Anguilla in 6 Days on a Budget (With Daily Costs)

Six days in Anguilla on a budget: the honest costs

Anguilla is not a cheap Caribbean island, and six days does not change that. It buys the full route: headline beaches on days one and two, the first offshore cay on day three, Scilly Cay’s grilled lobster on day four, an island loop by rental car on day five, and a St Martin day trip by ferry on day six. Only here for four days? The 4-day plan covers the same route through Scilly Cay. A full week? The 7-day plan adds one more pace day on top of this.

Day Focus Travel time Rough daily cost
Day 1 SXM arrival, public ferry to Blowing Point, Shoal Bay East, beach-bar dinner 20-25 min ferry crossing plus a taxi to base $90-150
Day 2 Meads Bay, Rendezvous Bay, a second beach-bar meal short fixed-rate taxi hops between beaches $60-100
Day 3 First offshore cay (Sandy Island or Prickly Pear), Heritage Collection Museum, The Valley 5-10 min boat crossing from Sandy Ground $80-140
Day 4 Scilly Cay lobster lunch, a Little Bay snorkel dinghy pickup at Island Harbour, plus a short boat or rope descent to Little Bay $100-180
Day 5 Rental-car island loop (Maundays Bay, East End), a repeat visit to your favorite beach about 45 minutes end to end $90-190
Day 6 St Martin/Sint Maarten day trip, shopping and a livelier dinner 20-25 min ferry each way $80-160

Book these before you go:

Day 1: SXM, the public ferry and Shoal Bay East, cost by cost

Land at Princess Juliana International Airport (SXM) on Sint Maarten, not Anguilla itself; the island’s own airport has limited direct service, so almost everyone arrives this way. Taxi to the ferry pier at Marigot on the French side, then take the public ferry to Blowing Point: about 20-25 minutes, roughly $30 per adult one-way plus a separate departure tax that different sources quote differently, so confirm current fares at anguillaferrytimes.com before you fly. A private charter departs the Dutch side and skips the Marigot taxi transfer, but starts around $65 per person one-way, more than double the public fare, so the ferry is the real budget win here.

Settle into a base at West End or Sandy Ground, then spend the afternoon at Shoal Bay East, a two-mile stretch of white sand on the north coast with reef close enough to snorkel from shore. Entry is free, same as every one of Anguilla’s 33 beaches; the only real spend is a rented lounger or a drink from a beachfront shack. For dinner, skip the fine-dining tier and eat at a casual beach bar like Sunshine Shack or the Dune Preserve on Rendezvous Bay, where a grilled-catch plate and a rum punch cost a fraction of the same meal up the road at a resort restaurant.

Day 2: Meads Bay, Rendezvous Bay and a beach-bar bill you can actually plan for

Spend the morning at Meads Bay, the glossiest strip on the island and home to Blanchards, Anguilla’s best-known splurge restaurant. Walk the beach and admire the resort row for free, then eat at one of the more casual spots nearby rather than booking the main restaurant, which alone can run past a two-day food budget. The afternoon belongs to Rendezvous Bay, long and quiet with clear sightlines across the channel to St Martin, and a second casual beach-bar meal to close the day.

Get around both days by fixed-rate taxi. The East Caribbean dollar (EC$/XCD) is pegged at $1 to EC$2.70, but nearly every price you actually see on a menu or a fare card is already quoted in US dollars. Do the math once and stop thinking about it: an EC$54 plate of fish is exactly $20, and an EC$100 taxi receipt is just under $37.

Day 3: your first offshore cay, cost by cost

The offshore cays are a genuine step up from a third straight beach day, and worth building the whole day around. Sandy Island is a five-minute boat ride from Sandy Ground, commonly run by the long-standing Captain Jojo operator, with an on-cay restaurant, loungers and hammocks. Prickly Pear is a slightly longer crossing with two established beach restaurants, Agatha’s and Johnno’s, plus better snorkeling. Boat operators here run by the trip rather than a posted price list, so expect to pay in cash and confirm the fare before you board; the exact current rate was not pinned down to a single source at publish time.

Back on the mainland, spend a spare hour at the Heritage Collection Museum near The Valley, covering the island’s history from the pre-Columbian period through the 1967 Anguillian Revolution; admission and hours were not confirmed at publish time, so check locally before planning your afternoon around it. Round out the day with a short walk through The Valley itself, past the restored 1787 Wallblake House, before heading back to your base for the evening.

Day 4: Scilly Cay’s lobster lunch and a Little Bay snorkel

Head to Island Harbour on the East End and wave from the pier, the way visitors to Scilly Cay always have; a dinghy motors across to collect you for grilled lobster and a heavy-handed rum punch. Historically the cay has opened only a few lunch days a week, commonly cited as Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, and its own website has lapsed, so confirm the current schedule with your hotel or a recent review before building the day around it. Lunch here runs well above the beach-bar tier; treat it as the day’s one planned splurge.

Without a car to arrange, book a short boat trip to Little Bay for the afternoon, a secluded north-coast cove with strong snorkeling reachable by water; the rope-assisted scramble down the cliffside exists too, but needs a current-conditions check before treating it as a casual DIY route. Taxi back to your base for the evening, and save the rental car for tomorrow, when it earns its cost over a whole day rather than one afternoon.

Day 5: the island loop, Maundays Bay and a repeat beach day

By day five, Anguilla has shown you its headline sights; day five is honestly about pace, not new checklist items. Buy the temporary Anguilla driving permit through your rental company, roughly $15 for a short stay or $25 for three months, and drive on the left for a loop of the island’s roughly 45-minute end-to-end route, taking in Maundays Bay, a small, exclusive semicircle of sand that is effectively the private beach of the Cap Juluca resort, and the quieter East End.

Spend the afternoon back at whichever beach earned your loyalty on day one or two, Shoal Bay East for the reef, Meads Bay for the resort-row people-watching, or Rendezvous Bay for the quiet. A rental car costs real money on top of the permit, roughly $50-70 a day plus fuel, so a fixed-rate taxi for the loop is the cheaper way to see the same ground if the driving hassle is not worth it to you.

Day 6: a St Martin day trip, the cheap way to do it

St Martin/Sint Maarten is a different country, split French and Dutch, not a part of Anguilla despite sitting 12 miles south across the channel; a day trip here is a genuine change of pace, not more of the same beach-and-cay rhythm. Take the same public ferry you arrived on, this time round trip from Blowing Point to Marigot, roughly $60 for both legs plus the departure tax, cheaper than any booked excursion that bundles in a driver you may not need for a walkable town.

Spend the day on the French side’s shopping and cafes, or taxi over to the Dutch side for a casino and a livelier dinner scene than anything on Anguilla itself, then catch an evening ferry back to Blowing Point. Confirm the day’s return sailing times before you leave in the morning; the public ferry runs on a fixed daily schedule, not a continuous shuttle.

Is six days enough for Anguilla?

Yes, and honestly more than the island’s own sights fill on their own. Six days covers the three headline beaches, two offshore cays, Scilly Cay’s lobster lunch, a full island loop by car, and a St Martin day trip, the complete route this island supports. A 4-day trip covers the same beaches and cays without the loop or the day trip; a 7-day plan mostly adds more unstructured beach time on top of this, not more new ground.

How much does six days in Anguilla actually cost?

Budget roughly $500-920 per person across all six days for ferries, taxis, boats, the rental car and permit, food and drink, lodging separate. That is not cheap by Caribbean standards, and it should not be: Anguilla’s whole identity, no cruise port, no casinos, no high-rises, is built around staying upscale rather than high-volume. The single biggest lever on the total is accommodation and timing; a room booked outside the December-April dry season runs noticeably less than the same room in peak season.

Is Anguilla safe for a six-day trip?

Yes, for the ordinary beach-and-cay experience, but not on a blanket claim of zero crime. The UK FCDO’s most recent update flags a 2025 spike in gang-related gun crime and robbery, serious enough that Anguillians held a public anti-gun-violence march in August 2025. That uptick is real and worth ordinary caution, avoiding isolated areas after dark and keeping valuables out of sight, but it has not changed the fact that crime targeting tourists on the beach circuit remains rare. Check the current UK advisory and the beach and cay listings at ivisitanguilla.com before you fly.

One thing to sort before you land

Confirm Scilly Cay’s current open days and your St Martin return-ferry time before you build days four and six around them; both run on fixed schedules with no continuous shuttle, and a message to your hotel or a recent review beats an old blog post. Everything else on this route, the arrival ferry, the cays, the beach bars, runs on cash-friendly prices you can plan for well in advance.