Komodo Liveaboard Prices

Komodo liveaboard prices run from $165 to $1,550, and almost none of that spread is the itinerary. Every boat below visits the same islands with the same rangers. What you are buying as the number rises is nights, then a cabin, then a bathroom, then the boat itself.

Here is what each tier actually costs, with the two charges that sit outside all of them.

The seven tiers, priced

All figures are live GetYourGuide prices. Read the basis, not just the number — GetYourGuide sells some of these per person and others for the whole vessel, and two boats an hour apart on the same route can quote on different bases.

Where the money actually goes

Read that table vertically and the pattern is sharp.

$165 → $292 buys a night. This is the best-value increment on the page. The second night adds three or four stops and, more importantly, a second morning to retry a weather-dropped Manta Point session. Detail on the 3D2N page.

$292 → $339 buys a private cabin. Forty-seven dollars for a door that closes and reliable air conditioning, on the boat with the best rating-times-volume in the catalogue. On value terms this is the second-best increment here.

$339 → $767 buys a bathroom. Four hundred and twenty-eight dollars, and that is essentially all it buys — the itinerary is the same. Whether it is worth it is a genuine question; the luxury page sets out what the ensuite tier actually adds.

And here the basis flips. The graded Phinisi lists at $855 — but that is per group of up to two, so for a couple it works out around $428 a head. Read that against the $767-per-person VIP boat and the deluxe tier is cheaper for two people than the table’s ordering suggests. It is the single most valuable thing on this page, and it is invisible if you compare headline numbers.

$926 buys the boat to yourself, per person. The most-reviewed private 2D1N boat is priced per head, not per vessel, so no group arithmetic applies to it — though it does include every park and ranger fee. The genuine whole-boat charters run $853 to $5,604 in tiers of two, four and ten, and every one of them is newly listed with no reviews. The private charter page works both models through.

The two charges in none of these prices

Komodo National Park entry, ranger and conservation fees. Collected by the park authority, not the operator, and sitting in the exclusions of almost every shared boat. Budget roughly IDR 650,000–750,000 per foreign visitor for a multi-day trip, in cash, in rupiah. Domestic residents pay roughly half.

It is a fixed cost per head, so it hurts cheap trips proportionally more — around 22% on top of a $183 two-day trip, under 6% on a $767 VIP cabin. Two wrinkles: most private charters include it, and at least one shared boat now requires it in advance rather than in cash. The fees guide lists what each operator here charges.

A per-person fuel surcharge, on at least one boat, scaling with cabin grade: IDR 350,000 on superior, IDR 500,000 on deluxe, IDR 750,000 on luxury. Also in the exclusions. On a luxury cabin, the surcharge and park fee together add roughly $90 per person.

Then the smaller ones: crew tips (optional everywhere, customary in practice), alcohol (generally excluded and often not sold on board), travel insurance, and one more night in Labuan Bajo — because boats return early to mid-afternoon on the final day with delays routine, and you should not book a same-day flight out.

Is the day trip cheaper? Yes, and by less than it looks

A full-day speedboat from Labuan Bajo is $88 and reaches four to six of the same stops. Set against a $183 overnight boat that is roughly half the price.

But the day trip’s park fee is also paid on site in cash, so the real gap narrows — and what the extra ninety-five dollars buys is the Padar ridge at sunrise and Kalong Island’s flying foxes at dusk, neither of which is reachable in a day at any price. We argue both sides properly on the liveaboard vs day trip page.

Getting the best price

Book early, pay nothing. Free cancellation up to 24 hours ahead and reserve-now-pay-later are near-universal on these listings, so holding a date costs nothing. The well-rated boats run one or two departures a week and fill first in July, August and the December–February manta window.

Buy the night before the cabin. On any budget, the second night returns more than the better bathroom.

Check the basis before you compare two prices. A listing marked per group up to 2 at $855 and one marked per person at $767 are not $88 apart — for a couple the first is roughly $340 a head cheaper. GetYourGuide states the basis on every listing; this is the one number worth reading twice.

Check the price against your month. GetYourGuide prices are set by operators and move with demand; the figures on this site are live rather than fixed. The seasons guide covers when demand peaks.

Ready to see live dates and prices? The calendar above is the shared-cabin sailing at $292 — or read the buying guide and then check availability.