Amalfi Coast Boat Tours from Salerno — All 7, Compared.

Whichever boat you pick, the film is the same — only the seats differ. Minutes out of Salerno the harbor cranes give way to Vietri sul Mare, the ceramics capital whose tiled church dome is the coast's unofficial opening credit. Then Cetara, a real fishing village that still lands anchovies and tuna, famous for colatura di alici — the fermented anchovy essence local chefs treat like liquid gold. Most first swim stops happen in the green coves just past it.

Maiori and Minori follow — the flat twins with the coast's longest beaches and, in Minori, a Roman villa lying casually under the lemon terraces. Mid-coast comes Amalfi itself, surprisingly small from the water for a town that once out-traded Venice; you'll clock the striped campanile and the paper mills' valley behind it. Just west, two sights boats slow down for: the Furore fjord, a slot canyon under a stone bridge, and Conca dei Marini's Emerald Grotto (the $119 cruise goes inside; ~€8 entry, cash).

Then Praiano, the quiet ledge-town locals pick for sunsets, and finally Positano — four hundred vertical metres of pastel boxes that every phone on board will rise to greet. Some tours anchor for a swim beneath it, some dock for free time, some just glide past slowly: this single difference explains most of the price gaps in the table above, so decide how much Positano you need before you pay for it.

GetYourGuide lists dozens of "Amalfi Coast boat tours" that technically touch Salerno. We cut everything that departs from Sorrento or Naples with a Salerno pickup bolted on (you lose an hour each way), everything under 50 reviews unless it was genuinely new and promising, and everything where the operator's photos and the reviewers' photos looked like two different boats. Seven survived.

Two patterns worth knowing before you choose. First: on this coast you pay for group size, not scenery — the $67 boat and the $187 boat sail the same water past the same towns. The extra $120 buys you twelve neighbours instead of forty, and free time ashore. Second: morning departures beat afternoon ones on every boat, every time — calmer sea, better light, and you reach Positano before the Sorrento day-tripper wave lands at noon.

The honest weak spot of the fleet: food. Every "lunch included" on a sub-$100 boat means one hot course done well, not a feast — reviewers who expected a restaurant left 3 stars, reviewers who expected a picnic left 5. Eat a real breakfast, enjoy the pasta, and save your appetite for dinner in Salerno's old town, which — we'll keep saying it — eats better than Positano for half the bill.