Cruise wifi cost calculator

Ship wifi is sold per device, per day. That one fact is why families are surprised at the total, and it is the arithmetic almost nobody does before boarding.

Put in the daily price your line quotes — it is in your cruise planner, or on the booking confirmation — and this works out what your party actually pays.

Why the total surprises people

Lines advertise a daily price, and a daily price sounds small. The multiplication is what gets you: people × nights × price. A family of four on a fortnight's cruise can be looking at four figures for something they will mostly use to say "we're at the pool".

It is sold per device almost everywhere, not per cabin and not per booking. Two parents and two teenagers is four packages at the default.

What one shared package does and does not cover

One package means one device online at a time. Some lines let you swap which device that is, a few prohibit sharing outright, so check the terms for your line.

What it genuinely covers: somebody in the party is reachable from home. That is the real reason most families buy wifi at all — an elderly parent, a business, a teenager left behind.

What it does not cover: everyone being individually contactable from shore, and everyone posting as they go. Both are usually wants rather than needs, and the second is what a shared satellite link handles worst anyway.

The part the calculator cannot price, because it is free

Most of what families buy wifi for is not reaching home at all. It is finding each other — where are you, are we still meeting at six, has anyone seen the kids.

That does not need the internet. Some lines include guest chat in their own app over the ship's network, free on Royal Caribbean, Princess and Disney, paid per person on Carnival and Norwegian, and absent on P&O — line by line here. And CruiseLink passes messages directly between the phones in your group over Bluetooth and the ship's local network, with no package at all.

Said plainly, because it is the honest limit: that only reaches the people you are travelling with, everyone has to install it before sailing, and it is not instant across a whole ship. For reaching home, you still need somebody to have bought something.

Three ways to pay less, in order of how much they save

1. Buy fewer packages than people. This is the big one and almost nobody does it. The calculator above is the argument.
2. Buy before you sail. Pre-cruise pricing is consistently lower than the onboard rate, and the onboard rate is what you pay if you decide on day two.
3. Use the ports. Free wifi in a port café handles photos, video and backups, which are exactly what the satellite link is worst at. Where to find it.

This works from the price you enter rather than a stored price list, so it cannot go stale and it works for any line and any currency. The lines do not publish these figures openly — the number lives in your cruise planner once you have booked.

Get CruiseLink

Free, no account, nothing to set up beyond your group. On iPhone and Android, and the two work together.