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Capri Italy Tours › Blue Grotto Capri Italy Without a TourUpdated 2026-09-05

Can You Visit the Blue Grotto in Capri Italy Without a Tour?

Hours, prices and access verified by the Capri Italy Tours team — last checked 2026-09-05

Tour boats and rowboats waiting their turn at the mouth of the Blue Grotto

You can absolutely go on your own, and the honest answer to what it costs is: €42 if you go by sea from Marina Grande, and €18 if you take the bus. Here is the whole arithmetic, and where a tour earns its money.

Can you go to the Blue Grotto without a tour?

Yes, and nobody will stop you. There is no requirement to arrive with a group, no advance ticket and no timed entry. What there is instead is a floating ticket office at the cave mouth, a queue of boats, and a fee structure that is not obvious until you are standing in it.

What does it actually cost on your own?

ArrivingPublic motorboatRowboatEntryTotal
From Marina Grande, independently€24€12€6€42
By bus from Anacapri—€12€6€18 plus €2.40 for the bus
On a tour boatIn your fare€12€6€18
On a tour that includes itIn your fareIn your fareIn your fareNothing more

That is the whole arithmetic, and it is the answer to most of the questions people ask about this cave. The €24 motorboat is the part that surprises people: from Marina Grande it is the only public way to the cave by sea, and it is priced as a return trip to the grotto or as an island tour.

Reduced entry applies: €2 for EU citizens aged 18 to 25 and free under 18, so a family with teenagers pays the rowboat and little else. The floating office takes cash.

How do you get there by land?

Tour boats and rowboats waiting their turn at the mouth of the Blue Grotto

The cheapest route by a wide margin. A bus from Anacapri takes about twenty minutes and costs €2.40, and a flight of steps takes you down to the same floating office the boats use. You then pay €12 for the rowboat and €6 to go in, and you are inside for the same five minutes as everybody else.

The catch is getting to Anacapri in the first place: funicular from Marina Grande to Capri town, then a bus, or a single bus that takes about twenty-five minutes. From the harbour it is roughly an hour door to door, and the same again back.

What is it like inside?

Five minutes, and worth them. Your rowboat holds four and the boatman pulls on a chain fixed to the roof to get you through an opening about two metres wide and a metre high, which is why everybody lies flat. Inside, the light comes in under the surface and bounces up through the water, so the whole cave is lit from below in a blue nothing else quite produces.

It is not a long visit and it is not a peaceful one — there are other rowboats and the boatmen sing. Go for the two minutes when the light does what it does, not for a contemplative half hour.

How long is the queue, honestly?

Anything from twenty minutes to two and a half hours. Travellers on five different trips here have described waits at the upper end in season, and two operators decline to include the cave at all specifically because of it.

The variable is the hour. It opens at nine, and the ferries and tenders land their passengers between ten and eleven. If you are at the cave before ten you are usually through in under half an hour; if you arrive at one o'clock in August you are making a substantial commitment.

When is it open, and when is it not?

SeasonHoursLast entry
November to March09:00–14:0013:30
April, May and October09:00–16:0015:30
June to September09:00–18:00, sometimes 18:30 at peak17:30

Closed on 25 December and 1 January — and closed on any morning the sea is up. That decision is taken at the cave, on the day, by the boatmen. There is no forecast to check and no booking to protect you.

So is a tour worth paying for?

It depends entirely on which failure mode you would rather avoid.

Going alone saves money if you go by land: €18 plus a €2.40 bus, against a tour fare. Nothing else on Capri is cheaper for the same five minutes.

Going alone costs you the morning if the cave is shut when you arrive, because you will have spent an hour getting there and an hour getting back for nothing. A boat trip in the same weather still runs its other stops.

A tour buys the order. The two guided days that include the ticket go to the cave first, before the queue builds, which is the single most valuable thing anybody can do about this attraction.

Which tours include the ticket?

Two, out of everything here. Both are seven-hour guided island days from Marina Grande with land transport and a licensed guide, and both put the admission and the rowboat transfer inside the fare. One of them also carries a written substitute — a shared boat tour of the island — if the cave is closed on the day.

Nine other trips stop outside and leave you to pay the €18 in cash. One passes the cave without stopping, and two skip it entirely and tell you so in their own words. The Blue Grotto tours page is the full breakdown.

What do you lose by skipping it?

Less than the guidebooks imply, and this is worth saying plainly. The other caves round the island — the White Grotto, the Grotta Verde, the Grotta Rossa, the Grotta dei Santi — are free, have no queue, and a small boat goes straight inside them rather than transferring you to a rowboat. Several of the two-hour trips visit three or four of them.

If your mental image of Capri's caves is gliding into a lit cavern, the free ones deliver that experience and the famous one delivers five minutes and a ticket. That is not an argument against the Blue Grotto. It is an argument against building a whole day round it.

What else is at that end of the island?

If you are making the journey by land, do not make it only for five minutes. The bus from Anacapri to the cave passes the road out to the Punta Carena lighthouse, twenty minutes the other way, where there are rock platforms to swim from and the best sunset on the island. Anacapri itself holds Villa San Michele at €12 and the Monte Solaro chairlift at €14 return, both a short walk from Piazza Vittoria.

Built together, that is a genuinely good day: chairlift at nine, cave by eleven, lunch in Anacapri, lighthouse in the afternoon. It is also almost entirely served by a €2.40 bus. The highlights page prices each piece.

What do the tours get wrong about it?

Two things, and both are worth knowing before you read a listing. First, several trips describe themselves as visiting the Blue Grotto when what they mean is that they stop outside it and wait while you decide whether to pay. That is not dishonest, but it is not the same as a ticket, and the exclusions on the same listing usually say so in small print.

Second, a listing that says the cave may be closed and no refund issued is telling you something real rather than covering itself. Four of the trips here carry that clause. It is a reason to prefer a route with other stops on it, not a reason to distrust the operator.

The decision, in one paragraph

If you are staying on the island and the weather is settled, go by bus from Anacapri before ten and pay €18. If you are here for one day and the cave is why, buy one of the two guided days and let them handle the order. If you are here for the water rather than the ticket, take a two-hour boat trip and go into the free caves instead. All three are defensible; assembling a day around the cave and hoping is not.

Every trip named in this guide is compared on price, hours and what the fare covers at Capri Italy Tours.

Frequently asked questions

How much is the Blue Grotto?
€18 a head if you arrive on a tour boat: €12 for the rowboat that takes you inside and €6 for the entry itself, paid at the floating ticket office at the cave mouth. Arriving under your own steam from Marina Grande adds the €24 public motorboat, so the same visit costs about €42. Entry is €2 for EU citizens aged 18 to 25 and free under 18.
Do Capri Italy boat tours include the Blue Grotto ticket?
Usually not. Of the trips listed here only two put the admission inside the fare — the guided small-group island day and the full-day guided tour — and the rest either stop outside and leave you to pay, or skip the cave altogether. The card for each tour says which of those it is, so check before you book.
When is the Blue Grotto open?
From 9am every day, closing at 2pm from November to March, at 4pm in April, May and October, and at 6pm from June to September. Last entry is half an hour before closing, and in peak weeks the June to September closing has been pushed to 6.30pm. It is shut on 25 December and 1 January.
Why does the Blue Grotto close?
Because of the sea. The entrance is about a metre high, so any swell or strong wind makes the rowboat transfer unsafe and the boatmen close it, a decision taken on the morning rather than in advance. Several operators state in writing that if the cave shuts the tour runs without it and no refund is given, so a trip that includes other stops is the safer booking.
Do I need cash on Capri?
Some. Card works for the funicular and the buses, where tap-and-go is live at the turnstiles, and for most tickets. The Blue Grotto's floating office and several boat operators' docking supplements are cash, and four of the charters here state their port or fuel surcharge is paid in cash on the day.
Is there a ticket to get onto Capri?
No. Capri is an island with two working towns, not a gated site, and you can walk anywhere public on it for nothing. What you pay for is the boat over, the transport up the hill, and the handful of places that charge admission — the Blue Grotto, Villa San Michele, Villa Jovis, the Gardens of Augustus and the chairlift.

The two fares that already include the ticket

Go early, take the bus if you are staying over, and never build a whole day round a cave the sea can close by breakfast.