BBQ Boat Amsterdam: Prices, Menu and What If It Rains

The BBQ boat departs from Stationsplein 18, a few minutes' walk from Amsterdam Centraal Station, with other pick-up points available on request. A skipper runs the boat for the whole charter, so nobody in your group needs to do anything but eat, drink and talk. The barbecue is cooked on board: satay, burgers, sausages in both meat and vegetarian versions, shashliks, steak, bread, salad, sauces and herb butter. Halal meat is available on request.

The open bar runs alongside the grill: beer, wine and soft drinks, unlimited for the length of the charter rather than capped at a set number of rounds. Wine switches from rosé in summer to red in winter. A guest who doesn't drink alcohol pays the same per-person rate and can work through as many soft drinks as they like; the price isn't split by who orders what. The route runs the canal belt and the Amstel, past the Maritime Museum and Oosterdok, the Skinny Bridge and the "Dancing Houses".

Pricing is per person and scales with time on the water, not with how much any one guest eats or drinks. A 2-hour charter costs €69.95 per person, 3 hours is €87.95, and 4 hours is €110.95, each including tax and before the 1.5% guest transaction fee added at checkout. Ten guests is the floor, so the shortest booking starts at 10 times €69.95, which is €699.50 before that fee. The same group at 4 hours becomes €1,109.50 before fees, roughly €41 more per head for the extra two hours. At the maximum of 28 guests, a 2-hour charter runs €1,958.60 before fees: the per-person rate doesn't shrink as the group grows, so a bigger group just costs more overall. Check the BBQ boat's own page for live pricing and availability on your exact dates.

This boat is not rain-protected, not heated, and has no toilet on board. It sails open or partly covered depending on conditions. There's no indoor version of this specific charter to switch to on the day, so look at the forecast before you book, not after it turns.

If the date looks wet and the group still wants a private charter with a skipper and an open bar, the honest fallback inside this same family is the pizza and drinks charter or the tapas and drinks charter. Both are rain-protected, depart from the same Stationsplein 18 dock, and keep the unlimited drinks. Neither is heated and neither has a toilet, so rain-protected here means dry, not winterized.

The same operator runs five other private charters from the Stationsplein 18 dock, each with a skipper and the same 10-guest floor. None of them are heated, none have a toilet, and none offer free cancellation, so those three trade-offs aren't unique to the grill option; they're standard across the whole family. What changes is the food, the drinks style, and whether there's a roof. If the grill isn't the must-have and budget is tighter, drinks and bites starts lowest in this family at from €399.50 and runs as short as one hour, with bites instead of a barbecue.

Under 10 guests, none of this fits: the floor is fixed across the whole family, not a discount tier that bends for the right date. For a smaller group the better next step is the full list of private boats, built for smaller headcounts instead of charging for seats nobody fills. Past 28 guests, the group boat tours page handles larger requests directly. The dinner cruise category page lists the BBQ boat alongside pizza, tapas and the cheese and wine format in one place. For a birthday specifically, the birthday boat guide compares private boats by group size.

Every guest on this specific boat must be 18 or older, so it isn't the right charter for a family group with children or teenagers. Cancellation runs on a sliding scale: a full refund a month or more before departure, 75% back inside a month but still a week out, and nothing back inside the final week. Date and time changes are allowed up to 48 hours before departure, a separate allowance worth using if the forecast turns against you close to the date.