Sorrento to Capri Ferry: Fares, Timetable and Tickets

Two numbers deserve a warning. The crossing duration is the one NLG does not publish anywhere on its route page, so the 25-to-26-minute figure comes from the platform listing for the same crossing, and it is dock-to-dock, not queue-to-queue. And the landing fee is not an NLG charge: it is the island's own arrival tax, added per person to every leg that lands on Capri, which is why the return leg to Sorrento does not carry it.

The operator whose route page we checked and verified is NLG, Navigazione Libera del Golfo, and its page at nlg.it carries the 2026 fare table, the calendar and the booking widget; private customers are pointed from there to the operator's own booking portal. We did not find a second company's official page for the Sorrento to Capri crossing in this check, so we print NLG only; the aggregators that rank for the route sell tickets for the same service and add their own layer. What the official page does not publish is anything like a seat map or a gate time: there is one port, one office and a queue, and the ticket is not for a named sailing.

That is the honest limit of the official site, and it is also why a reservable ticket like the platform ferry journey exists at all.

• Official site: nlg.it route page, with the fare table and the booking widget on it
• Booking portal: the operator's own customer portal linked from the route page for dated bookings
• At the port: the ticket office at Piazza Marinai d'Italia, open 07:00 to 19:00, sells the same fares with no booking fee
• Aggregators: listed prices differ from the official fare by a few dollars; they buy you a reservation, not a better boat

In season there are seven sailings a day from Sorrento and six back from Capri. Out of season the service thins to the two anchor sailings, the 08:30 and the 17:05, with a 14:00 crossing only on selected winter dates. Plan the return around the 16:05 and the 17:45: they are the last two boats, and the 17:45 is the one you must not be late for.

The 08:30 is the I.R. sailing, the year-round service that carries the cheaper €20.20 (about $23.40) fare, and the 09:00 runs in season only. For a day trip the 08:30 buys roughly an extra hour on the island and the season's cheapest fare in one move; the 09:40 and 11:10 are the boats that make the town queue at Marina Piccola worth avoiding. On the Capri side, the 09:10 and 10:25 returns are for the half-day crowd, and everything after 15:30 is one step closer to the last-boat problem below.

The ticket office at Piazza Marinai d'Italia opens at 07:00, ninety minutes before the first boat, and it sells the plain official fare with nothing added. The operator's own booking portal, linked from the route page, sells the same fares dated, which is worth doing for August weekends when the morning queue runs long. The platform listings, the single journey at $27 and the Capri plus Positano round trip at $77, add a cancellation window and a voucher to the same boats.

None of the three changes what you pay for children or luggage: those are operator and island rules. Luggage costs €5.00 per piece each way, so a return with a suitcase adds €10.00 (about $11.60), and pets travel at €5.00 each way too.

• At the office: official fare, no fee, opens 07:00, cash and cards both accepted at the window per NLG's page (the page does not state card policy, so carry a backup)
• On the official portal: dated tickets at the same fares, useful for peak mornings
• On the platform: the reservable journey ticket or the multi-leg round trip, each with the listing's own cancellation terms
• On board: NLG's page does not state an on-board purchase option for this route, so do not plan around it

The fee is €5.00 (about $5.80) per person from 1 April to 31 October and €2.50 (about $2.90) per person from 1 November to 31 March, set by the island's town-council resolutions of 12 January 2024 and added by the operator to every leg that arrives in Capri. It is charged per person, and NLG's route page states no child rate for it, so a family of four pays €20.00 (about $23.20) on top of the summer return fares. NLG's page also notes a separate disembarkation duty under the 2012 law that applies to the same arriving legs and not to the return.

For a boat tour that circles Capri without landing, no fee falls due; that split is explained on the Sorrento boat tour page.

• €5.00 (about $5.80) per person, 1 April to 31 October
• €2.50 (about $2.90) per person, 1 November to 31 March
• On top of the fare, added by the operator at purchase, not collected at the turnstile
• No child rate stated on the route page; every passenger pays the island fee
• One-way only: the charge attaches to legs landing on Capri, not the return to Sorrento

After the 17:45 there is nothing: no night crossing, no operator statement about stranded travellers, no published fallback, and that absence is itself the fact to plan around. A missed last ferry means an unplanned Capri night at island prices, which no source we checked publishes a figure for. The practical order is to anchor the day to the 16:05 return and treat the 17:45 as the bonus boat: the day plan on the Capri page is built on exactly that arithmetic.

Sea state is the other way the last boat disappears; the listings for this crossing carry the same warning, that hydrofoils run in most weather but landings at Capri pause in heavy swell, so on a fresh day take the earlier return rather than the last.

• Last return: 17:45 daily, all year
• The safe return: 16:05, the second-to-last sailing and the one a full island day can still make
• If boats pause in swell: landings at Capri can stop while the crossing stays technically open; earlier is safer
• Missed it: no published fallback exists; the cost of an unplanned island night is not stated by any operator or official source

The crossing itself is easy: 25 to 26 minutes each way per the listing, seven sailings a day in season, and a return fare of €44.00 (about $51.00) plus the €5.00 landing fee. Whether the day is worth it depends on what you do with the six to eight hours ashore, and that is a plan, not a ticket. The full verdict, the hour-by-hour island day and the cost build-up are on the Capri day trip from Sorrento page; if you would rather meet the island from the water without landing, the boat tour formats compare the circuits instead.

Our one-sentence answer: the day is worth it if you can take the 08:30 out and leave yourself the 16:05 home.

The 08:30 sailing is the load-bearing fact of a Sorrento holiday that includes Capri: it is the boat that turns the island into a full day, and it is the reason the two-day plan puts Capri on its second morning while the town still has yesterday evening left. Give yourself 25 minutes on foot down to Marina Piccola from the town centre, or take the steps behind Piazza Tasso, and buy at the office the afternoon before if the morning looks busy. If the weather turns, the same port runs the Positano line as the sheltered-water swap.

One sentence to decide by: take the 08:30 out, buy the return at the office when you land, and let the island day decide which of the 16:05 and 17:45 boats you earn.