We’re often asked, “How much does a cruise ship cost to build?” These mega-vessels are so big and expensive, that they’re not purchased very often. As such, most people have no idea how expensive these things actually are.
We’ve analyzed over 200 cruise ship purchases throughout the last few decades. This post will provide you with the most comprehensive analysis of cruise ship cost that exists anywhere. Trust us, we scoured the internet. Nowhere does anyone do justice to the question, until now.
First, let’s go over a few items. It’s difficult to compare ships due to their differences in age, size, type, etc. A 400 person cruise ship purchased in 1985 and a 4,000 passenger ship bought in 2015 are going to have drastically different prices. Comparing the costs of each would be like comparing apples and oranges.
To make the ships more comparable, we played with a few of these factors to "normalize" costs between ships of varying size.
Cruise Ship Cost Factors
- Year: we analyzed 200 ship costs over a period of a period of 41 years. The oldest, active ship was purchased in 1984. The newest ship in our analysis will be delivered in 2025. The median age in our data set is 2008. Obviously a dollar today has a different value than a dollar 40 years ago. As such, we took the cost of the ship and applied a cost index to find the value in today’s dollars. As an example, the Oasis of the Seas was purchased in 2009 for $1.3 billion dollars. By applying a cost index, we can see that today’s value of that ship would be $1.8 billion dollars.
- Tonnage: a Cruise Ship’s “tonnage” describes the volume of that ship. It’s a standard unit of measurement used in the nautical world to compare the size of a ship. A larger ship will typically be more expensive than a smaller ship (obviously). We included an infographic below comparing each cruise ship’s cost per gross tonnage. This allows us to compare ships on an "apples to apples" basis.
- Cost: The price paid for the cruise ship at time of purchase.
- Cost Today: as mentioned above, this figure is the cruise ship’s cost in today’s dollars. We got to this number by applying the accepted CPI (consumer price index) as provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
By playing with a few of these, we’re pretty confident in our ability to compare cruise ship cost across all lines, sizes and years.
Ok – now that the boring vocabulary lesson is done, let’s get to the fun stuff.
Cruise Ship Cost by Size
Passenger Capacity
The graph below shows Cruise Ship Cost based on a ship’s capacity. It’s not surprising that ships that hold more passengers, cost more money.
We’ve broken down the 200+ cruise ships into the following buckets.
- 0 to 500 Passenegers
- 501 to 1,000 Passengers
- 1,001 to 2,000 Passengers
- 2,001 to 3,000 Passengers
- 3,001 to 4,000 Passengers
- Greater than 4,000 Passengers
The infographic below displays the average cost of a cruise ship within the capacity ranges above. On the left, you'll find the average cruise ship cost for vessels in that capacity range. This number is the “Cost Today” figure mentioned above. We used this to account for the time difference between ships.
Which cruise ship has the largest passenger capacity?
The Icon of the Seas has the largest maximum passenger capacity at 7,600 guests. The ship also holds 2,350 crew members, for a total capacity of over 10,000!
Which cruise ship costs the most?
The "most expensive ship every built" can be analyzed in two ways. We'll look at both "actual dollars" and "normalized cost." The latter compares all ship purchases based on "today's dollars." The former only looks at the actual price paid at the time of purchase.
- Actual Dollars: The most expensive ship ever purchased is the Star of the Seas with a price tag of $1.8 billion. The ship will be delivered in 2025.
- Nominal Dollars: The most expensive ship ever purchased, when adjusted for inflation, is the Allure of the Seas. The vessel was purchased in 2010 for $1.5 billion. That translates to a value today of $2.1 billion dollars!
Cruise Ship Cost by Year
Average Historical Cost
Next we wanted to look at the price of cruise ships over time. To figure this out, we put ships into the following buckets:
- Purchased before 1990
- Purchased from 1990 to 1995
- Purchased from 1995 to 2000
- Purchased from 2000 to 2005
- Purchased from 2005 to 2010
- Purchased from 2010 to 2015
- Purchased from 2015 to 2020
- Purchased from 2020 to 2025
The prices shown are an average of the actual costs (not “today’s cost” as used above).
The ship costs above all represent inflation-adjusted pricing. Dollars are all normalized to account for inflation. You can see that ships gradually get more expensive with each passing year.
One major reason is "ship size." Ships are getting bigger and bigger! A larger ship will obviously cost more.
Later in this post, we break ships down to a "per tonnage" cost. That will let us compare ships across the spectrum!
Average Cost by Cruise Line
Which cruise line spends the most & least on their ships?
Below is the raw data showing the average cruise ship cost for each major cruise line.
The list is sorted from most expensive to least. You can see that, on average, Royal Caribbean spends the most on their ships by a decent margin.
Royal Caribbean
29 ships
$1.11 Billion
Disney Cruise Line
6 ships
$994 Million
Dream Cruises
3 ships
$958 Million
Cunard Cruise Line
3 ships
$915 Million
Norwegian Cruise Line
19 ships
$879 Million
Carnival Cruise LIne
27 ships
$864 Million
MSC Cruises
23 ships
$859 Million
Virgin Voyages
4 ships
$837 Million
Princess Cruises
16 ships
$829 Million
Costa Cruises
11 ships
$811 Million
P&O (U.K.)
5 ships
$715 Million
Celebrity Cruises
15 ships
$714 Million
TUI Marella
11 ships
$652 Million
AIDA
14 ships
$649 Million
Holland America
11 ships
$610 Million
P&O Australia
4 ships
$598 Million
Crystal Cruises
3 ships
$555 Million
Regent Seven Seas
5 ships
$464 Million
Oceania Cruise Line
6 ships
$462 Million
Star Cruises
3 ships
$434 Million
SAGA Cruises
2 ships
$421 Million
Hapag Lloyd
2 ships
$407 Million
Seabourn Cruises
5 ships
$403 Million
Pullmantur
4 ships
$386 Million
Margaritaville of the Seas
1 ships
$361 Million
Fred Olsen
2 ships
$335 Million
Azamara Cruises
3 ships
$271 Million
Silversea Cruises
2 ships
$196 Million
Seadream Cruises
2 ships
$100 Million
The infographic below shows all cruise lines. The figure next to each represents the average cost of all ships in that fleet.
The costs are normalized to account for the time value of money.
In this graph, you can see which cruise lines spend the most and least on their ships. Please keep in mind that "ship size" is a very important factor here. Some lines, like Royal Caribbean, have much larger ships and naturally these ships are more costly!
Royal Caribbean spends far more, on average, than all of the other lines.
Don't just assume their ships are better, however. Their vessels are far larger than the average cruise ship. Check out our list of the 25 Largest Cruise Ships in the World. You'll find that RCCL absolutely dominates the top of the list, with only a few exceptions!
While this chart above is interesting, a far more valuable analysis can be gained by looking at "Cost per Gross Tonnage."
Price by Gross Tonnage
Think about the last time that you purchased a home. I'm sure your analysis included a breakdown of Cost Per Square Foot. This allows you to compare the price to other homes of varying sizes. Similarly, we break down Ship Cost by Gross Tonnage (GT). The metric is the most commonly used in the nautical world and allows us to normalize the comparative data!
Seadream Cruises
2 ships
$23,164 Per GTSilversea Cruises
2 ships
$17,155 Per GTSeabourn Cruises
5 ships
$11,349 Per GTHapag Lloyd
2 ships
$11,344 Per GTCrystal Cruises
3 ships
$11,100 Per GTOceania Cruise Line
6 ships
$10,953 Per GTRegent Seven Seas
5 ships
$10,122 Per GTFred Olsen
2 ships
$9,857 Per GTStar Cruises
3 ships
$9,188 Per GTAzamara Cruises
3 ships
$8,958 Per GTDisney Cruise Line
6 ships
$8,339 Per GTCunard Cruise Line
3 ships
$8,317 Per GTAIDA
14 ships
$8,292 Per GTTUI Marella
11 ships
$8,207 Per GTDream Cruises
3 ships
$7,631 Per GTVirgin Voyages
4 ships
$7,592 Per GTSAGA Cruises
2 ships
$7,526 Per GTCelebrity Cruises
15 ships
$7,468 Per GTCarnival Cruise LIne
27 ships
$7,355 Per GTNorwegian Cruise Line
19 ships
$7,336 Per GTHolland America
11 ships
$7,255 Per GTRoyal Caribbean
29 ships
$7,093 Per GTMargaritaville of the Seas
1 ships
$6,825 Per GTP&O Australia
4 ships
$6,813 Per GTP&O (U.K.)
5 ships
$6,884 Per GTCosta Cruises
11 ships
$6,655 Per GTPrincess Cruises
16 ships
$6,586 Per GTPullmantur
4 ships
$6,375 Per GTMSC Cruises
23 ships
$6,299 Per GT
Price Per Gross Tonnage (GT) Rank
The above data table shows the average cruise ship cost (in today's dollars) divided by the gross tonnage per each ship.
Seadream Yacht Club spends far more per GT than any other line. When compared to the mass-market ships, this represents a per GT figure over 3x those larger counterparts.
Obviously, there are "economies of scale" when building ships. We take this into account below and break ships up into groups: large, mid-sized and small.
Ship Size & Price Per GT
Cruise ship size can vary by a factor of more than 50x. Small ships might register just over 4,000 GT, while some Royal Caribbean ships weigh in at 240,000 GT.
As such, we grouped ships into three buckets to more accurately compare across the industry as a whole.
In the infographics below, you'll find three different charts. Here's how we broke down the sizing.
Large Ships: greater than 75,000 GT
Mid Sized Ships: between 40,000 & 75,000 GT
Small Ships: less than 40,000 GT
Large Ships - Cost by GT Ranked
The graph above ranks all "large" ships from most to least expensive.
Disney tops the list with the most expensive ships by GT. This is not particularly surprising. The company goes above and beyond with their ships, customizing them to fulfill the fantasies of millions of Disney Fans.
At the bottom of the list is MSC.
Mid-Sized Ships - Cost by GT Ranked
The graph above ranks all "Medium-Sized" ships from most to least expensive. These fall between 40k and 75k gross tons.
Crystal Cruise Line tops the list with the most expensive ships by GT. At the bottom of the list is Pullmantur.
Small Ships - Cost by GT Ranked
The graph above ranks all "Small Ships" from most to least expensive. All ships in this category register less than 40k GT.
Seadream tops the list with the most expensive ships by GT. At the bottom of the list is Azamara.
We hope that this post was helpful and fully answers the question, "how much does a cruise ship cost?"
If you found this interesting, please check out our post showing the costs of individual ships.
There, you'll find the most expensive ships ever purchased by cruise lines.
