Almost every Favignana and Levanzo boat tour visits the same coves. Cala Azzurra, Bue Marino, Cala Rossa, then across to Levanzo for Cala Fredda and Cala Minnola. Read six listings and you will read the same itinerary six times.
So the useful question is not where the boat goes. It is how many people go with you — and on this route that single variable predicts the rating almost perfectly.
The numbers
| Format | Typical price | Guests | Rating |
|---|
| Large shared cruise | $46–$87 | 100+ | 4.2–4.3 |
| Twelve-guest boat or RIB | $58–$99 | up to 12 | 4.8–4.9 |
| Private charter | $790–$1,742 per boat | your group | 4.9 (low counts) |
Three different twelve-guest operators from Trapani — Egadi Boating, Tourist Lines Egadi and Egadi Charter — sit at 4.9, 4.8 and 4.9, across 448, 830 and 98 reviews respectively. That is consistent enough across independent companies to be a property of the format rather than of any one crew.
What the cap concretely changes
Access. Bue Marino is a cliff face over deep water; the Grotta degli Innamorati is a sea cave with two entrances. Both need a boat that can anchor close in. The large cruise vessels point at them from a distance. If the photograph you have in your head is of people swimming into a cave, that is a small-boat stop.
Swim time. A twenty-five-minute anchorage means twenty-five minutes in the water when there are twelve of you. With a hundred and twenty passengers and one ladder, a good part of that stop is spent in a queue.
The skipper. Read the reviews of the twelve-guest boats and the skipper is named — Vito, Giuseppe, Pino, Nino, Vincenzo, Marco. That does not happen on a large vessel. It is a soft signal, but it is a reliable one.
Flexibility. Small boats reorder stops around the wind. Large ones run a timetable. On a day when the northerly is up, that is the difference between three good anchorages and three uncomfortable ones.
What it does not change
The small boats are not more comfortable in the conventional sense. A RIB is exposed to the sun for eight hours, bumpier in chop, and has nowhere to sit properly. If you want shade, a seat and a stable deck, a mini-yacht or the large cruise is genuinely the better boat — see RIB and dinghy tours for the full trade-off.
Small boats also rarely include lunch. The twelve-guest tours generally provide drinks, fruit and a snack, and dock at Favignana at one o’clock so you can eat ashore. If a hot meal on board matters to you, look at boat tours with lunch instead.
The best-value small-group boats
Egadi Charter’s full-day RIB from Trapani at $58 is the clearest value: twelve guests, 4.9 rated, wine and fruit on board, snorkelling gear, a floating mat at the anchorages, and no fee collected on the day.
The Egadi Boat Experience at $80 carries the strongest rating-plus-volume combination on the whole site — 4.9 from 448 guests — and is the one whose reviews most consistently describe a day built around swimming.
If you are already on the island, the six-hour Favignana departure with five swim stops fits more water into less day than any mainland tour can.
Is the premium worth it?
If the swimming is the point of your day, yes — clearly. If you mainly want to see Favignana town, have a hot lunch and come back, the $46 cruise does that well and the extra money buys you little.
We work through that decision, along with cheapest, best for families and best for snorkelling, on the best Favignana and Levanzo boat tours page. Or check availability — twelve seats go before two hundred do.
