What it costs and how long it really takes
A Capri day trip from Naples means fifty minutes on a fast craft from Molo Beverello and about €60 a head in transport alone: €50 for the return, €5 landing fee in high season, €4.80 for the funicular. On the Caremar ferry from Calata Porta di Massa you come down to roughly €39, but you pay 80–87 minutes each way instead of 50. The full-day tour starts at €161.50 and covers guide, crossings and the boat trip.
The difference between a good day and a wasted one is not the price: it is the time of your first sailing. Get into Marina Grande at 8:55 and you find Monte Solaro deserted and the Piazzetta clear; leave at 11:10 and you find the same things with three thousand people ahead of you.
Second variable, and this one is not negotiable: the sea. Capri is the only trip on the gulf that the weather can cancel on the morning itself. Keep it for a settled day and move the excavations to the windy ones.
The day, hour by hour
Molo Beverello: ticket already on your phone, security check and the boarding line
The SNAV fast craft for Capri leaves
Marina Grande: you pay the landing fee and ignore the boat-trip stands
Bus to Anacapri from the terminal above the harbour, 20 minutes of hairpins
Chairlift up Monte Solaro: 12 minutes of climbing, the island is still empty
Back down and round Anacapri: via Giuseppe Orlandi, the church of San Michele
Bus or taxi to Capri town: the Piazzetta, via Camerelle, the Gardens of Augustus
Lunch away from the shop-window streets, towards via Madre Serafina
Belvedere di Tragara, then back to the harbour on the funicular
Boarding for Naples: leave with one sailing in hand, not on the last one
Last useful SNAV fast craft from Capri, into Beverello around 20
If you would rather see the island from the water than on foot, the second plan reverses the order: boat first, town after.
Do-it-yourself variant
NLG departure from Beverello: you arrive before the boat trips set off
Marina Grande: the boatmen’s ticket hut on the quay, then round the island
Stop at the Blue Grotto from the sea, if the boatman gives the go-ahead
Back to Marina Grande and the funicular up to the Piazzetta
Lunch in Capri town and the Gardens of Augustus
Via Krupp from above, the belvedere, a last coffee in the Piazzetta
NLG fast craft to Naples, in around 18:45
Getting there: who sails to Capri, and from where
Five companies operate in the gulf, but not all of them leave from Naples and not all of them use the same quay. This is the table to look at before you buy.
| Company | Quay in Naples | Vessel | Duration | Fare each way |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Caremar | Calata Porta di Massa | Ferry | 80–87 min | €14.80 · fast craft (TMV) €21.50 |
| SNAV | Molo Beverello | Fast craft | 50 min | €25 · €23 in the regional band |
| NLG | Molo Beverello | Fast craft | 50 min | €25 · €23 in the regional band · children 2–12 €17 |
| Gescab | Molo Beverello | Jet on the joint route | 50 min | €25 · €23 in the regional band · groups of 15 €25 |
| Alilauro | — | No direct link from Naples | — | Capri from Sorrento €19–21, or from Ischia, Positano, Amalfi |
Three things the table does not say, and they matter.
There is one Naples–Capri route and the carriers take turns on it. Gescab sells the Jet route whose sailings are covered in rotation by SNAV and NLG: the ticket costs €25 from all of them, so buy from whichever company has the departure time you need, not from the one you think is better. On the SNAV site the same crossing appears from €27.50: check both channels before you pay.
The regional-interest band saves you €2 each way. It applies to sailings between 06:00 and 09:30, between 13:00 and 15:00 and between 18:00 and 20:30. The 8:05 out and the 18:10 back both fall inside it: €46 return instead of €50.
Alilauro does not run Naples–Capri. Its list of routes from Naples stops at Ischia, Forio and Sorrento; it reaches Capri from Sorrento (€19 in the regional band, €21 in the tourist band), from Ischia and from the Amalfi Coast. If a page offers you an “Alilauro hydrofoil Naples–Capri”, you are looking at an intermediary, not the company.
The useful times, checked on the companies’ own sites: first departure from Naples at 07:00, then 08:05, 08:35, 09:10, 09:30, 10:15 and on until 20:00. Coming back from Capri, sailings run from 06:50 to 19:12 with SNAV and until 19:55 with NLG in high season. The Caremar ferry works to a wider grid and finishes earlier.
What the day costs
By public transport
- Fast craft Beverello–Capri, returnnlg.it
- €50 · €46 on the regional-band sailings · 50 min each way
- Alternative: Caremar ferry from Calata Porta di Massa, returncaremar.it
- €29.60 · 80–87 min each way
- Landing fee on Caprinlg.it
- €5 from 1 April to 31 October, €2.50 the rest of the year
- Funicular Marina Grande–Piazzetta, returncapri.it
- €4.80 (€2.40 each way)
- Total per person by hydrofoil
- €59.80 · about 11 hours door to door
With a tour
With the full-day tour from €161.50 you are paying for the guide, the boat passage and somebody else handling the Blue Grotto queue: worth it if this is your first time on the island and you want to decide nothing on the spot. If you already know where you are going, doing it yourself costs less than half.
What to see and how long you need
In one day you cover the whole island only if you pick an order and stick to it. These are the real timings, funicular and buses included.
- Monte Solaro, 1 hr 30. Chairlift from Anacapri, 12 minutes up, €15 return or €12 one way according to capri.it. It is the highest point on the island and the only place from which you grasp its shape. Go there first.
- Anacapri, 1 hr. Via Giuseppe Orlandi, the church of San Michele with its majolica floor, the lanes behind the square. More village and less shop window than Capri.
- Capri town and the Piazzetta, 1 hr. The Piazzetta takes five minutes to look at and is paid for in coffee; the value is in the streets around it, via Madre Serafina and via Castello.
- Gardens of Augustus and via Krupp, 45 min. The viewpoint over the Faraglioni you see in every photograph. Via Krupp is often closed for falling rock: you can see it from above anyway.
- Belvedere di Tragara, 1 hr there and back. A level walk from via Camerelle, the Faraglioni up close, no ticket.
- Blue Grotto, 2 hrs with the transfers. It depends on the sea. More on that below.
The funicular links Marina Grande to the Piazzetta in three minutes at €2.40 each way and saves you 130 metres of climbing. The buses for Anacapri leave from the terminal above the harbour and are small, frequent and always full: if it is 10 in the morning in August, consider the open taxi.
No hire cars circulate on the island for visitors and the roads are as wide as a bus: every movement is by funicular, bus, taxi or on foot. That constraint has a practical consequence for the day: each transfer between Marina Grande, Capri town and Anacapri costs twenty to thirty real minutes, queue included. Three transfers are the most a day will take; four will not fit.
The beaches, which many people assume are a given, are the weak point of Capri in a day. Marina Piccola and the Bagni di Tiberio are small, partly private, and reached by walking down or by little boat: if the aim of the day is to swim, a boat trip round the island returns far more than a swim from the shore.
Who should pick what
Blue Grotto: the rule for deciding
The Blue Grotto is not a ticket you book, it is a weather condition. You go in on a rowing boat through an opening a little over a metre high: as soon as there is swell or a tramontana wind the entrance is closed, often by mid-morning and with no warning.
According to capri.it you pay €19 at the floating ticket office, of which €12 is for the rowing-boat service and the rest is the entry ticket, plus €25 for the boat from Marina Grande: around €44 all in. The regional museum circuit does not publish its price list online and is not responding at the moment, so capri.it remains the only source that can be consulted for this figure.
The practical rule: if the sea is calm, get there by 11:30 on a boat from Marina Grande, because in the afternoon the tour queue piles on top. If the sea is not calm, drop it without regret and use the two hours on Monte Solaro and Tragara. Never buy the grotto ticket together with the ferry ticket the day before: nobody refunds you for the sea.
The full-day tours handle that uncertainty for you: the listing for the excursion with a local guide from Naples puts the Blue Grotto down as “weather permitting” and names a panoramic boat trip as the stated alternative. That is exactly why it costs more than twice the do-it-yourself price.
Same product, platforms compared
Prices refreshed from the GetYourGuide, Tiqets and Headout feeds.
| Platform | Price | Rating | Duration | Cancellation | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TiqetsCapri Island: Day trip from Naples with Island Boat Tour | €105 Lowest price | ★ 4.5 (77) | 10:00 | — | Book on Tiqets |
| GetYourGuideFrom Naples: Capri, Anacapri, and Blue Grotto Full-Day Trip | €161.50 | ★ 4.8 (1,658) | 9 h | Free | Book on GetYourGuide |
| HeadoutFrom Naples: Guided Tour of Capri & Blue Grotto with Round-Trip Boat Transfers | €208 | ★ 5.0 (2) | 8 h | Free | Book on Headout |
On the same circuit the platforms behave differently: Tiqets’ day trip with an island boat tour sits in a lower band, Headout’s guided excursion with boat transfers in a higher one. What changes is the group, the guide and what is included, not the boat.
Anyone who only wants the crossing buys the ferry ticket from Naples to Capri and arranges the rest on the spot. Anyone with a single day who wants the most out of the water looks at the panoramic tour of the Gulf of Naples and Capri (€84, nine hours) or Tiqets’ coast-to-coast boat excursion at Capri, which you take on the island and which lasts an hour. Anyone who wants the hydrofoil and a guide without the big group looks at the VIP hydrofoil format (€108, eight hours), the most reviewed of the lot.
Combining Capri with the rest of the gulf
Capri fits well with two things only, and badly with everything else.
Capri plus Sorrento. The ferry ticket to Sorrento and Capri from Naples (€76) opens the most sensible combination: hydrofoil to Capri in the morning, transfer to Sorrento in the afternoon, train home. Alilauro covers Sorrento–Capri both ways with six sailings a day. The page on Sorrento in a day has the full transport table.
Capri plus the coast, by boat only. The boat trips that take in Capri and Positano on the same day work because they never touch the road. If you want the Amalfi Coast in a day, though, keep it separate: two islands and a coastline in one day cannot be done.
Do not combine Capri with Pompeii, with Vesuvius or with Ischia and Procida. They are three different days, and every attempt to add them up ends in forty minutes per place. If you are building a multi-day itinerary, the sequence that holds is excavations, city, island, coast: it is reasoned through in all the day trips, along with the months in which the sea cancels fewest sailings.
For getting across Naples to the quay, Beverello is reachable on Metro Line 1 at Municipio; Calata Porta di Massa needs ten minutes more on foot. Lines, tickets and times in detail are in getting around Naples.
The local operators who work the island
Beneath the big catalogues sit small outfits, and the difference shows. Capri Island Tour works the island circuit and the gozzo trips leaving from Marina Grande; Exclusive Cruises sits at the top end of private boats, with prices per vessel rather than per person. Our notes on the shipping companies — who cancels first, who refunds how, which ticket office is least chaotic — are in the review of the gulf ferries.
Anyone after a private boat for the day will find the options compared in boat tours in the Gulf of Naples, where prices are split between per person and per vessel.
In short
A Capri day trip from Naples works on three conditions: leave on one of the first sailings from Molo Beverello, decide about the Blue Grotto on the spot by looking at the sea, and do not take the last hydrofoil of the evening. By fast craft you spend about €60 on transport and are back around 20; by ferry from Calata Porta di Massa you spend €39 and pay half an hour more each way. If it is your first time and you want guide, boat and grotto on one ticket, the full-day tour is the simplest way to close the day with no decisions to make.
Questions people ask
How much is the ferry from Naples to Capri?
The Caremar ferry from Calata Porta di Massa costs €14.80 each way and takes 80–87 minutes. The fast craft from Molo Beverello costs €25 (€23 in the regional-interest bands) and takes 50 minutes. On top of either comes the landing fee on Capri: €5 from 1 April to 31 October, €2.50 the rest of the year.
Which quay do the boats for Capri leave from?
The SNAV and NLG fast craft leave from Molo Beverello, 500 metres from piazza Municipio. The Caremar ferry leaves from Calata Porta di Massa, about a kilometre further east: they are two different harbours, so check which one is on your ticket before you set off walking.
Is an organised tour better than doing it yourself?
On your own it is €39–60 of transport and you decide everything on the spot. A guided tour starts at €161.50 and makes sense if it is your first time, if you are on a cruise call, or if you want the Blue Grotto without handling boatmen and queues. Partner prices are checked regularly.
Can you see the Blue Grotto in a day?
Yes, but only with a calm sea and no wind: the entrance is an opening a little over a metre high and it is closed as soon as the sea moves. Get there by boat by 11:30 and keep a plan B ready, because nobody can guarantee you access in advance.
What is the last useful sailing back to Naples?
The last SNAV fast craft leaves Capri at 19:12; NLG runs until 19:55 in high season. The Caremar ferry to Calata Porta di Massa stops earlier. Never bank on the last sailing: if the sea worsens it is cancelled.
What happens if the sea is rough?
Fast craft are suspended before ferries, which ride it out better. If your sailing is cancelled the company refunds you or rebooks you, but the day is lost: in winter and on windy days keep Capri as plan B and Sorrento or the excavations as plan A.
Is Capri suitable for children?
The island is all climbs, stairways and narrow streets without pavements: a pushchair is a burden. With small children what works is the ferry (steadier), the funicular up to the Piazzetta, the Monte Solaro chairlift from age 4 or 5, and an afternoon in the Gardens of Augustus.
Official sources
Read next
- SorrentoCircumvesuviana, Campania Express, hydrofoil, shuttle or airport transfer: verified fares and times for a Sorrento day trip from Naples.
- Amalfi CoastMinivan, boat, ferry or train plus bus: what an Amalfi Coast day trip from Naples really costs, with verified timetables and tours compared.
- Ischia and ProcidaTwo islands in one day: ferry fares, island buses, thermal parks and the boat tour that joins them. Procida from €32.50. Compare and pick your day.
- Boat toursGozzo, shared boat, yacht or kayak: capacities, departure quays and verified prices per person or per boat. Pick the right format and book your trip.
- Getting aroundMetro, Circumvesuviana, ferries, Alibus and high-speed rail: lines, stations, minutes, fares and last useful services. Check tickets and transfers.