“How much does a catamaran cost” has three legitimate answers depending on which market you are shopping, and the gap between them is enormous. We broker all three routes out of Tortola, so what follows is what boats actually close at in the Caribbean — not asking prices, and not manufacturer list prices with every option unticked.

Size drives the headline number, but the route you buy through moves it more than most buyers expect. The same 45-foot hull can be a $700,000 new build, a $420,000 five-year-old private boat, or a $340,000 ex-charter needing $60,000 of work — and all three are reasonable purchases for different buyers.

For the new-build baseline, the 2026 catamaran price guide puts a new 45-footer from a major production builder at roughly $500,000 to $800,000, with the main brands spanning about $300,000 for older pre-owned hulls up to well over $1.5 million at the flagship end. Our own closings track that shape closely.

Two things matter about new-build pricing that the brochure figure hides. First, the base boat is not a boat you would cross an ocean on. Sails beyond the standard suite, a watermaker, solar, upgraded ground tackle, air conditioning, a generator and a decent electronics package routinely add 15 to 25 percent to the base price. Budget the option list as part of the purchase, not as an afterthought. If you are still deciding whether the format suits you at all, the case for why owners love catamarans is about liveability rather than the numbers on this page. Two catamarans carrying the same asking price can behave very differently once the wind is up, and the difference usually comes down to hull design and handling rather than to anything on the equipment list.

Second, delivery. If your boat is built in France and you are cruising the Caribbean, someone has to get it there — either by commercial transport or on its own bottom with a delivery crew. Both cost real money and both take time. Buyers who plan to take delivery at a Caribbean dealer generally have the simpler path.

The upside of new is that you choose the layout, you get a warranty, and you know the entire history because you are the entire history. For a buyer intending to keep the boat a decade, that is worth a great deal.

Production catamarans hold value better than most monohulls, which is both good news and the reason used boats feel expensive. The curve is steepest in the first two or three years and then flattens considerably. By year ten a well-maintained boat is typically trading around half of what it cost new, and from there the decline is slow — condition, not age, starts doing most of the work on price.

What moves a used boat within its band is entirely predictable once you have priced a few hundred of them. Documented sail and rigging replacement, a recent bottom job, working refrigeration and a watermaker that has been serviced rather than sitting all lift a price. A charter-layout interior in a boat being sold to a private cruising buyer lowers it, because the pool of buyers who want six cabins and six heads is much smaller than the pool who want three cabins and a decent owner’s suite.

Age also interacts with insurance in this region. Underwriters in a named-storm zone take a harder look at older hulls, older rigging and older electrical systems, and a boat you cannot insure economically is a boat you cannot really own here. Get an indicative insurance quote before you remove your survey contingency — not after.

This is the route most Caribbean buyers actually take, and it is the one the general pricing articles skip entirely. Charter management programmes place new catamarans into a fleet for a fixed term, run them hard on a strict maintenance schedule, and then release them for sale. Because the boats come out of the programme in batches, the Caribbean has a steady supply of five- and six-year-old catamarans available at prices private sellers cannot match.

The mechanics are straightforward. The Moorings’ own brokerage describes standard contracts running five to six years, a structured phase-out process taking roughly two months, and savings of up to 40 percent against comparable privately owned models. Other operators run similar programmes on similar terms.

The honest version of the trade-off: you are buying a boat that has done far more hours than a private boat of the same age, been handled by many crews of varying competence, and carried a charter interior layout. In exchange you get a fully documented service history, a boat that has been continuously maintained by professionals rather than sporadically by an owner, and a price that leaves room for the work it needs.

The purchase price is the part buyers research. The annual cost is the part that decides whether they still own the boat in year four. A useful working rule for a cruising catamaran kept in the Caribbean is 8 to 12 percent of the boat’s value per year, all in — higher if you are dockside in a marina full-time, lower if you are mostly on the hook and doing your own work. Price bands shift again once you leave sail behind, so decide whether you want a sailing or power catamaran before you fix a budget — the running costs diverge further than the asking prices do.

Insurance deserves its own line. Hull cover in a named-storm zone is materially more expensive than in a temperate market, and underwriters increasingly attach conditions about where the boat sits during hurricane season. That is not a reason to avoid the region; it is a reason to get a quote early, because it can move your total cost of ownership by more than the difference between two boats you are choosing between.

If the boat is going to live and cruise here, buying here is almost always the simpler path — but it is worth understanding both routes before you commit, because occasionally the right boat is somewhere else.

We work co-brokerage on both sides of that decision, which means we have no interest in steering you toward a boat simply because it happens to be on our own list. If the right catamaran for you is another broker’s listing, that is the boat we will help you buy.