St Barts Boat Tour Prices: What Every Listing Actually Charges

St Barts boat tour prices fall into two shapes, and the difference between them is bigger than most visitors expect. There is exactly one tour priced per person, at $189, and five private charters priced per group, from $1,947.52 to $4,816.09. That is the whole market on this site: six tours, six prices, no hidden middle tier. The marine reserve that rings the island is part of the reason the inventory looks like this. Its rules ban jet skis, seabobs, electric surfboards and any thermal or electric propulsion device in reserve waters, which is why no jet ski product exists around St Barts at all, and the reserve's 5 knot speed limit shapes how every one of these six boats operates once it approaches the coast.

This guide lays out each price exactly as the listing states it, separates what is included from what is not, and shows the per-person arithmetic that makes a private charter look very different when the group is full. Along the way it covers the fees that arrive on top of the headline price, the operating windows that decide when each tour can actually run, and how the calendar, from hurricane season to the mid-March 2027 Bucket Regatta, moves prices and availability. Nothing here is converted out of its listed currency, and nothing is rounded.

How Much Does A St Barts Boat Tour Cost?

A St Barts boat tour costs $189 per person on the single shared group day, plus a government fee of US$20 per person paid separately, or between $1,947.52 and $4,816.09 per group on the five private charters. The cheapest per-group price applies to a boat carrying up to 10 guests, the dearest to an overnight catamaran carrying up to 4. No other boat tour price exists on this roster.

Those two numbers bracket the entire market, and it helps to be clear about which one applies to you before comparing anything else. The $189 figure belongs to the Gustavia, Colombier Beach and Ile Fourchue tour run by Boomerang Boat Charters, a shared group day with a maximum of 40 passengers that meets at the Dinghy Dock Bar in Simpson Bay, Sint Maarten, and runs about seven hours. It is the only tour where you buy a seat rather than a boat.

Everything else is a charter. You are paying for the whole vessel and its crew, whether two people step aboard or ten. That is why the headline numbers look steep: the Full-Day St Barth Private Charter Tour from Love Boat Sxm starts at $1,947.52 for up to 10 guests, while the overnight catamaran run by Zephyr, a two-day, one-night voyage sleeping up to 4, is the ceiling at $4,816.09 per group. In between sit the Paper Boat Charter motor trip at from $2,100 for up to 8, the Nikki Beach charter from Seven Marine at from $2,120 for a group of up to 15, and the Paper Boat sailboat charter at from $2,000 for up to 8.

One practical consequence of this split: a solo traveller or a couple priced out of a charter has exactly one option, the group day, and that option only runs 12 May to 31 August 2027. A family or friend group of eight or ten, by contrast, may find the arithmetic on a charter closes most of the gap, which is the subject of the next section. For a broader look at how these six tours sit alongside each other in style rather than price, the companion piece on the best St Barts boat tours covers that ground.

What The Six Available Tours Charge From St Martin

Five of the six tours charge per group, and one sells per-person seats at $189. In per-group terms the sailboat charter starts at $2,000 for up to 8, the motor charter at $2,100 for up to 8, the Nikki Beach charter at $2,120 for up to 15, and the overnight catamaran at $4,816.09 for up to 4. Every figure is the listing's own, in USD.

All six depart from St Martin or Sint Maarten, which matters for price comparisons because every tour includes the crossing in the day. The table below is the full roster. Read the price column with the group maximum beside it: a from-price on a charter is the floor for the boat, not for a seat.

Two rows deserve a second look. The Paper Boat Charter appears twice because it genuinely runs two different products: an about 8 hour motor charter at from $2,100 for up to 8 guests, and a separate 7.5 hour sailboat charter at from $2,000 for up to 8. They are different listings with different prices and should never be merged when comparing. The sailboat listing is also brand new and carries no reviews yet, so there is no rating to weigh against its lower headline price.

The Zephyr overnight row is the outlier on duration as well as price. Two days and one night, with breakfast, lunch and dinner included and only lunch in Gustavia and crew tips of 15 to 20 percent excluded, is not a day trip with a bigger number attached. It is a different product category, which is why this guide treats it as the ceiling rather than as a competitor to the day charters. Readers weighing that choice directly may prefer the longer discussion in is St Barts better as a day trip or overnight.

Per Person Or Per Group: The Arithmetic That Changes The Comparison

Dividing each firm per-group price by its stated group maximum is plain arithmetic, and it can put a full charter's per-guest figure surprisingly near the group day's per-person price. This is not a new price, and no operator sells seats at these figures. The arithmetic only holds when the boat is full, and a group of two still pays the whole from-price.

The reason to do this division is that a from-price per group answers a question most small parties are not asking. A couple looking at $1,947.52 is seeing a number roughly ten times the per-person tour, which looks absurd until the same couple discovers four more friends. The table below shows the division for every charter, labelled as arithmetic and nothing more, dividing the listed price by the stated maximum number of guests.

Notice what the arithmetic does to the rankings. On a per-guest basis the Nikki Beach charter, the second-highest headline price, becomes the cheapest day on the water, because it carries up to 40 people. The overnight catamaran stays expensive under any lens even with all four berths filled, but that price buys two days and three included meals rather than one afternoon.

The $189 group day still wins on out-of-pocket cost for a party of one, two or three, and it is the only option that does not require assembling a group. For parties of six or more, the gap narrows to the point where the private charter's flexibility, a boat to yourselves with your own stops, competes on near-equal money. The Paper Boat 8 hour motor charter, rated 5.0 across 17 reviews, is the only listing on the roster with enough reviews for a rating to carry weight, and it is the natural comparison point for a full group of eight. St Barthelemy Tours keeps this arithmetic in view across the site because it is the single most useful mental shift when reading charter prices.

What Each Price Covers On The Water

Every listing states its own inclusions, and they differ sharply: the $189 group day includes lunch, alcoholic beverages, snorkelling gear, paddle boards and floating toys; the Paper Boat motor charter includes unlimited beer, wine and soft drinks plus a giant floating mat; the Zephyr overnight includes breakfast, lunch and dinner. Gratuities are excluded on nearly every tour, and lunch in Gustavia is excluded on the overnight.

The pattern worth seeing is that drinks and floating gear are common across the roster, while food is not. Only the group day and the overnight catamaran include meals, and the overnight excludes lunch in Gustavia specifically, presumably because guests are ashore that day. The table below reproduces the include and exclude lines as each listing states them. Where a listing does not mention something, it is marked not stated rather than assumed either way.

Two exclusions carry real money and are covered in detail in the fees section below: the Love Boat charter's dock fees at St Barthelemy of 40 EUR per boat plus 5 EUR per guest, and the Nikki Beach charter's customs clearance fees. These are the only three fee lines any listing states, and the site's standing rule is that any other fee in euros is unconfirmed and should not be budgeted as fact. What you can verify independently is the regulatory backdrop: the reserve authority's published zone rules explain why the boats carry snorkelling gear and floating mats rather than tow toys, since towed sports are prohibited in reserve waters alongside the jet ski and propulsion-device bans.

The gear itself tells you something about where these tours go. Colombier and Fourchue, the two bays named in the group day's title, sit inside the reserve's five regulated zones, where ecological mooring buoys are advised for vessels up to 20 tonnes and 25 m with stays of up to 96 consecutive hours. The floating noodles, lily pad and paddle boards in the inclusions are the toys the reserve's rules actually permit, and the snorkelling is the reason most people book.

The Fees That Arrive On Top Of The Price

Three fee lines exist across the roster: a US$20 per person government fee paid separately on the group day, dock fees at St Barthelemy of 40 EUR per boat plus 5 EUR per guest on the Love Boat charter, and customs clearance fees on the Nikki Beach charter. No other fee amount is confirmed anywhere on the listings or in the verified research, so nothing else should be added to a budget as fact.

The government fee is the easiest to plan for because it is flat and per person. On the $189 group day it adds a known $20 to each passenger's cost before gratuities, which the listing excludes. With a maximum of 40 passengers, that fee line can total US$800 across a full boat, paid separately from the booking.

The dock fees on the Love Boat charter scale both ways. A couple aboard pays 40 EUR for the boat plus 5 EUR each, so 50 EUR; a full group of ten pays 40 EUR plus 50 EUR, so 90 EUR. In per-guest terms that is between about 5 and about 9 EUR a head depending on group size, a small addition to a from $1,947.52 per group price but one worth knowing exists, since it is paid at the dock rather than at booking. The customs clearance fees on the Nikki Beach charter carry no stated amount at all, so the honest planning advice is to ask the operator for the figure when you book; inventing one here would be a guess, and the roster is explicit that unstated is never the same as zero.

Gratuities sit outside this table because they are tips rather than fees, but they recur in the exclude columns: gratuities are excluded on the group day, both Paper Boat charters and the Nikki Beach charter, and the Zephyr overnight states crew tips of 15 to 20 percent as customary. On a charter priced per group, a tip calculated as a percentage of the whole-boat price is a meaningful line item, so it belongs in any honest budget even though no operator collects it at booking.

When Each Tour Runs, And Why The Calendar Moves The Price

The group day runs only 12 May to 31 August 2027, the only operating window any listing states, and that window overlaps the start of the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs 1 June to 30 November with a peak from mid-August to mid-October. The charters carry no stated seasonal windows, but free-cancellation and refund terms differ sharply, from 24 hours on the sailboat to 6 days on the catamaran.

Seasonality matters on St Barts in a way the price table cannot show. The $189 group day's operating window, 12 May to 31 August 2027, sits mostly inside hurricane season, which the US National Hurricane Center defines as 1 June to 30 November with peak activity from mid-August to mid-October, as NOAA's cyclone climatology page sets out. That is a fact about overlap, not a weather forecast, and the operators, not the calendar, decide day by day whether a crossing runs.

The cancellation terms are the practical price of that uncertainty. The Zephyr overnight catamaran offers a full refund up to 6 days in advance, the longest lead time on the roster, which suits a two-day commitment exposed to a changing forecast. The Paper Boat sailboat charter allows free cancellation up to 24 hours before. The remaining four listings each state free cancellation in general terms without a stated window on the roster, so the operator's live listing is the place to confirm the exact cut-off before relying on it.

Event weeks change the island, and availability, even where they do not change the listed price. The St Barth Bucket Regatta returns in mid-March 2027, and the Music Festival's 43rd edition runs 8 to 18 January 2027. Neither is a boat tour, but both fill Gustavia harbour and the island's rooms, which is exactly when a private charter's calendar tightens. Anyone planning around those weeks should also read the site's guide to the best time to visit St Barts, and anyone curious about the sea conditions these crossings run through can follow up with how rough is the sea between St Martin and St Barts.

How To Book Without Overpaying: A Practical Order Of Operations

Decide group size first, then date, then boat: a party of one to three has only the $189 group day, whose window closes 31 August 2027; a party of six or more should compare the full-boat arithmetic before ruling out a charter; and every booking should be checked against the stated refund terms, which range from 24 hours to 6 days, before money changes hands. No tour on this roster sells seats on a schedule.

Start with the honest inventory check. Only six tours exist on this site, none of them a jet ski, fishing, kayak, scuba or sunset-cruise product, and the marine reserve bans jet skis outright, so searches for those categories will come up empty here. Five charters and one group day is the whole market, and planning goes faster once that is accepted.

For the group day, the decision moment is the calendar rather than the price. The $189 fare plus the US$20 government fee is fixed and per person, lunch and drinks are included, and the boat meets at the Dinghy Dock Bar in Simpson Bay, so the only real questions are whether your dates fall inside 12 May to 31 August 2027 and whether a seven-hour day with up to 39 other passengers suits your pace. The listing has 8 reviews at 5.0, too few for a star claim in this site's voice, so weigh the inclusions rather than the rating.

For a charter, the sequence runs the other way: fix the headcount, divide the from-price by the group maximum as plain arithmetic, and compare the result against what a seat on the group day would cost the whole party. A party of ten dividing the Love Boat charter's from $1,947.52 across ten guests, and comparing that against the group day's $189 plus its government fee for the same ten people, is choosing between a private boat and a shared one for closely comparable money. The St Barts private boat charters guide walks through that choice in more depth, and the arithmetic table above is the tool to bring to it. Once you've settled the private-versus-shared question, our packing list for a St Barts boat tour covers the practical side of getting out on the water.

Two cautions close the practical list. First, a from-price is a floor, not a quote: the operator's live listing is the only place the final figure for your date and group appears. Second, fees travel separately from the booking price, so the government fee, the dock fees or the customs clearance fees land on the day, not at checkout. Budget the headline, add the stated fees, leave room for gratuities, and the number you carry to the dock is the number you actually pay.

Common Questions About St Barts Boat Tour Prices