How Much The Biggest Cruise Ships (And Cruise Lines) Make Each Day

Step onto a cruise ship, and the first thing that you likely notice is how large and luxurious cruise ships really are.

From grand promenades that span multiple decks to ships that measure 20+ stories and more than 1,000 feet long, it’s obvious that cruise lines spend a lot of money building the vessels. In fact, some of these newest ships cost well north of $1 billion to construct. That’s not to include the daily cost of operating and maintaining the ships.

Of course, cruise lines wouldn’t spend that much money if they didn’t know they could earn it all back… plus a tidy profit to compensate for the effort. With thousands of people on a ship, each trip made by the ship brings in hundreds of thousands — and even millions of dollars — in revenue. That goes on for years on end over the life of a ship.

But have you ever wondered just how much the cruise lines are making each day? With dozens of cruise ships all holding thousands of people each, the numbers have to be astounding. Meanwhile, how much are individual cruise ships making for every day that they sail?

Given that we’ve covered how much cruise lines make from each passenger in the past, we decided to see just how much cruise lines and the biggest cruise ships make each day they operate.

How Much Money Cruise Lines Make Each Day

Major cruise lines are publicly traded companies, with stock on the major exchanges. As such, they are required to file regular financial results. We took a look at the latest yearly results for three major cruise companies: Carnival, Royal Caribbean, and Norwegian to dive into exactly how much money they make.

Before we get too far, you should know that today’s cruise companies are highly complex organizations with a number of different assets.

For example, Carnival Corporation actually encompasses a number of different lines, including Carnival, Princess, Holland America, and more. Meanwhile, financial reports usually don’t break down figures based solely on individual cruise lines. Therefore, we have to look at the company as a whole, instead of individual cruise lines. Still, it gives us a good estimate.

Carnival Corporation
As the largest cruise company in the world, Carnival Corporation is famous for the Carnival brand, but also features other lines including the aforementioned Princess and Holland America, AIDA, Costa, Seabourn and others.

All told, Carnival Corp. brought in a staggering $26.6 billion in revenue across all of its lines for the 2025 fiscal year. Divided by 365 days, that comes out to $72,936,986 in revenue earned each day.

How much of that turns into profit? The cruise line had a total profit of $2.76 billion last year. Divided by the days in a year, that comes out to a daily profit of $7,561,644.

Royal Caribbean Cruises LTD
Royal Caribbean Cruises LTD is famous for the largest cruise ships on the planet, but did you know it is also the parent company of Celebrity Cruises and Silversea Cruises? It also has joint partnerships in TUI and Hapag-Lloyd Cruises. In total, the cruise line operates nearly 70 ships that cover the world.

As you might expect, all those ships bring in a lot of money. In the past year, Royal Caribbean saw revenue of $17.9 billion from its business. That’s a total of $49,136,986 divided out for each day of the year.

Royal Caribbean is also highly profitable. With 2025 profits of $4.29 billion, the cruise company earned a profit of $11,756,164 per day across its fleet.

Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings
Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings is of course the parent company of Norwegian Cruise Line. However, it also operates cruises under the Oceania and Regent brands. 

While Norwegian is the smallest of the “big three” cruise companies, it still brings in a healthy amount of money. Last year saw revenue of $9.8 billion, or $26,924,910 each day. As for profits, the company had a bottom line of $423.2 million — or $1,159,578 per day.

To summarize, here’s how much these three cruise companies earned in 2025:

How Much Money The Biggest Cruise Ships Make Each Day

While it’s interesting to see how much cruise lines are making per day, the numbers are so large that they can be difficult to wrap your head around. What is more approachable is how much the cruise lines make from their individual ships.

You should understand this is a “back of the envelope” calculation. Cruise lines don’t break down their revenue or profit from individual ships. Specific trips will earn more or less, so these figures are just an estimate.

To calculate how much a ship makes, we first calculated how many people sail on each ship. Cruise lines report the passenger capacity of ships at double occupancy, as well as a  an average occupancy rate for the entire company.

This figure is usually between 103-108%, indicating that all rooms have at least two guests on average, and some also have a third.

From there, we multiplied the number of guests by the revenue per passenger the cruise company makes each day. Revenue per passenger is calculated by dividing total revenue earned by the number of passenger cruise days during the year.

For example, if a ship holds 4,000 passengers and sails on a three-day cruise, that’s 12,000 passenger cruise days.

Carnival Jubilee
Carnival Jubilee is Carnival’s newest and largest ship in its fleet. First launched in late 2023, the ship is homeported in Galveston. It has space for 5,374 at double occupancy, but in 2025 Carnival saw an occupancy rate of 105%. Using these figures, we can estimate that the typical cruise on this ship has 5,643 passengers.

Meanwhile, given that Carnival brought in revenue $26.2 billion across its fleet and had 101.7 million passenger cruise days on its ships, we can estimate the company  generated revenue of $262 per person, per day.

With 5,643 passengers spending an average of $262 per day, that would mean the Carnival Jubilee sees an estimated revenue of $1,477,089 each day.

Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas
Icon of the Seas is Royal Caribbean’s game-changing ship and the first of the Icon class (now joined by Star of the Seas and Legend of the Seas). It’s also the largest cruise ship in the world. All told the ship carries 5,610 passengers at double occupancy, but upwards of 7,600 at full capacity. According to its financial reports, Royal Caribbean sees occupancy levels of 109.7%. So the estimated number of passengers in our calculation would actually be 6,154.

With revenue of $17.9 billion and 58.5 million passenger days on its ship, that means Royal Caribbean brings in an average of $306 per person each day on its ships.

In total, 6,154 passengers times $306 each gives a total estimated revenue of $1,886,148 each day aboard the Icon of the Seas.

Norwegian Aqua
Launched in 2026, Norwegian Luna is the newest ship in NCL’s fleet and part of the line’s Prima-plus class.

All told, the Norwegian Luna has room for 3,565 guests, assuming double occupancy. However, like other cruise lines Norwegian sails above 100% capacity. In 2025, the occupancy figure was 103.5% across the company. If Norwegian Luna sails at this level, it means 3,690 passengers on the ship.

According to financial reports, Norwegian brought in just over $9.8 billion last year with 25.3 million passenger days. Quick division shows that the cruise line earned $389 per person, per day in 2025.

With 3,690 passengers on the Norwegian Luna bringing in $389 per day, that would mean revenue of $1,434,492 for each day.

Here’s how the estimated revenue figures we calculated stack up:

Why These Figures Might Actually Be Low

As repeated throughout, these are estimates. Specific cruise ship statistics are not publicly available. Instead, we’ve taken the figures for the whole company and applied them to a single ship.

However, these ships are among the newest in the fleet. New ships typically see higher ticket prices and more revenue opportunities onboard compared to the average ship. So in reality, these ships like pull the averages up.

For instance, a 7-day cruise aboard Icon of the Seas for July 2027 starts at $2,204 per person for the cheapest cabin. For a sailing at the same time of year aboard the much older Enchantment of the Seas, the price starts at just $960 per person.

The bigger and newer the ship, the more money it’s likely to bring in. 

Are these numbers higher or lower than you thought? Do they surprise you? Let us know in the comments below.

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