The first time I paid a Riviera capitainerie, I handed over more for one night than my home club in Hampshire charges for a fortnight. The boat was the same 11.6 metre cruiser. The water was the same wet. The difference was the postcode, and that difference is the whole story of berthing on the Cote d'Azur.
I have spent four summers nudging a sailing boat between Menton and the Gulf of Saint-Tropez, and the question every visiting skipper asks me is the same one: what does a berth here actually cost? Not the glossy annual contract figures, but the real number you hand over when you arrive tired at six in the evening and just want a shower and a cold drink.
The number that matters: per metre, per night
French marinas price by size, either by length times beam or by length bands with a maximum beam, so a beamy modern cruiser can pay more than a narrow classic of the same length. The headline you want is the high-season nightly rate for your overall length (LOA) and beam, and on this coast it can change threefold within a single harbour.
At Saint-Tropez, the 2026 tariff is per square metre, length overall times beam, and the rate depends on the quay. A visitor under 25 metres goes to the Bassin Jean Lescudier, where the high-season rate is 2.35 euros per square metre: about 80 euros a night for a 10 metre boat with a 3.4 metre beam, water and electricity included. The Vieux Port, the quay in every photograph, takes visiting yachts of 25 to 50 metres at 7.03 euros per square metre, three times as much. The Estienne d'Orves quay, for yachts up to 90 metres, sits in between at 5.37 euros per square metre. Same harbour, same night, three different prices depending on which quay you are tied to. That spread is the single most useful thing I can teach you about this coast: the address on the receipt is not the address you think you are paying for.
For a 12 metre boat with a 4 metre beam, the visitor basin comes to about 113 euros a night in high season, which in 2026 runs from 30 April to 10 July and again from 20 August to 4 October. The very high season, 10 July to 20 August, is dearer again at 2.94 euros per square metre, about 141 euros for the same boat.
Antibes is the surprise. Port Vauban calls itself the first yachting port in the Mediterranean, with around 1,500 berths, yet its 2026 season rate (1 May to 1 October) for a boat of 11 to 11.99 metres with a beam up to 4 metres is 46.22 euros a day, plus 9.99 euros for the water, electricity and shower package. A stop of under thirty minutes is free if you ask the port office first, and anything between thirty minutes and six hours is charged at half the base rate, which is genuinely useful if you only want to land crew and leave.
Why annual contracts tell you more than nightly rates
Visiting skippers fixate on the nightly number, but the annual berth prices reveal the true pecking order of the coast, and they explain why some harbours never have a free berth in August.
In a Voiles et Voiliers survey of 32 ports between Menton and Port Camargue, Corsica included, reported in 2022, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat came out the most expensive: about 6,278 euros a year for a 10 metre berth and 9,879 euros for a 12 metre one. Nice charged roughly 5,250 and 7,410 euros for the same two sizes. Port Grimaud, the canal village at the head of the Gulf of Saint-Tropez, sat around 5,187 and 7,899 euros. Saint-Tropez itself, for an annual holder, was cheaper than you would expect, near 4,425 euros for 10 metres, because the money there is made on visitors, not residents. Its 2026 tariff tells the same story: a year in the Bassin Jean Lescudier costs 150.62 euros per square metre, about 5,100 euros for a 10 by 3.4 metre boat, the price of 64 high-season visitor nights in the same basin.
Read those figures the way a local does. A harbour with a 9,000 euro annual rate has owners who never leave their berth empty, so the visitor pontoon is tiny and full. A harbour with a modest annual rate and a brutal nightly rate on its prime quay, like Saint-Tropez, is built to fleece the visiting superyacht, not to house cruisers. Knowing which is which tells you where you will actually get in.
What the fee does and does not include
The nightly rate buys you the water under the keel, and in some harbours water and electricity on the pontoon as well. Saint-Tropez includes them; Antibes sells them as a daily package on top of the berth. Neither buys you the tourist tax (taxe de sejour), a small per-night levy collected on top.
Two practical things catch out British crews every season. First, you almost always pay on arrival or in advance now, by card, through online systems like the port's own reservation portal rather than cash to a man in a RIB. Second, the rate is for your declared LOA including bowsprit, pulpit and davits, not the number on your registration document. Marinas measure, and they round up.
If you are still deciding whether to buy a boat to keep here at all, the running-cost maths starts with exactly these berth figures, and it is worth reading alongside a proper survey of the hull you are considering, the kind I walk through in my hull inspection checklist for buying a used sailboat. A cheap boat with a 9,000 euro berth is not a cheap boat.
How I actually budget a Riviera fortnight
Here is the real arithmetic from last August, an 11.6 metre boat with a 3.9 metre beam, two weeks, Menton to Saint-Tropez and back, at the 2026 tariffs.
- Two nights in Saint-Tropez's visitor basin in the very high season: about 133 euros a night, water and electricity included.
- Five nights at Antibes, my logistics base mid-coast: 46.22 euros plus 9.99 for water and power, about 56 euros a night.
- Seven nights at anchor: free, plus my own conscience about where I drop the hook.
That mix kept the average down to around 40 euros a night across the fortnight, before tourist tax. Anchor every night and the average collapses; tie up in Saint-Tropez every night of the very high season and the berths alone come to about 1,860 euros.
The lever, every time, is anchoring. The bays between Nice and the Italian border are deep and well sheltered, and learning where you can legally and safely drop the hook is the difference between a 40 euro average and a 133 euro one. I have written up the deep-water bays in detail in my piece on anchoring at Villefranche and around Cap Ferrat, because that single skill saved me more money than any loyalty card ever could.
The August problem nobody warns you about
None of these prices matter if there is no berth to pay for, and in August there often is not. Cannes is among the most competitive berthing harbours in Europe and can be full even out of season because of its conference calendar. The visitor pontoons at the desirable harbours fill weeks ahead.
The fee, in other words, is only half the battle. Getting a berth at any price in high summer is the other half, and it deserves its own plan, which is why I put together a separate survival guide to booking a Riviera berth in August. Read that before you commit to a route that assumes you can just turn up.
The east-to-west price gradient, mapped
If you remember one pattern from this whole article, make it this: the dearest annual berths sit at the eastern end. In that survey the most expensive marina, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, is near Monaco, and Nice came next. It is not a smooth slope, since Port Grimaud ran third. But Saint-Tropez came in about 30 per cent under Cap Ferrat, the average across all 32 ports was 3,790 euros for 10 metres, and the cheapest, the Vieux Port at Saint-Raphael, charged about 1,990.
This matters for route planning, not just budgeting. A skipper who keeps the boat at the eastern end pays the eastern prices every single night. A skipper who bases further west and day-sails east pays the east only when they choose to. Where you start the cruise quietly sets the cost of the whole thing, and no brochure will tell you so.
Three small fees that catch out British crews
Beyond the headline rate, three charges surprise visitors every season. The tourist tax (taxe de sejour) is a per-night levy added on top of the berth, small but real, and some ports, Antibes among them, charge it on a set number of people for your boat's length rather than on the crew actually aboard. Electricity is sometimes metered by the kilowatt-hour rather than included, so a boat running air conditioning all night on the pontoon pays for it. And if your shore-power plug does not fit the pedestal, the adapter is on you: Saint-Tropez's tariff says in so many words that it is not included.
None of these is large alone. Together they add perhaps ten to fifteen per cent to a high-season night, which is the difference between a budget that holds and one that quietly slips. Ask the capitainerie what is included when you book, not when you leave.
My honest summary after four seasons
The Cote d'Azur is not as ruinous as the brochures suggest, provided you treat marinas as occasional luxuries rather than nightly defaults. Pay for the harbour you genuinely want to walk into, anchor the rest, and the coast becomes affordable. Tie up out of habit, and it will quietly empty your account one 133 euro receipt at a time.
The skippers who go home complaining about Riviera prices are almost always the ones who berthed every night by reflex. The ones who go home with money left over learned the same lesson I did on that first eye-watering night in Hampshire money: the water is free, and on this coast the water is the best part.
