Affiliate disclosure
In short: some links on this site pay us a commission when you book, you never pay more for it, and no cruise operator can pay to appear here.
Which links earn a commission
Every booking button and every in-text link to a cruise opens that trip's listing on GetYourGuide or Viator with our partner tag attached. If you book after clicking, the platform pays us a share of the commission it already collects from the operator. That share comes out of the platform's side of the transaction, not out of your fare, so the price on the listing is the same price you would get by finding the page on your own.
GetYourGuide and Viator are the platforms where these Paris sailings are sold to individual travellers. One further relationship covers a different product: the "Check rates" buttons beside the hotels named in a few guides are affiliate links to Expedia, routed through the Travelpayouts network, and a completed stay booked through one pays us a commission the same way, at no extra cost to you. A third relationship covers the free walking tour named on our free-things-to-do guide: the "See this free tour on GuruWalk" link is a referral link to GuruWalk, an independent walking-tour platform we do not operate, and it is compensated the same way as our cruise and hotel links. There is no display advertising, no sponsored posts and no paid reviews, and the map embedded on the homepage earns us nothing at all. If another network is ever added, this page and the footer disclosure will name it before the first link goes live, not after.
What that does not change
- What gets listed. Every sailing on this site had to pass the same test: a real boat running Seine departures in central Paris, bookable by an individual right now, with a live product page and enough reviews for its rating to mean something. Operators whose trips are not currently running are left out, no matter how famous the name. When the same operator sells the identical departure on both platforms, it counts once, because doubling it would inflate the catalog while splitting one boat's reviews across two cards.
- Ranking. No operator can buy a spot, and none has been offered one. If a category opens with a particular cruise, that is because it is the most-reviewed option in its category, a claim you can verify against the numbers shown on the cards.
- What we say. An open-deck sightseeing cruise is fine on a warm evening and bundled-up business in January, and the descriptions say both. A dinner cruise with a modest review base gets called exactly that instead of borrowing trust from a better-known operator's numbers. When a one-hour sightseeing ticket covers most of what a pricier evening cruise offers for less money, the comparison says so plainly, even though the cheaper booking pays us less.
- What stays off the list. Long multi-day river itineraries are not Seine sightseeing trips, so they do not get cards here, whatever they might earn. A listing that rewraps a departure already listed under another product page does not get a second entry either.
- Free options. Walking the quays, watching the boats pass from a bridge at dusk, and buying a Batobus hop-on pass straight from RATP earn this site nothing, and they still get recommended wherever they genuinely beat a paid ticket.
What this affiliate status leaves untouched
Every star rating and review count printed here is the number the platform itself publishes, taken from the live listing. Nothing is averaged across sites, rounded in our favor, or invented. Where the dinner cruise by one operator and its sightseeing cruise have separate listings, the numbers stay separate too, because that is how travelers actually encounter them.
Prices are handled the same way, with one honest caveat. Cruise fares on the Seine depend heavily on what is included: a plain one-hour sightseeing seat and a multi-course dinner sailing from the same operator are different products at different prices, so they are kept apart rather than blurred together. Rates also shift with the date, the seating or menu option chosen, and the currency your account displays, since these listings show in dollars for US visitors and other currencies elsewhere. That is why no price is invented here. The live booking page is always the final authority on what you will actually be charged.
If you would rather book direct
You can skip our links entirely. Search the operator's name on GetYourGuide or Viator yourself, or go to the operator's own website: Bateaux Parisiens, Compagnie des Bateaux Mouches, Vedettes de Paris, Batobus (RATP) and the other companies compared here all sell tickets directly. One thing to weigh: a direct booking falls under that operator's own cancellation terms, which can be stricter than the platform's. This site would rather you ended up on the water. The cruise comparisons, the FAQ and the about page are worth using whether or not you ever book through a link.
Questions about any of this: email us. How the tour lineup is put together is explained on the about page.