Blue Grotto tour reviews
Seven boats are sold as a way to see the Blue Grotto and not one of them buys you into it. At the cave you leave the boat, pay the state ticket and the rowboat fare on the spot, and queue with everybody else. So a review of any of these cannot be a review of the grotto. It is a review of the day built around a stop that lasts under five minutes and, on several of them, may not happen at all.
Which boat, and from where?Every option below still leaves the €18 at the cave to pay on the spot. What changes is where you sail from and how long the day is.
Compare all sevenThe score I would read first
The cheapest tour here is also the worst-rated, and the gap is not small. It carries 4.3 across 5,948 ratings while four of the others sit at 4.8. That is the weakest score on this site, and I am putting it at the top of the page rather than at the bottom of a list sorted by price, because sorting by price is how it gets booked in the first place.
My reading of the 4.3 is dull rather than damning. It is an island circuit out of Marina Grande at the entry-level price, and a good share of the people rating it appear to have booked it believing the cave was part of the deal. An island tour runs about two hours and skips the grotto stop often enough that you cannot plan around it; the transfer-only boat runs about an hour and is the one that guarantees the stop. Nothing in the listing lies about that. Nothing in the listing says it loudly either. The full review is here, and the difference between a transfer and a circuit is set out here.
And the score I would read most carefully
At the other end of the page, the early-entrance experience carries 4.5 from 29 ratings. Twenty-nine is a small base. It is enough to say that the people who went were mostly happy and not enough to tell you what happens on a bad morning, because a bad month has not had to show up in it yet. One strongly-worded fortnight would move that 4.5 visibly, which is not true of a score resting on five thousand ratings. What those 29 do and do not tell you.
The seven, reviewed
Capri: Island Boat Trip with Grottos
The cheapest, the most-reviewed, and the lowest-rated of the seven.
from €25Read the full review ›
Blue Grotto Early Entrance Experience
The only one of the seven aimed at the queue. A very small review base.
from €80Read the full review ›
From Sorrento: Capri Boat Tour with Blue Grotto Optional
A Sorrento crossing and an island day. The grotto is an optional extra.
from €94Read the full review ›
Sorrento: Exclusive Capri Boat Tour and Optional Blue Grotto
The best rating at the highest volume on this site. About four hours.
from €119Read the full review ›
From Naples: Capri, Anacapri, and Blue Grotto Full-Day Trip
A full day from Naples that includes Anacapri, which most crossings do not.
from €162Read the full review ›
Positano: Capri and Blue Grotto Shared Boat Tour with Drinks
From Positano, drinks included, and the thinnest sample of the four 4.8s.
from €172Read the full review ›
Capri: 3-Hour Private Boat Tour with Blue Grotto Visit
Three hours, and the price buys the whole boat rather than one seat.
from €399 per groupRead the full review ›What the ratings cannot see
Two of the four 4.8s rest on thin samples: 267 ratings on the Positano boat and 173 on the private charter, against 5,297 on the Sorrento flagship. All three are good scores. They are not equally settled scores, and I would not treat a decimal place as the deciding factor between them. The other thing an average cannot see is the sea. A reviewer who sailed on a closed day rates the day they got, not the day they booked, so a high average tells you nothing about your odds of getting inside. The skippers decide at the cave mouth at 9am and there is a live status banner you can check first.
What every one of them leaves you to pay
Entry is not included and never is: the €18 at the cave — €12 to the rowers, €6 to the state — is paid on the spot, in cash, on top of whatever the tour cost. A tour buys you the crossing and the day; it does not buy the cave. It also does not move you up the rowboat line, because nothing does. If the queue is the thing you are trying to solve, the honest answer is a bus and an early start rather than a bigger ticket. The three-way split, and both totals, are on the tickets page, and all seven are compared side by side here.
Frequently asked questions
Which Blue Grotto tour should I book?
Book for the day out rather than for the cave, because the cave is a five-minute stop that may be shut. If you are crossing from Sorrento, the €119 exclusive tour holds 4.8 across 5,297 ratings, which is the most settled good score here. If you are already on Capri and want the cheapest water time, the €25 island trip does that at 4.3. All seven, cheapest first.
Do any of these tours include entry to the Blue Grotto?
None of them. The €6 state entrance and the €12 rowboat are paid at the cave on the day, in cash, whatever you spent on the boat that brought you. Several listings also make the grotto stop optional, meaning extra and not guaranteed. What the money actually buys.
Is the cheapest tour the worst one?
It is the lowest-rated, at 4.3 from 5,948 ratings, and that is worth knowing before you sort by price. The likely reason is a mismatch rather than a bad boat: it is an island circuit and a share of reviewers expected a grotto trip. The full review of the €25 trip.
Are these reviews independent?
Yes. I am a licensed guide who writes this site, not an operator and not a ticket seller. I earn a small commission if you book through a link here, at no extra cost to you, and the page that gets the most traffic on this site is the one telling you to take a €2.40 bus instead. That page is here.