How much does a 35–50 ft boat cost per day in 2026?

Original GetBoat data: 35–50 ft, eight destinations, 90 days to 30 July 2026 — listed rates, not bookings.

Across the eight destinations in this study, median listed day rates for a 35–50 ft motor yacht run from €1,038 in Dubai to €1,787 in Miami. Catamaran medians run from €424 in Mallorca to €2,322 in Miami across the seven destinations with enough boats to report.

Miami also advertises boats from $145 an hour. That contrast is the point: a “from” price shows the floor, not the middle of the listed fleet. These are listing prices, not completed bookings or final bills; VAT, fuel or a skipper may be extra.

One boat counts once, regardless of how many times we observed it. Rates are per boat, not per person, and are converted to euros for comparison. A “day” is whatever the operator sells as a day — we do not normalise trip length. “Middle 50%” is the Q1–Q3 range: half of the boats in that cell list inside it.

Quick read: median listed rates run from €1,038 per day in Dubai to €1,787 per day in Miami.

Quick read: Mallorca is the lowest market at €424 per day; Miami is the highest at €2,322 per day, but its figure is based on only 14 boats.

The advertised entry rate and the typical rate are different facts. Miami is the cheapest-looking market by “from” price and the most expensive by median, on both boat types. The inversion happens because entry rates describe one boat — the cheapest — while a median describes the fleet. So do not compare destinations by their lowest advertised price.

The gap between boat types is often larger than the gap between destinations. In five of the seven comparable destinations, the catamaran median is lower than the motor-yacht median: Mallorca €424 against €1,178 — less than half; Split €700 against €1,062; Athens €823 against €1,379; Ibiza €917 against €1,423; Phuket €888 against €1,254. Mykonos prices the two types almost identically (€1,428 vs €1,448), and Miami is the only market where catamarans list above motor yachts — on that 14-boat sample.

The middle half of the range is wide everywhere. Split catamarans run €344 to €1,343 between Q1 and Q3 — a 3.9x spread inside one type, one size band, one destination. Athens catamarans span 3.2x. A citywide average is too blunt to budget from — which is why we publish the ranges.

To use the tables: fix the boat type first, then the size, then the destination. Ask for the tax treatment and the all-in figure before comparing quotes, since listed rates resolve neither.

Usually not, at this size. At 35–50 ft, listings marked as crewed are a minority in our data: 2 to 26% depending on market, with two outliers — catamarans in Miami (43%) and Mykonos (36%). For budgeting, assume the skipper is extra unless the listing explicitly includes one. Where a skipper is billed separately, listings on our site put it at roughly €100 to €500 per day depending on market and duration — treat that as a GetBoat listing range, not a guaranteed quote or a hard cap.

Ask for the all-in figure before comparing quotes: a 21% difference in tax presentation outweighs most of the differences in the tables above.

Divide the day rate by the hourly rate to find the break-even number of hours; shorter trips favour the hourly rate, longer ones the day rate. Compare only listings with the same duration and inclusions. Half-day packages, where offered, price at 60 to 75% of a full day rather than half — so two half-days cost more than one full day.

Live prices for your own dates are on the GetBoat destination pages for Ibiza, Miami, Split, Athens, Mykonos, Mallorca, Dubai and Phuket, and on the catamaran and luxury-yacht listing pages.

Figures are medians of listed day rates — not completed bookings — held as rate observations in the GetBoat database. From 416,953 active observations we used only those with a day unit that were entered directly by the operator, excluding roughly 119,000 day values our system derives from weekly rates. We further required an internal quality score of 0.7 or above — a data-quality measure of how complete and consistent the record is — and an observation date within the 90 days to July 30, 2026. After all filters, the reported cells rest on 2,536 observations from 1,274 distinct boats. Amounts are converted to euros by our internal exchange-rate table at the time the observation is recorded.

Each boat contributes one value: we take the median of that boat’s observations, then the median across boats, so a frequently-observed listing does not outweigh a rarely-observed one. Boats are grouped by registered length of 35 to 50 ft and by category as recorded on the listing; sailing yachts and houseboats are excluded — sailing yachts are predominantly listed on weekly terms, houseboats are not day-charter products. Destinations are matched at city level, falling back to the boat’s home port where the observation carries no location; country-level entries are never folded into a city. Cells below 10 distinct boats are not reported; the smallest reported cell rests on 14 boats, the largest on 256.

Limitations: tax treatment is unrecorded, inclusions are recorded inconsistently, and listing length can contain errors. The window is May–July, so this is a summer snapshot, not a full-year seasonal comparison. These tables describe what boats list for on GetBoat, not what the wider charter market costs. Next refresh: October 2026.

Detailed notes for Spain, Greece and the US — the jurisdictions behind five of our eight destinations. Croatia, the UAE and Thailand follow in the October refresh.

Spain. The standard 21% rate applies to short-term hire of a vessel handed over to the customer inside Spanish VAT territory; short-term means up to 90 days. Ibiza and Mallorca fall under it.

Greece. The rate depends on the type of service, not on the length of the booking. Greek tax guidance distinguishes hire of a vessel without crew from carriage of passengers with crew: short-term bareboat hire with handover in Greece is generally taxed at 24%, while qualifying crewed passenger transport can fall under 13%. Itinerary and documented use outside Greek waters can affect the taxable base. If you see a flat “13% for charters over 48 hours” claim, treat it with caution — the 48-hour threshold governs eligibility for a reduced taxable base on qualifying crewed charters; it is not a switch between 13% and 24%.

The United States. A genuine bareboat charter turns on control of the vessel: the charterer must have control and must be free to select and pay the captain; the owner cannot remain aboard; up to 12 guests are permitted when bareboat conditions are met. Separate agreements for the boat and for the crew are a common way to evidence that the captain was independently chosen — standard practice rather than a statutory test. This does not mean a US rate never includes a captain: a lawfully operated uninspected or inspected passenger vessel can quote a captain inside the price. Establish which model you are buying, because the two look similar in a listing and differ in what you owe.