Belize City to Caye Caulker Ferry Schedule and Fares

Verified live on 24 September 2026, on both operators’ own booking systems, for travel on Wednesday 14 October 2026.

Two operators run this route. San Pedro Belize Express: 8 sailings each way, advertised at USD 29.00 — US$33.69 per adult once its checkout adds an 11% Internet Processing Fee and a US$1.50 Port Authority Fee. Caribbean Sprinter: 6 sailings each way, US$30.50–32.00 outbound and a flat US$32.00 back, which it states includes all fees. On what you actually pay, Sprinter is the cheaper boat on every departure, and — with the airport shuttle added — at every party size from one to four. Crossing times differ by operator and direction — see below. Where to stay on Caye Caulker covers the island end of the trip; the equivalent run to San Pedro is priced on our BZE airport to San Pedro page.

Departure times

Belize City → Caye Caulker

Caye Caulker → Belize City

Caye Caulker → San Pedro

San Pedro Belize Express: 8:45, 9:45, 11:15 AM, 12:45, 2:15, 3:45, 5:15, 6:15 PM (last). Its booking engine also sold a 7:00 AM sailing (arriving 7:30) for Wednesday 14 October 2026, which its printed schedule shows as running on certain days only — so that is nine departures on the engine against eight every-day ones on the printed sheet. Caribbean Sprinter: 8:45, 11:15 AM, 2:15, 3:45, 5:15, 6:25 PM (last). Fares for this onward leg are on our Caye Caulker to San Pedro water taxi page.

Belize Express times come from the operator’s printed schedule and were confirmed departure for departure against its live booking engine on 24 September 2026. Sprinter times come from its sailings page, which states “Our sailing schedule remains the same, seven days a week”, and were confirmed against its booking engine, which prints an approximate arrival time against every departure.

Fares

Belize Express’s sailing list shows USD 29.00 on all eight departures in both directions. Two fees appear only at the passenger step, after a sailing is chosen: an Internet Processing Fee and a Port Authority Fee of US$1.50 per passenger. The processing fee is set in the checkout page’s own code as 11% of the ticket subtotal, and the page displayed it as US$3.19 for one adult, US$6.38 for two, US$9.57 for three and US$12.76 for four. US$29.00 + US$3.19 + US$1.50 is the US$33.69 in the table — our arithmetic on the checkout’s own lines.

Sprinter varies outbound — 08:00 US$31.50, 10:30 US$30.50, 13:30 US$31.00, 15:00 US$31.50, 16:30 US$32.00, 17:40 US$32.00 — and charges a flat US$32.00 on every return sailing. Its booking page states: “There are no processing fees or charges, and pricing includes all applicable government fees & taxes.”

One caveat on the Belize Express fee. The figures above are what its passenger step displays in a browser. The page’s underlying code carries larger figures for groups before its own script replaces them — US$12.76 for two adults, US$28.71 for three, US$51.04 for four. We stopped before the payment step, so which figure is finally charged to a group of two or more is something we have not seen. Either way the comparison below does not change: the larger figures only widen Sprinter’s lead.

Which operator costs less, once you add the airport shuttle

Both terminals sit away from the international airport, and both operators sell a shuttle to reach it — about 25 minutes, by Belize Express’s own account. They price those shuttles differently: Belize Express charges USD 25.00 for the first person and USD 10.00 for each additional. Sprinter charges US$15.00 per person. Belize Express’s checkout showed its transfer as US$25.00, US$35.00, US$45.00 and US$55.00 at one to four passengers — the same rule.

Our arithmetic from those published figures, one way, airport to Caye Caulker, adult passengers, travel on 14 October 2026:

Sprinter’s totals span a range because its ferry fare varies by departure time. We computed every departure at every party size: Sprinter is cheaper on all six of its departures at all four party sizes. The gap narrows as the group grows, and at four adults it is smallest — US$1.76 — on Sprinter’s two dearest sailings, the 16:30 and the 17:40.

The shuttle on its own does point the other way for larger groups — Sprinter’s is cheaper at one and two passengers, the two tie at three (US$45.00 each), and Belize Express’s is cheaper at four (US$55.00 vs US$60.00, which is Sprinter’s US$15.00 × 4 — our arithmetic) — but Belize Express’s two ferry fees outweigh that at every size we priced. These are one-way totals for the airport-to-Caye-Caulker leg only.

Correction, 24 September 2026: an earlier version of this table left out Belize Express’s two checkout fees and showed it as the cheaper operator for three and four adults. With the fees included, it is not.

How long the crossing takes, by operator

These are two operators timing their own boats, not a contested number — there is nothing to reconcile between them. Use the figure for the operator you booked. The one genuine disagreement here is inside a single company, and it is flagged under the table.

Belize Express’s booking engine shows 45 minutes outbound and 1 hour 0 minutes on every return sailing; its Caye Caulker destination page also states 45 minutes from Belize City. Sprinter’s booking results page states, verbatim, that the sailing is “approximately 45 minutes” in both directions, its sailings page gives “0h 45m ± 5 min” each way, and its engine’s per-departure arrival times sit 45 minutes after each departure. All checked 24 September 2026.

San Pedro Belize Express does not agree with itself about the return. Its own FAQ says the crossing is “approximately 45 mins” — both ways — which its booking engine contradicts on every return sailing we priced. We put the engine’s 1 hour in the table because it is per-sailing, dated and transactional, and we are flagging the FAQ rather than deleting it: the operator publishes both figures, so the 1-hour return is not settled. This is the operator’s own inconsistency, and it is a different thing from the two-operator difference above.

Terminals

San Pedro Belize Express departs the Belize Marine Terminal, #111 North Front Street, Belize City, phone 011-501-223-2225.

Caribbean Sprinter’s sailings page gives its terminals in the map on that page rather than in the text: Belize City, 10 N Front St., +501 223-0033, open 6:00AM – 6:30PM, and Caye Caulker, Front Beach @ Calle del Sol, +501 613-0079, open 5:45 AM – 6:45 PM. The two Belize City terminals are on the same street at different numbers, so check which one your ticket is for.

If you are searching for “Ocean Ferry Belize”

Ocean Ferry Belize is no longer an independent brand. The domain oceanferrybelize.com did not answer at all on 24 September 2026 — the connection timed out over both http and https — having served a page titled “Maint – Caribbean Sprinter – Back Soon” when we checked it on 26 August 2026. The operator trades as Caribbean Sprinter LTD, booking at sprinter.bz. Direct Ferries records it as “Caribbean Sprinter, formally known as Ocean Ferry Belize.”

Children and groups

On San Pedro Belize Express, children aged 4 to 10 pay a children’s rate and anyone over 10 pays the regular fare. The FAQ names the category without an amount; the booking engine’s passenger step shows it as USD 12.50 one way, Belize City to Caye Caulker. With one adult, that checkout came to a US$41.50 subtotal, a US$4.57 Internet Processing Fee and US$3.00 in Port Authority Fees. Groups over 12 people qualify for one free ticket.

Caribbean Sprinter says only that “discounts may apply” for youth passengers; its prices are “the most you will pay”.

Flying instead

Caye Caulker has an airstrip (CUK). Tropic Air’s home page carries a “Caye Caulker — Hourly flights” tile.

Maya Island Air publishes three flights a day to Caye Caulker and four back, from Belize City Municipal (TZA) rather than the international airport — but that schedule image was last modified 8 February 2023, and it still carried that date when we requested it again on 24 September 2026, so it does not establish current service. What each carrier does and does not publish about its network, fares and baggage is set out on our getting around Belize by domestic flight page.

What the operators don’t publish

These are gaps in the operators’ own published information. We looked and they are not there:

• Caribbean Sprinter’s child fare. Its booking page says only that discounts “may apply” for youth passengers.
• Any explanation of Belize Express’s Internet Processing Fee. Its FAQ, schedule and Caye Caulker page, read on 24 September 2026, do not mention it; the 11% rate is visible only in the checkout page’s own code, and the fee itself only after a sailing is chosen.
• A Belize Express crossing time it agrees with itself on for the return leg — see above.

How we researched this

Scope: this page reports source research, not an on-site test. We checked the booking systems, timetables and official sources named below on the date shown; calculations, unresolved disagreements and information we could not verify are labelled explicitly.

We ran one-way searches on both operators’ own booking systems on 24 September 2026, for travel on Wednesday 14 October 2026. Belize Express’s checkout was run at one, two, three and four adults and at one adult with one child, both as raw page captures and in a real browser, stopping before payment. Fares, fees and durations come from the live booking engines; timetables from Belize Express’s printed schedule (an image whose file has not changed since it was last modified on 22 July 2025) and Sprinter’s sailings page; the child and group policies and the shuttle price from Belize Express’s FAQ; Sprinter’s shuttle price from its shuttle page; its terminal details from the map on its sailings page; the Maya Island Air date from that file’s HTTP metadata; and the Ocean Ferry status from live connection attempts plus Direct Ferries.

Where two operators state different things, we print both rather than choosing. Where an operator publishes nothing, we say so rather than estimating.

What we did not check

Separate from the list above, because these are our limits and not the operators':

• Round-trip fares. Both operators sell returns; we priced one-way only, so we cannot tell you whether a return is discounted.
• The payment step. We did not complete a booking, so the amount finally charged by Belize Express to a group — the displayed 11% figure or the larger one in the page’s code — is not confirmed.

Figures on this page labelled our arithmetic are calculated by us from the sourced inputs cited below — comparisons, percentages, multiples, differences, per-night and per-person conversions, running totals and currency conversions. Every other figure is reproduced as its named source published it. Where an operator or authority publishes a per-person or per-night rate directly, that is their figure and it is attributed to them at the point it appears.

Sources

• San Pedro Belize Express — online ticketing — fares, the Internet Processing Fee and Port Authority Fee at each party size, the USD 12.50 child fare, the transfer prices at checkout, crossing durations and the 7:00 AM Caye Caulker → San Pedro sailing; run 24 Sep 2026 for travel 14 Oct 2026
• San Pedro Belize Express — printed schedule — the two Belize City ↔ Caye Caulker timetables and the Caye Caulker → San Pedro departures
• San Pedro Belize Express — Caye Caulker destination page — the 45-minute crossing time
• San Pedro Belize Express — FAQ: child-fare category, group discount, airport shuttle pricing and duration, and the “approximately 45 mins” statement its own booking engine does not match on the return leg
• San Pedro Belize Express — Belize City page — terminal address and phone
• Caribbean Sprinter — booking — per-departure fares, approximate arrival times, the “approximately 45 minutes” quote, the no-processing-fees statement and the youth-discount line
• Caribbean Sprinter — sailings schedule — departure times, the “0h 45m ± 5 min” crossing time, the seven-days-a-week statement, and both terminals’ addresses, phones and hours
• Caribbean Sprinter — airport shuttle — the $15 USD per person shuttle price
• oceanferrybelize.com — connection attempts on 24 Sep 2026 timed out; on 26 Aug 2026 it served a Caribbean Sprinter maintenance page
• Direct Ferries — the Ocean Ferry / Caribbean Sprinter renaming
• Maya Island Air — flight schedule — timetable image, last modified 8 February 2023
• Tropic Air — the “Caye Caulker — Hourly flights” tile

Last verified: 24 September 2026. Fares, fees, timetables and shuttle prices change without notice.

Written by Estuardo Enriquez. This site is independent, carries no affiliate relationship with any operator named here, and is not connected to any previous owner of this domain.