Anguilla in 7 Days on a Budget (With Daily Costs)

Seven days in Anguilla on a budget: the honest costs

Seven days in Anguilla is not more sights, it is more pace. This British Overseas Territory, a separate country from St Martin/Sint Maarten next door despite sharing the same arrival route, has a headline list, top beaches, two offshore cays, Scilly Cay’s lobster lunch, a rental-car island loop, that fits comfortably inside five days; the extra two here buy a St Martin day trip and genuinely unstructured beach time instead of a longer checklist. Only have five days? The 5-day plan skips the island loop and the St Martin crossing. Six? The 6-day plan adds one of those two, not both.

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, Little Bay snorkel 5-10 min dinghy to Scilly Cay $110-200
Day 5 Rental-car island loop: Maundays Bay, Cap Juluca, the East End about 45 minutes end to end $70-130
Day 6 St Martin/Sint Maarten day trip: shopping, casinos, a livelier dinner 20-25 min ferry each way $100-180
Day 7 A slow repeat day at your favorite beach so far, no new sights none, stay put $50-90

Book these before you go:

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

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 you can 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

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.

Book a short boat trip to Little Bay for the afternoon, a secluded north-coast cove with strong snorkeling reachable by water or by a rope-assisted scramble down the cliffside; the rope route exists but needs a current-conditions check before treating it as a casual DIY option. No car needed today, a boat operator and a taxi cover the whole day.

Day 5: the rental-car island loop

This is the day a car earns its cost. Buy the temporary Anguilla driving permit through the rental company, roughly $15 for a short stay or $25 for three months, drive on the left, and loop the island’s roughly 45-minute end-to-end route at your own pace rather than trying to see it from a taxi window. Stop at Maundays Bay to look at Cap Juluca’s effectively-private beach, then continue through the East End’s quieter fishing-village stretch before returning the car in the evening.

Skip the rental if a full day of driving is not your idea of a vacation; a single fixed-rate taxi driver hired for a half-day loop covers the same ground without the permit paperwork, for roughly the same total cost once fuel and the permit fee are added up.

Day 6: a St Martin day trip

Take the ferry back across to Marigot or Philipsburg for a genuine change of pace, shopping, casinos and a livelier restaurant scene that Anguilla deliberately does not have. The round-trip ferry runs $60 or so per person before a departure tax, roughly the cost of a nice dinner on Anguilla itself, so treat the day as a real splurge rather than a free add-on. Go for the contrast, not because Anguilla is short on things to do; a St Martin day only makes sense on a trip this length, where the pace allows for one day that is not a beach day.

Day 7: a slow day, on purpose

By day seven you have already seen Anguilla’s actual headline list: two top beaches, an offshore cay, Scilly Cay’s lobster lunch, the island loop, a day trip off-island. There is no seventh distinct sight to add, so the honest move is to go back to whichever beach earned it, Shoal Bay East if you want the reef, Meads Bay if you want the resort-row people-watching, and spend the day with a lounger, a paperback and the same beach bar you liked on day one. Budget the same as a normal beach day, a rented lounger, lunch and drinks, and a fixed-rate taxi if you switch beaches, without the boat fare or lobster-lunch splurge from earlier in the week.

Is seven days enough for Anguilla?

Yes, with two days to spare. Seven days covers every beach and cay that actually distinguishes this island, plus a St Martin day trip and a genuinely unplanned day, and Anguilla simply does not have enough fresh checklist items to need more. If you would rather spend those last two days doing less rather than adding a day trip, the 5-day plan covers the same core beaches and cay in less time.

How much does seven days in Anguilla actually cost?

Budget roughly $560-990 per person across all seven days for ferries, taxis, boats, 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, though that quieter, cheaper stretch overlaps the official June-November hurricane season, so budget for trip insurance if you book the August-October window specifically.

Is Anguilla safe for a seven-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 before you build day four around it; the venue runs on a small-operator schedule with no live site to check, so a message to your hotel or a recent review is worth more than an old blog post. Keep day seven genuinely unplanned rather than filling it with a rushed extra excursion; the whole point of seven days over five is the room to slow down.