Cruise passenger numbers are booming. Last year, 37.2 million people took a cruise, which marked a record high, according to the Cruise Lines International Association. Just think: In 2016, only 21.6 million people sailed on a cruise.
But despite the massive and ever-ballooning bookings being racked up, the cruise industry has lacked the kind of search platforms that serve other travel industries such as flying and hotels.
Too many vacationers are still trying to find ideal cruise departures by picking through schedules on the big cruise lines' websites, which have limited search functions and still hide extra fees—which are also increasing each year—until late in the booking process.
Frommer's regularly ranks the best search engines for airfare and hotel stays, and millions of travelers have come to trust our current recommendations.
We'd love to rank the best cruise search engines, too, but we can't—mostly because there aren't many.
But there is one.
CruisePlum cruise deal aggregator
Quietly launched about a decade ago and gradually improving with time, CruisePlum is the exception. It's the cruise search engine you should know about and bookmark, because it will save you from having to comb through multiple cruise line websites to find your perfect vacation match.
CruisePlum's objective is to make it easy to search for cruises that suit whatever specifications you can come up with. Prices are populated by current data that comes directly from the cruise lines.
Whereas many travel bookers will hide mandatory fees such as port charges and gratuities in initial price quotes, CruisePlum displays those rates right at the top, so you'll always have a sense of the true cost that the cruise lines would prefer to save for a last-minute reveal.
We asked the operator of CruisePlum, who chooses not to disclose their name publicly, how the site makes money, and they wrote that the site is basically a labor of love.
"It doesn't sell anything, participate in affiliate programs, seek sponsorships, accept donations, run ads, promote products, etc.," they wrote us. "Simply, CruisePlum does not generate revenue of any kind, nor has it ever. CruisePlum does not have any employees and it's no one's 'day job'."
Once you sign up (for free) and tell the platform how many people will be sailing (one to four passengers), CruisePlum's Detailed Search function can filter all upcoming cruises by factors of your choosing, such as precisely when you wish to travel, how long you want to sail, price ranges that go as low as $0–$49 a day or up to the moon, when the ship was built (older ships tend to be cheaper), the specific ports called on, ship amenities, and more.
You can even tell the site which ports and cruise lines you hate so they'll be excluded from search results.
By the end, you'll have a list of upcoming cruise departures perfectly matching your wish list, and you can see prices for every major cabin type.
Additionally, CruisePlum automatically includes taxes, port fees, and mandatory gratuities in price quotes—which is why they appear to be higher than what you'll find at first on a cruise line's website.
"Providing bottom-line pricing is something we've done from the start," CruisePlum's captain told us. "Before the California hidden fee law, CruisePlum was the only U.S. site I know of that included taxes and port fees in the upfront total and per-night prices."
Click a price that interests you and CruisePlum might even give you the option to see cheaper deals if you change dates or pick a similar itinerary.
So CruisePlum's standard detailed search actively helps you find the cheapest version of what you want—and that's even before you start exploring the site's specialized lists of Hot Deals, Last Minute Deals, Solo Deals, Price Drops, and New Releases, which are all delivered in their own lists from the menu bar.
You can't actually make a booking at CruisePlum, but to our eyes that makes it more trustworthy since it's not about selling you anything. It was built to give you the most complete picture possible, without bias, so you can arm yourself with information and complete your booking where you choose, be it directly with a cruise line or via a travel advisor.
"Building a site can be fun," Mr. or Ms. CruisePlum told us. "Maintaining one is satisfying because we keep learning new things, including from our users."
Imagine that. Something done for the love of it, not for cash.
CruisePlum, you're a peach.
While we're on the subject of helpful cruise websites, here are four more money-saving platforms you should know about.
Can I Do This Port?
Another labor of love operated by a cruiser, CanIDoThisPort.com exists to answer a simple question that is hard to answer: Do I have to pay for an excursion to tour a given port or can I just see it on my own?
The site's owner posted their raison d'être on Cruise Critic's message boards to alert fellow cruisers about the new resource: "Can I Do This Port gives you a straight answer for a port in about five seconds: how DIY-friendly it is, how much time you realistically need, the specific things that could go wrong, and what we'd do with the day. Every port information is hand-researched, not scraped or AI-slopped together. It's completely free. There are no ads, no affiliate links, no excursions to sell you, nothing gated. There is genuinely nothing to buy, because the moment we're incentivized to tell you a port is hard, the tool stops being worth anything."
CruiseTimetables.com
When locals complain about overtourism, cruise ships are a huge source of that frustration. But there's a way to know in advance how many cruise passengers will be in a port at the same time.
CruiseTimetables.com catalogs the upcoming schedules of all the major cruise itineraries. Head to the site's Port Schedules page and choose your destination. Then, on the resulting calendar page, select the date when you're thinking about visiting that port. You'll be shown a list of all the ships with itineraries slated to be there on that day.
Would you rather be in the exquisite but intensely cramped Old Town of Dubrovnik on April 14, 2027, when just 684 people will be calling on the Oceania Sirena? Or the day before, when more than 2,000 bodies from three different ships will be shuffling, elbow-to-elbow, along the Stradun?
This site can be useful for travelers who won't be on a ship, too, since they can track quieter days in tight towns.
(CanIDoThisPort.com has a calculator for port crowds that supplies a sense of whether a typical mob size is expected for that day, but the stripped-down presentation on the CruiseTimetables site simply gives the facts.)
ShoreExcursions.com
Everyone knows that cruise lines mark up the cost of shore excursions and you can often save money on the same activities by booking them yourself.
To protect their profits, cruise lines try to frighten passengers out of booking day trips on their own, warning, for example, that the ship won't wait for guests who book their own excursions and are late coming back.
But that scare tactic doesn't work with ShoreExcursions.com, which serves as a broker for shoreside activities, many of them identical to what your ship sells at an inflated rate. The website guarantees you'll be back at the dock in time to avoid getting left behind.
But even if the worst happens and your day trip is tardy in returning, the site promises it "will arrange and pay for your accommodations, meals, and transportation to the next port of call, and they will pay you an additional $1,000 USD per customer for the inconvenience."
The site also guarantees the lowest prices for its trips, and, if you find the same excursion for less (except ones obtained through "an agency rebate, coupon, or membership discount"), ShoreExcursions.com will match that price.
In that light, maybe it's the cruise lines that are afraid of third-party excursion brokers.
CruiseCompete
If you want to save money on a cruise, it helps to try every door. That's why Frommer's has been recommending CruiseCompete since its inception in 2003.
Once you know what cruise departure you want to take (maybe use CruisePlum to figure that out), take your ideal cruise situationship to this site.
After you enter the vacation you have your eye on, CruiseCompete takes a day or so to send your wishes to a list of travel advisors who will then bid for your business.
Why would you want to do that? Because cruise lines are big on favoritism, and travel agents who do lots of business are often privy to special perks such as free upgrades, onboard credits, and lower rates.
You won't be obligated to buy your cruise from any of the CruiseCompete bidders if they don't deliver a quote you like, but you will stand a good chance of being offered some tempting freebies or rates that you wouldn't have been able to access on your own.