Which Boat Tour Should You Book?

There are fifty-two bookable Favignana and Levanzo boat tours, they nearly all visit the same coves, and the price runs from $46 to $1,742. This page answers the question that actually matters — which one should you book — by taking it one priority at a time.

Best overall value — Egadi Charter, Trapani, $58

Twelve guests, 4.9 across 98 reviews, a full day from Trapani covering Cala Azzurra, Bue Marino, Cala Rossa, the Grotta degli Innamorati, Favignana town and Levanzo. Soft drinks and Sicilian wine, fresh fruit, snorkelling gear, life vests and a floating mat at the anchorages. No fee collected on the day.

It costs $29 less than the mini-yacht and rates six-tenths of a point higher. Nothing else on this route beats it on price-for-rating. Lunch is not included — you eat during the stop in Favignana town.

Cheapest — Blu Lines mini-cruise, Trapani, $46

The lowest fare on the route, and with 2,940 reviews it is also the most-booked tour by a wide margin. Both islands, free time ashore in Favignana, a hot Trapanese lunch served on board, and a village stop at Levanzo.

Two caveats stated plainly: it rates 4.2, the lowest here, and the weaker reviews are about crowding on a large shared vessel rather than anything failing. And a €5 Marine Protected Area fee is collected on the day. It remains excellent value — but it is a different day from the small boats, not a cheaper version of one.

Best rated — Egadi Boating, Trapani, $80

4.9 across 448 guests, the strongest rating-plus-volume combination on this site. A small boat that anchors at Bue Marino and at the mouth of the Grotta degli Innamorati, where the skipper hands out gear and you swim inside the cave through one of its two entrances.

If you want the safest booking on evidence rather than on promises, this is it.

Best small-group tour — Tourist Lines Egadi, Trapani, $64

Twelve guests on a modern maxi-RIB, 4.8 across 830 reviews — the most-reviewed small boat here. Drinks, fruit and a Sicilian street-food snack; snorkelling gear, life jackets and floaties included. It sits neatly between the $58 value pick and the $80 top-rated one, with more review evidence than either.

More on the format: small-group boat tours.

Best tour with lunch — Zeus Charter, from Favignana, $151

A straight 5.0 from 63 guests, the highest-rated tour on this site. Lunch is actually cooked and served on board — food, water, wine, a digestif, fruit and dessert — on an owner-skippered boat with two sun decks and a shaded area extended with awnings for the meal. It departs from Favignana, so no crossing eats into the day.

Best lunch on a budget: EgadisLife at $70, also from Favignana, with a pane cunzato, fruit and wine on board — the cheapest fed day here. Best from the mainland with lunch: the $46 mini-cruise above.

Full breakdown: boat tours with lunch.

Best for snorkelling — Egadi Discovery, from Favignana, $70

Five swimming stops in six hours, and none of that six hours is spent crossing from the mainland. Cala Rossa, Bue Marino, Cala Azzurra, Cala Fredda, Cala Minnola and the Blue Grotto on Favignana’s northern coast. Snorkelling gear included, and a toilet on board. 4.8 across 179 guests.

From the mainland, Egadi Boating is the pick, on the strength of the Lovers’ Cave swim. More: snorkelling tours.

Best private tour — Exclusive Boat Trapani, $836 per boat

4.9 across nine bookings, and the only private charter from Trapani that includes a full lunch on board with Sicilian products, local wine and prosecco. It also circles Favignana properly, reaching Cala del Preveto and Cala Rotonda on the western side, which the shared fleet does not.

Read the capacity carefully, though: that $836 covers up to four people, so it is $209 each rather than the $70 a twelve-berth charter would give you. For a larger group, the Marsala 27-foot boat takes twelve for $1,161 — $97 a head, less than a seat on the mini-yacht. See the full arithmetic on private boat tours.

Best from Trapani — Egadi Charter, $58

Same as best overall value. Trapani has thirty-eight departures and the widest quality spread on the route; this is the one that gets the most right for the least money. Full port comparison: boat tours from Trapani.

Best from Marsala — Triscovery, $139

Marsala’s inventory is small and skews private. Among the shared boats, Triscovery is the one that includes a pane cunzato baked by the operator’s own bakers, an aperitif, the landing tax and the fuel levy — the listing states there are no fees collected on the day, which is rare here.

If you want both islands from Marsala rather than Favignana alone, take the nine-hour shared day at $116 instead. Full port page: boat tours from Marsala.

Best from Favignana — Zeus Charter, $151

Same as best with lunch. If $151 is more than you want to spend, EgadisLife at $70 is the value answer and also feeds you. Full page: boat tours from Favignana.

Best for families — Blu Lines mini-cruise, Trapani, $46

This is the one case where the big boat genuinely wins. A large, stable vessel with shade, seating, a toilet and a hot lunch, plus two hours ashore in Favignana town, is a far easier day with young children than eight hours perched on a RIB in the sun. It is also the cheapest, which with four tickets to buy is not a small thing.

Read the exclusions before you book, though: individual operators across this route set minimum ages of one or four years, and the RIB tours in particular list pregnant women as unsuitable. And note that nearly every swim stop on any tour here is entering open water from a boat, not wading from a beach.

Best if you want more time swimming — Egadi Discovery, from Favignana, $70

Five stops in six hours is the highest ratio here, and it comes from the same structural fact each time: departures from the island spend none of the day crossing. If you are on the mainland and cannot use an island departure, Egadi Charter’s RIB deploys a floating mat at the anchorages, which turns each stop into somewhere you can stay in the water rather than tread it.

Is a smaller boat worth paying more for?

Usually yes, and the evidence is unusually clean. Three independent twelve-guest operators from Trapani rate 4.9, 4.8 and 4.9 across 448, 830 and 98 reviews. The large shared cruise rates 4.2 across 2,940. That is not one crew having a good year; it is a property of the format.

The mechanism is not comfort — a RIB is less comfortable than a big boat. It is access and waiting. A shallow-draught hull anchors inside Bue Marino and at the mouth of the Grotta degli Innamorati; the large vessels sail past both. And with twelve people, a twenty-five-minute anchorage is twenty-five minutes of swimming rather than fifteen minutes of queueing for a ladder.

But not always. If your day is really about seeing Favignana town, having a hot lunch and getting a look at the coves from the deck, the $46 cruise does that honestly and the extra $12 to $105 buys you very little. And if anyone in the group has a bad back or a weak stomach, the big hull is genuinely the better boat. See RIB and dinghy tours for that trade-off in full.

The two costs nobody mentions

The €20 per-person skipper fee on the Trapani mini-yacht, collected at the box office on the day. It takes a booking for two from $174 to roughly $220 and it is the largest on-the-day charge on this route.

The €5 Egadi Marine Protected Area fee on the $46 mini-cruise, also paid on site.

Both are declared in the listings’ exclusions. Neither appears in the price you compare in search results, and between them they change which tour is actually cheapest.

Ready to book? Check live availability and prices for your dates. Every tour here confirms instantly and nearly all carry free cancellation up to 24 hours before departure.