Amalfi Coast Tours by Boat or by Road: How to Choose

This is the first decision to make about a day on the Amalfi Coast, and everything else follows from it. Ten of the trips listed here go by water and five go by road, they cost roughly the same, and they produce completely different days. In this guide: what each one actually buys, what it leaves out, who each suits, and what to do if you have two days rather than one.

What is the actual difference?

A road day is about towns. You are driven along the SS163 and set down in Positano, Amalfi and usually Ravello, with an hour or two in each to walk, look and eat. A boat day is about the coast between the towns: the coves, the sea caves, the fjord at Furore and the water itself, with one or two stops ashore rather than three.

Neither is a lesser version of the other. They see different things. The road cannot reach the coves and the boat cannot reach Ravello, which sits 350 metres above the sea with no route up from it.

Boat against road, compared

What does a boat day give you that a road day cannot?

Access, mostly. The SS163 runs along the contour well above the water, so everything at sea level between the towns — the beach at La Gavitella, the cove at Marina di Praia, the Fiordo di Furore, the coves below Praiano with no name at all — has no road to it. Half of what people photograph on this coast is reachable only from a boat.

It also gives you the towns from the angle they were built to be seen from. Positano reads as a ravine full of houses from two hundred metres offshore and as a set of roofs from the road above it. And it gives you swimming, which on a road day means finding a beach in your free hour and then getting dry again.

Practically, a boat day usually feeds you. The captured listings include prosecco, limoncello, beer, soft drinks, water, snacks and fruit aboard as standard, and one includes a full lunch. A road day includes none of that.

What does a road day give you that a boat cannot?

Three towns instead of one or two, and Ravello above all. Ravello is the one place on this coast a boat cannot take you: Villa Rufolo, built in 1270, whose garden Wagner took for Klingsor's in Parsifal after visiting in 1880; Villa Cimbrone and its Terrace of the Infinite; and a square that empties completely once the coaches leave.

A road day also gives you a guide rather than a skipper. On the busier shared days a licensed guide travels with the vehicle all day and gives live commentary between the towns, which is a different proposition from a captain pointing out a headland. And it runs in December, which the boats do not.

Which one costs more?

Almost nothing separates them at the shared end. Road days on this coast run from about $110 to $130 a person; small-group boat days from about $110 to $182. The cheapest full day on the coast is a road day at $109, and the cheapest boat day is $110.

Where the gap opens is at the private end. A private car is quoted per person and starts around $331; a private boat is quoted for the whole boat and starts at $769 for up to six. If there are five or six of you, the boat can work out cheaper per head than the car — which is not what most people expect. That arithmetic is worked through in the tour prices guide.

How much of the day is spent moving?

More than you think, on both. A road day of eight to nine hours gives you three to five hours ashore, which means four or more hours in the vehicle. That is not padding: it is what the SS163 does. Fifty kilometres of two-lane road with over a thousand bends takes an hour and a quarter end to end in light traffic and two hours in August.

A boat day of seven hours gives you perhaps two to three hours ashore and four on the water. The difference is that four hours on the water is the product, and four hours in a minibus is the price of the product. That single distinction settles the question for a lot of people.

Who should take the road

First-time visitors who want the three famous towns and will regret missing Ravello. Anybody travelling between November and March, when the boats have stopped. People who would rather walk a town than swim off a boat. Anybody with a mobility need, because one private minivan states that the vehicle itself is wheelchair accessible and no boat on this list makes the same claim.

And anybody prone to seasickness, obviously — although read the next section before you assume that settles it.

Who should take the boat

Swimmers, first. Families with children old enough for a boat, because the swim stops are what younger travellers remember and several boats carry floats. Couples who want a day that costs the same as a coach seat and feels nothing like one. Anybody who has been here before and already knows what Positano's main street looks like.

And anybody staying in Positano or Amalfi, because the boats leave from the beach you are standing on while a road tour usually starts in Sorrento, an hour away over the ridge.

What if you get seasick, or carsick?

Take the question seriously, because this coast punishes both. The SS163 is a continuous sequence of hairpins and it unsettles more people than the sea does; the water inside the Gulf of Salerno is usually calm through the summer and the boats stay close in. If you are prone to motion sickness generally, the boat is often the gentler of the two.

Either way: take something before you set off rather than once it starts, and choose a morning departure. The afternoon breeze gets up along this coast almost every day of the summer, and the road is at its slowest — and therefore its most stop-start — after two o'clock.

Can you do both in two days?

Yes, and it is the best two days available here. The order matters slightly: do the road day first, because it orients you and puts names on the towns, then take the boat and watch the same coast go past from below. Doing it the other way round works too, but the boat day is better when you already know what you are looking at.

If you only have two days and are staying in Sorrento, consider making the boat day one that departs from Positano or Amalfi and travelling there independently, so you are not crossing the peninsula twice. The one-day guide sets out how the timings work.

What the season decides for you

Sometimes the choice is made for you. The boat operators publish their own trading seasons and they are the hard constraint on this coast: most open between mid-March and mid-April and close between 18 October and 8 November. Outside those dates there is no boat day at any price and the road is the only option.

The month-by-month weather page carries the temperature and rainfall figures behind that table, and the shoulder-season guide covers what is open in April, May, September and October in more detail.

The short version

One day and a first visit: take the road, because Ravello is worth it and you will want the three towns. One day and you have been before: take the boat. Two days: take both, road first. Any day between November and March: the road, because nothing else is running.

Whichever way you go, compare on time ashore rather than on total length, and read the exclusions before the price — several boats collect a docking or destination fee in cash on board, and no road tour includes the villa admissions at Ravello. The full list of Amalfi Coast tours from Positano and everywhere else sits on Amalfi Coast Italy Tours.

Frequently asked questions