Cruise Drink Package Calculator
Here you'll find the most thorough analysis online for deciding, “Is the cruise drink package worth it?” Click through to your cruise line for your personalized drink package calculator and more info to make your decision.
How much do you actually drink?
One number, seven answers. Every package below recalculates against your rate, including what you keep paying out of pocket when a drink breaches that package's cap. Ship, sail date and drink-by-drink profile live on the line pages.
every day of the cruise
Not one of the 7. The closest is Carnival CHEERS!, still $12.40 a day worse than paying as you go. This is the honest answer for light drinkers and it is the whole reason this page exists.
Cash comparison uses each line's median drink price plus that line's bar gratuity. Package totals add the package gratuity and the average spend that still lands on your folio when a drink breaches the cap, so a package that leaks nothing sits exactly on its published break-even and one that leaks sits above it. Non-alcoholic and soda packages are real products we do not model yet.
Every cruise drink package, compared
7 packages, sortable. Break-even never appears without coverage next to it. Sorted by real break-even.
Package gratuity is added at purchase and it is not optional. Nothing on this page shows you the advertised number alone: the struck-through figure in each row is what the line quotes, and the number above it is what lands on your folio.
Royal Caribbean, Celebrity Classic and Celebrity Premium are dynamically priced. The typical figure leads and the range stays visible, because the verdict genuinely flips across it.
Note the fine print.
Six rules that vary sharply by line, and each one can flip whether your cruise drink package is worth buying at all.
Every line except Princess requires all drinking-age adults in the stateroom to buy in. Norwegian goes further and applies it to everyone on the reservation, not just the cabin. Princess’s terms do not require it at all.
Everyone else lets you pay the difference on a drink above the cap. Carnival does not cover it at all and gives you 25% off instead, which sounds worse than it is.
Royal Caribbean’s Deluxe package works ashore at CocoCay and Labadee. Carnival’s does not travel, including Celebration Key, where guests routinely assume otherwise.
Carnival sailings from Texas, Norfolk and New York do not activate CHEERS! until 6am on day two. The package is priced for the full cruise regardless.
Norwegian excludes specialty coffee and bottled water, both sold to you as separate packages. Carnival and Celebrity Classic exclude fresh juice. Princess, Celebrity Premium and Royal Caribbean exclude nothing.
The Open Bar package is bundled into the fare through Free at Sea, and those guests pay only the prepaid service charge of about $21.80 a day. Our 8.4-drink break-even is for guests buying it outright.
Find yourself on this list
No package on any line pays off anywhere in this band. Not one. Even at four drinks a day the cheapest package on this page still costs more than handing over a card at the bar. Buy as you go, and put the difference toward an excursion.
The decision zone, and the only place the comparison is genuinely close. Princess Plus and Celebrity Premium clear first at 5.7 and 5.8 drinks a day, simply because they are cheap for what they cover. Carnival needs 6.4 despite covering everything, and Norwegian is the last to turn at 8.4, above the top of this band.
Every package on the page pays for itself by nine drinks a day, so price stops being the question and coverage and daily limits take over. Celebrity Premium and Princess Premier have no daily cap; Royal Caribbean, Carnival and Princess Plus stop at 15 drinks a day. Coverage is where the money leaks now, not the headline rate.
Every line here sells a cheaper non-alcoholic or soda package, and several will let one adult in a cabin take that instead of the full bar package. We have not priced those products yet, so we will not pretend to rank them, but they exist and they are usually the right answer.
Where every number comes from
Between 129 and 177 drinks per line, across 11 categories: cocktails, beer, hard seltzer, wine by the glass, spirits, mocktails, soda, specialty coffee and tea, bottled water, fresh juice, energy drinks. Package terms come from each line's published terms and FAQs. Every package price carries a named source and a checked-on date.
One Celebrity menu board in our collection was discarded outright: six of its products were priced below current boards, which means the photograph caught a stale menu. Prices that cannot be corroborated do not enter the database.
Frequently asked questions
Between roughly $65 and $109 per person per day before gratuity, depending on the line, and every line adds 18% to 20% on top at purchase. Princess Plus is the cheapest at $64.99 a day, or $76.69 once the service charge lands. Carnival CHEERS! is $69.95, or $83.94. Norwegian is the dearest at $109, or $130.80. Royal Caribbean and Celebrity price dynamically rather than publishing one rate: Royal Caribbean ranges from $56 to $115 a day depending on the ship and sailing.