator on this page can promise it. Read the cancellation terms before booking a boat sold on the cave — the sea makes that call, not the company.
| Month | Sea | Grotto hours | What it means on the water |
|---|---|---|---|
| January – March | 14.6 – 15.5 °C (58 – 60 °F) | 09:00 – 14:00 | Skeleton timetable; check at the Molo 0 and Molo 21 offices that morning |
| April | 15.9 °C (61 °F) | 09:00 – 16:00 | Boats return in numbers, coast crossings restart |
| May | 19 °C (66 °F) | 09:00 – 16:00 | Best trade of the year: full service, short grotto queues |
| June | 23.2 °C (74 °F) | 09:00 – 18:00 | Long hours at the cave, swimmable sea, prices below August |
| July | 26.2 °C (79 °F) | 09:00 – 18:00 | Everything runs and everything queues; take the first boat |
| August | 26.8 °C (80 °F) | 09:00 – 18:00 | Warmest water of the year, two-hour waits at the cave mouth |
| September | 25 °C (77 °F) | 09:00 – 18:00 | The month to pick: warm sea, thinning crowds |
| October | 22.2 °C (72 °F) | 09:00 – 16:00 | Still swimmable; Amalfi services wind down |
| November – December | 17.2 – 19.6 °C (63 – 67 °F) | 09:00 – 14:00 | Shared tours occasional; private charters keep going |
Extras
Capri collects less at the pier than its reputation suggests, but what it does collect is collected at the water, in cash, by people who do not take cards.
| Item | Amount | Who collects it | When it applies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grotta Azzurra rowing boat and entry | ≈ €19 | Boatmen's cooperative and the two comuni | Every Blue Grotto visit, by boat or by bus — cash only |
| Landing contribution | €5 April to October, €2.50 November to March | Comune di Capri | Already inside a scheduled ferry ticket; charged separately on private transfers |
| Funicular, Marina Grande to Capri town | €2.40 single | The island transport company | Any trip up to Piazza Umberto; the same fare buys a bus single |
| Island taxi | ≈ €17 up to four, €20 up to seven | The taxi cooperative | Fixed fares; the way to reach Marina Piccola from the port |
| Monte Solaro chairlift, Anacapri | €9 one way, €12 return | The chairlift operator | Not a boat cost, but the usual add-on to a day that lands early |
On the water
Everything shared leaves from Marina Grande on the north shore; the Blue Grotto is round on the north-west coast, the Faraglioni and Marina Piccola on the south side, and the lap between them is what these boats sell.
Questions
On the island, from $29 for the one to two hour coastal lap and $58 for a small-group grottoes cruise with a swim stop, either this one or this one. Walk-up tickets at Molo 0 and Molo 21 run €24 to €25 for the same loop. From the mainland the range is $122 to $231; private hulls start at $418. Add roughly €19 at the cave to any of them.
Almost never. Your operator sells transport to the mouth of the cave; entry is a separate transaction at a floating booth outside the opening, where you transfer into a licensed rowing boat — Laser Capri say exactly this on their own website. Budget about €19, of which around €12 is the rowing boat, per capritourism.com and capri.net.
Yes, and this detail ruins more Capri mornings than the weather does. The cave sits under a cliff on the north-west shore with no telephone or data coverage, so the floating booth cannot run a card terminal. Bring the fare per person in notes before you leave Marina Grande — there is no cash machine at the cave.
All shared boats leave from Marina Grande, but from numbered berths at opposite ends of it. Motoscafisti di Capri work Molo 0, nearest the hydrofoil arrivals; Laser Capri sell at Molo 21 and board at Molo 23. Marina Piccola, on the south side, is a different harbour reached by bus or taxi.
Whenever the sea is up. The entrance is two metres wide and a metre high at low water, so a modest swell or a high tide seals it, and the northerlies do it most often — tramontana and maestrale push straight onto that shore. Boatmen assess conditions at the mouth around nine each morning. Official hours are 09:00 to 18:00 from June to September, 09:00 to 16:00 in April, May and October, and 09:00 to 14:00 from November to March.
For the coast, unusually so: the Faraglioni arch, the White and Green grottoes and the Punta Carena headland are visible only from the water, and $29 is a low price for seeing them. For the Blue Grotto alone it depends on the day's sea. The clearest value sits in the middle — a two-hour small-group cruise at $58 that actually stops so you can swim, which the big launches do not.
From Sorrento the crossing is twenty to thirty minutes at €16.40 to €22 one way, so a $149 day boat buys swim stops rather than transport. From Naples the hydrofoil is fifty minutes at €26.50 to €31, and the $126 guided day is close to what that day costs assembled by hand. Already on Capri? Island prices are less than half the mainland ones, because no crossing is inside them.
First departures, always. Capri.net warns of waits reaching two hours at the cave mouth in high season, and the island boats begin at nine while the day-trip hydrofoils are still crossing. The morning also gives the strongest colour inside, since the light that makes the water glow comes through a submerged opening below the entrance.
Nearby
Or browse every boat tour and day cruise by port.
Twenty to thirty minutes across the strait, and the cheapest mainland base for a Capri sea day
Coastal day cruising ▸ PositanoItalyThe Amalfi coast version of the same boats, plus the crossing the weather cancels first
Coastal day cruising ▸ NaplesItalyMolo Beverello sends the fifty-minute hydrofoils and the guided island days
Coastal day cruising ▸