Molokini snorkel tour: all eleven boats compared

Strip the titles back and every Molokini snorkel tour here falls into one of three shapes. There is the short run: two or three hours, out to the crater and back, with little else attached. There is the half day: five to five and a half hours, two snorkel stops and food named in the listing text. And there is the half day with a third thing in it — the sea caves of the Kanaio Coast, or sailing on the trade winds.

Those three shapes explain the fares better than anything else does. The two-hour listing at $140 is the lowest crater fare of the eleven. The five-and-a-half-hour one at $228 is the highest, and it is the only listing whose description names the sea caves along the Kanaio Coast. Between them sit nine others, $100 to $204.

Per hour the order turns over completely. The five-and-a-half-hour Calypso listing works out at $34.55 an hour and the two-hour one at $70.00. A three-hour Molokini tour lands in between: $64.67 an hour on the Kihei listing, $57.67 on the small-group one. So the cheapest Molokini snorkel tour by the ticket is the costliest by the hour, and a long morning is the better rate on paper.

Whether that matters depends on what you want from the day. Snorkeling at Molokini Crater is the same water on all eleven; the extra hours buy a second stop, a deck to sit on between stops and, on five listings, something to eat. If you are fitting the crater around other plans, the hourly rate is the wrong measure and the two-hour listing is the one written for you.

One listing on this site costs $100, and it carries 785 reviews, the second largest count here. It is also the listing this page has to be most careful about.

Its own title and description say it snorkels to either Coral Gardens or Molokini Crater. The boat picks one of the two on the day. That is a perfectly good afternoon on a 55-foot catamaran, and 785 people have rated it — but it is not a Molokini snorkel tour you can book knowing where it will drop anchor, so this site does not quote it as a price from. The lowest fare that names the crater as the destination is $140.

You will still see $100 marked as the lowest price in the table above, because it genuinely is the smallest number here. It is a figure, not a promise. If the crater is the whole point of your morning, read the gap between $100 and $140 as the cost of knowing where the boat is going.

One other listing describes a flexible route: the two-hour one says it covers the inside and outer reef and/or the backside of Molokini. That is still the crater — what moves is which part of it. Worth knowing before you compare those two on fare alone, because both are sold as a Molokini Crater trip.

Maui snorkel trips to Molokini do not all leave from the same place, and the starting point is the part people most often get wrong. Four appear across these eleven listings: South Maui on four of them, Kihei on three, Maalaea Harbor on two and Wailea-Makena on two.

That matters more than it looks. A two-hour listing from Kihei and a five-hour listing from Maalaea Harbor are different mornings before anyone gets wet, because the drive to the harbor is yours and it is not inside the listed length. Molokini snorkeling tours from Maui are written around the harbor they sail from, so settle the harbor you can reach easily and compare only the boats that leave from it.

The titles and descriptions are the part to trust here. Four listings are headed South Maui, which is a stretch of coast rather than one pier; the two that say Maalaea Harbor and the one that says Kihei are the specific ones. Where a listing names its harbor, this page follows the listing rather than the catalogue.

The sea caves listing is the one real outlier. It leaves from Wailea-Makena, costs $228, and is the only description of the eleven that calls the water at the crater crystal clear and names the Kanaio Coast; no other listing here claims clear water at all. If that stretch of coastline is the reason you are booking, no second listing offers it.