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Bow thruster cost by boat type: what your hull does to the bill
Most price tables, including ours, go by boat length. Your hull has not read the table. It decides more than length does: which trade does the work, whether a A tube bored straight through the hull below the waterline, with a propeller in the middle of it. It is the conventional thruster. Fitting one is mostly a labor job rather than a hardware one. fits at all, and which line on the invoice is the big one. This page puts the hulls side by side and prices a bow thruster on each.
The short answer
Our by-length table puts a 35–40 ft job at $10,100–$14,200. Roughly half of that, $5,120–$5,760, is labor.
On the one itemized breakdown we found, the battery bank, charger and cables were 67–75% of the itemized lines. The hull work was the cheap part.
There is no hull body between the logs to put one through. You are pricing an external or retractable kit, and no owner has published what a fitted one cost.
The The part of the hull just behind the bow, where the front of the boat curves down toward the keel. It is the shallowest part of the underwater hull, so a tunnel there has little water above it. settles whether a tunnel goes in at all. Where it forces a custom spot, you pay for a custom job.
The hardware is the big line and the labor is small. One owner's aftermarket unit came to about half of what the builder charges.
Pricing the stern too? Every price on this page is for one thruster at the bow. What a stern thruster costs covers the other end. Each of the boat guides has a section called “Bow, stern, or both” for its kind of boat. Bow and stern thrusters together covers a unit at each end.
Every hull, side by side
Read the third column first. Which line dominates is what changes with the hull. The total moves too, but a length band already gives you the total.
| Hull | What the hull work is | Biggest line on the bill | Tunnel? | What we hold |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pontoon and tritoon | No hull to cut. Owners on the forums have a bracket fabricated between the logs. | Unknown: no invoice has been published | No: no hull body forward to pass a tube through | None. Zero published prices |
| Sailboat | Find a spot in a narrow, sharp bow with depth below the waterline and hull either side. | Labor, and it is a custom job | Sometimes: the forefoot decides | One owner-fitted install, 2023 |
| Aluminum or welded houseboat | Cut the opening, weld the sides, attach the tunnel. A welder does it, with no glasswork. | Electrical: two thirds to three quarters | Yes, welded in | One itemized breakdown, Dec 2016 |
| Catamaran | The same tunnel job as a monohull, done in one hull. No external unit spans two hulls. | Labor, as on a monohull | Yes, in one hull, when the wind on the boat beats what the two engines can do | None. No quote or invoice found |
| Trawler | Cut a tunnel below the waterline in a deep forefoot, bond it in with glass and resin, fair it flush. | Labor, about half the bill | Yes, and this is the case every length band assumes | Three yard-fitted jobs and one owner's claim, 2022–2025 |
| Motor yacht | The trawler job with a bigger unit and a bigger battery bank, because the house catches the wind. | Labor, about half the bill | Yes, the usual answer here | One yard-fitted job and one quote, 2016 |
| Bass and flats boat | Nothing at the bow: the trolling motor already covers it. A stern kit bolts on at the transom. | Hardware: the stern kit is the bill | No: an outboard planing hull has nowhere to put one | None. Nobody has published a price |
| Ski and wake inboard | Bolt-on external kit fitted in your own garage over a weekend, with no tunnel and no haul-out. | Hardware: labor is close to nothing | Rarely: the aftermarket is external | Nine forum rows, one paid figure |
| Express cruiser | A tunnel only if the planing forefoot has room for one. Otherwise, a retractable. An external unit is the wrong tool at speed. | Labor for a tunnel. The unit itself for a retractable | Sometimes: the forefoot decides | One quote and one owner-fitted install, 2025 |
| Center console | Usually nothing at the bow, because a center console’s bow needs little help. Outboard-mounted stern kits bolt on. A big one can take a tunnel or a retractable. | Hardware on a stern kit. Labor if a tunnel goes in | On a big one | One yard-fitted job and one quote, 2021 |
A thruster bill has three parts. There is the hole in the boat, the power run to the bow, and the unit itself. The hull decides which part is the problem.
Fiberglass makes the hole expensive.
A houseboat makes the power expensive.
A pontoon has no hull to put a hole in, so you are buying a different product.
A wake boat makes the hole and the power cheap. That is why one owner's aftermarket unit came to about half of what the builder charges.
What a bow thruster costs, boat by boat
The table above says which part of the bill grows. This one says what it comes to. Each row is one kind of boat at a typical length for it, priced as a boatyard job.
That price covers the thruster, the labor, batteries and wiring, and Lifting the boat out of the water on a travel lift or a trailer so work can be done below the waterline. It is billed separately from the job itself. when the job needs it. The ski or wake boat and bass or flats boat rows carry no haul-out at all: a boat that size comes in on her trailer. An express cruiser to 30 ft would too; the row here is 35 ft. The thruster finder prices the same jobs from the same list.
| Boat | External | Tunnel | Retractable | What owners have paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Express cruiser 35 ft | Not listed for a boat that planes | Tunnel thrusters for a 35 ft express cruiser Most jobs cost $9,500–$10,500. The least expensive, fitted by a boatyard:
And 8 more models, up to $13,000 for the VETUS Bow Pro 421. The thruster itself, before fitting: $900–$3,300. The boat has to come out of the water for these. One at each end, a tunnel at the bow and an external unit at the stern: most jobs cost $17,300–$19,000. Find the right one for your boat | All bigger than needed Retractable thrusters for a 35 ft express cruiser Every one we list is more thruster than this boat needs. Fitted by a boatyard, least expensive first:
And 6 more models, up to $39,900 for the Lewmar 250VRTT Vertical Retractable. The thruster itself, before fitting: $7,400–$29,400. The boat has to come out of the water for these. Find the right one for your boat | One quote $25,000 quoted for tunnels at both ends of a 41 ft Formula 41PC, Aug 2025, never bought. The owner fitted external units at both ends himself for about $11,000 |
| Sailboat 48 ft | Bow and stern pair: $9,000–$10,200 two DockStar units External thrusters for a 48 ft sailboat Fitted by a boatyard, least expensive first:
And one more model, up to $25,200 for the Sleipner Side-Power EX180D. The thruster itself, before fitting: $4,400–$17,800. Two of these can be fitted with the boat in the water. One at each end: most jobs cost $18,200–$30,400. Two DockStar units, one at the bow and one at the stern, come to $9,000–$10,200. Find the right one for your boat | Tunnel thrusters for a 48 ft sailboat Most jobs cost $16,200–$19,500. The least expensive, fitted by a boatyard:
And 32 more models, up to $29,900 for the Quick BTQ 250. The thruster itself, before fitting: $1,800–$10,600. The boat has to come out of the water for these. One at each end, a tunnel at the bow and an external unit at the stern: most jobs cost $24,600–$31,700. Find the right one for your boat | Retractable thrusters for a 48 ft sailboat Most jobs cost $24,700–$29,100. The least expensive, fitted by a boatyard:
And 10 more models, up to $48,200 for the Quick BTR 250. The thruster itself, before fitting: $7,400–$26,500. The boat has to come out of the water for these. Find the right one for your boat | One boat $2,368 on a 1985 Bayfield 32C, Mar 2023. The owner fitted it, so there is no labor in that figure |
| Trawler 42 ft | External thrusters for a 42 ft trawler Fitted by a boatyard, least expensive first:
The thruster itself, before fitting: $4,400–$9,500. Two of these can be fitted with the boat in the water. One at each end: most jobs cost $15,100–$23,000. Find the right one for your boat | Tunnel thrusters for a 42 ft trawler Most jobs cost $12,600–$15,800. The least expensive, fitted by a boatyard:
And 30 more models, up to $21,500 for the Sleipner Side-Power E100/185T. The thruster itself, before fitting: $1,500–$8,800. The boat has to come out of the water for these. One at each end, a tunnel at the bow and an external unit at the stern: most jobs cost $21,000–$26,000. Find the right one for your boat | Retractable thrusters for a 42 ft trawler Most jobs cost $21,800–$27,000. The least expensive, fitted by a boatyard:
And 7 more models, up to $34,600 for the Sleipner Side-Power ERL100 eVision. The thruster itself, before fitting: $7,400–$18,100. The boat has to come out of the water for these. Find the right one for your boat | 3 boats $9,000–$19,000 fitted by a yard, 2022–2025; two of the three are stern units |
| Pontoon or tritoon 24 ft | Bow and stern pair: $7,600–$10,900 Sideshift PT360 Pontoon Joystick System External thrusters for a 24 ft pontoon or tritoon Fitted by a boatyard, least expensive first:
The thruster itself, before fitting: $4,400–$4,600. All of these can be fitted with the boat in the water. One at each end: most jobs cost $11,700–$13,400. Sideshift PT360 Pontoon Joystick System, one at the bow and one at the stern, comes to $7,600–$10,900. Find the right one for your boat | Not possible on this boat | Not possible on this boat | None No owner has ever published what a fitted one cost |
| Houseboat 60 ft | Sideshift HB350 External thrusters for a 60 ft houseboat Fitted by a boatyard:
The thruster itself, before fitting: $6,500. It can be fitted with the boat in the water. One at each end: from $16,200, and that is a Sideshift HB350 at the bow with a Sideshift HB350 at the stern. Find the right one for your boat | Tunnel thrusters for a 60 ft houseboat Most jobs cost $20,900–$24,400. The least expensive, fitted by a boatyard:
And 25 more models, up to $51,300 for the Sleipner Side-Power E350 HDB eVision. The thruster itself, before fitting: $3,700–$31,000. The boat has to come out of the water for these. One at each end, a tunnel at the bow and an external unit at the stern: most jobs cost $30,200–$33,600. Find the right one for your boat | Retractable thrusters for a 60 ft houseboat Fitted by a boatyard, least expensive first:
And 3 more models, up to $50,600 for the Sleipner Side-Power ERL170 eVision. The thruster itself, before fitting: $22,700–$29,500. The boat has to come out of the water for these. Find the right one for your boat | One boat $5,000 on one boat, December 2016. The owner fitted it, so that is welding and parts only |
| Ski or wake boat 22 ft | Not listed for a boat that planes | Not possible on this boat | Not possible on this boat | Kits only $4,000–$6,200 for the kit alone, before fitting |
| Bass or flats boat 19 ft | Not listed for a boat that planes | Not possible on this boat | Not possible on this boat | None No owner has published a price for this kind of boat |
The two kinds of number in that table do not compare. The three price columns are ours. They are what a yard would bill, worked out from published prices and typical hours. The last column is what somebody said they paid. Several of those are owner-fitted jobs with no labor in them at all.
Be careful with the houseboat row. That $5,000 is one boat, in December 2016, where the owner did the work. It covers an aluminum tube, a welder's time and a battery bank. It is a real figure for that owner's job, with no yard labor in it. Priced as a yard job today, on a boat that size, most tunnel jobs would cost $20,900–$24,400.
Each thruster is priced on its own installation. That is why the external column is worth a second look. Two units in it can both be called external and be nothing like the same job.
Take the 48 ft sailboat. The cheapest there is the DockStar Smart Thruster, bow at $4,500. That is $4,380 for the unit and $160 of yard time, with no wiring to run and no haul-out.
The most expensive is the Sleipner Side-Power EX180D at up to $25,200. That is $17,750 for the unit, $5,920 of labor and lift, $1,000 of batteries and cable, and $492 of other parts. It costs more because it bolts through the hull and needs power run to it.
Where a cell says the route is not possible, the hull rules it out:
- External on a bass or flats boat: this site lists no external bow unit for a boat that planes. At planing speed a hard wave lands on a unit hanging off the bow. Sleipner places its external pods on displacement and semi-planing boats. Sideshift’s manual puts a rough-water speed cap on its bow unit. Stern units that mount on the drive or the transom are listed, and a tunnel or a retractable covers the bow.
- Tunnel on a pontoon or tritoon: a pontoon has no hull body between the logs to bore a tunnel through, and nobody sells one for these boats.
- Retractable on a pontoon or tritoon: a retractable drops down inside the hull, and a pontoon has no hull depth to drop into.
- Tunnel on a ski or wake boat: nobody sells a tunnel kit for these hulls. In every owner thread we read, nobody had cut one in, because the ballast tanks and the shallow planing bow own that space.
- Retractable on a bass or flats boat: a retractable needs hull depth to drop into, and these planing hulls have almost none forward.
- Tunnel on a bass or flats boat: nobody sells a tunnel kit for these hulls, and a bass boat’s shallow planing bow has almost no depth to hold one.
Which thrusters count in a row. Most makers publish a thrust rating, and we test each unit against its maker’s own figure. Some do not. For those we work one out from the size of the motor, and leave out any unit that comes up short. That stops a small, cheap thruster pulling a big boat's price down.
One exception: a thruster built for one kind of boat. Sideshift's HB350 is sold for houseboats and rated by Sideshift for boats up to 30 tons. Sideshift publishes no thrust figure for it. We take the maker at its word for the boat it was built for, so it stays in the houseboat row. Its smaller sister, the HB340, drops out. Sideshift sells it for shorter boats than our 60 ft example.
Where every unit is bigger than the boat needs, the cell says so. It shows the least expensive of them, so you still get a starting price.
The finder will usually give you a narrower answer than this table. It also asks about haul-outs, holes in the hull and your budget. This table knows only the kind of boat.
The table has no trolling motor column. On a light hull that the wind pushes around (a pontoon, a small aluminum boat, a bass boat), owners really do report a bow-mount trolling motor working for docking. It is the cheapest thing on this page.
The motor itself runs $2,500–$6,500. At one end is a Minn Kota Terrova Freshwater Bow-Mount Trolling Motor with MEGA Down Imaging. At the other is a Garmin Force Kraken Bow-Mount Trolling Motor (Transducer Not Included).
Cost it the way every other figure on this page is costed: fitted at a yard, with the battery bank and cable it needs. On a 24 ft pontoon that comes to $3,300–$8,200.
Most people do not buy one that way. A trolling motor is the one thing on this page an owner routinely bolts on in an afternoon. The hardware figure is the one that will match a catalog. The fitted figure is what it costs if somebody else fits it and wires a bank for it. The gap between the two is yard time and batteries.
A trolling motor is also a different kind of thing from the three columns above. It is built to move and hold a boat slowly for fishing, aimed fore and aft. Docking asks for a short, hard push sideways, on demand, with nothing to deploy or aim first.
Nobody sells one as a docking thruster. The finder lists a trolling motor only for the boats where owners report success, and never as the best answer. Where it works and where owners report it does nothing has the evidence on both sides.
The baseline: a fiberglass monohull
This is the boat every length band quietly assumes. The yard cuts a tunnel through a solid part of the hull below the waterline. They bond it in with glass and resin, then fair it back flush.
The by-length table on the cost page puts a 35–40 ft job at $10,100–$14,200. The quote checker adds that job up line by line. On its numbers, $5,120–$5,760 of it is labor, roughly half.
Welded hulls: the bill turns upside down
On a houseboat the bill turns upside down. The hull work is welding: cut the opening, weld in the sides, attach the tunnel. That is a different trade at a different rate, and the glass shop at your yard may send you down the road for it.
Only one owner has published an itemized breakdown (Wayne's Words, December 2016). The tube and the welding came to $1,000–$1,500. The battery bank, charger and cables came to $3,025.
That was 67–75% of the itemized lines, and the single largest item on the invoice. A thruster wants a lot of current at the bow. A houseboat has no battery capacity anywhere near there.
The houseboat guide has the full breakdown, including the two figures in that thread that do not reconcile. It also covers the purpose-built external units that retract under the deck, with their prices. And it explains why the hydraulic route exists on these boats and almost nowhere else in the consumer market.
Pontoon and tritoon: nobody has published a price
A pontoon removes the job. There is no hull body between the logs to bore a tunnel through, so the length bands do not apply at all.
We could not find a single pontoon owner anywhere stating what a fitted thruster cost them. Not as a quote, an invoice or a rough figure. The main forum thread asking exactly this question has no dollar figure in it.
What exists instead is a small set of purpose-built deck-mounted and retractable kits with published prices. There are also a couple of products that are advertised but cannot be bought.
Our own length-band table carries “Under 25 ft” with not one owner report, for the same underlying reason. Yards rarely fit tunnels to small or unconventional hulls, so there are no invoices to report.
The pontoon and tritoon guide has the whole picture. It covers what you can order, what it costs, what the forums recommend instead, and why four of the five makers publish no thrust rating.
Sailboat: the forefoot decides
A sailboat's problem is the shape of her bow. The first question is whether a tunnel will go in at all. The price comes after.
The bow is narrow and sharp, and the The part of the hull just behind the bow, where the front of the boat curves down toward the keel. It is the shallowest part of the underwater hull, so a tunnel there has little water above it. is deep. Finding a spot where a tube sits far enough below the waterline, with hull either side of it, is difficult. A fin keel and a long keel on the same length of boat get different answers.
There is no band for it. The only published sailboat cost we could find is one owner-fitted job on a Bayfield 32C. Where the forefoot forces a custom location, you are paying for a custom job, and the length bands stop applying.
The sailboat guide works through that shape. It also has the leverage arithmetic for when a tunnel will not go, and the reason your rig changes the sizing question.
Ski and wake: the factory price is the one you have seen
On a tournament ski or wake boat, the problem is the price you have probably already been shown. These are inboards (V-drive or direct drive, fixed prop, a small The blade behind the propeller that steers the boat, and it only works when water is flowing past it. At docking speed it does almost nothing, and in reverse it does nothing at all if it sits behind the propeller.). They dock like a One engine driving one propeller. It steers with a rudder, so it loses steering at low speed, and in reverse the propeller kicks the stern one way only. with almost no The slowest speed at which the boat still answers the wheel. Below it you are not steering, you are drifting in a chosen direction..
The case for a thruster is the strongest on this site. But the only price most owners have ever seen is a factory options sheet. So they price a thruster at five figures and stop looking.
One G23 owner reported paying $4,700 for an ezDrive kit ordered December 2020. Install labor was about ten hours on top. The owner summed up the saving plainly: “Cost was about 1/2 in total of what it costs from Nautique.”
That is the only paid figure we have for these boats. The rest are quotes and what owners believe the job costs.
The fitting is a bolt-on bracket. So the hardware is the big line, and the labor line all but disappears. The ski and wake page has every figure we found. Each one is dated, sourced, and sorted into what was paid, what was quoted, and what owners merely believe.
How to read a length band once you know this
A length band assumes fiberglass and a monohull. If your boat is neither, it is a starting point and not much more.
Ask which trade is doing the work. Glass and welding are different contractors at different rates. One of them may not be at your yard.
Ask where the batteries are going. On a boat with no capacity forward, this can be the largest single line. It was on that houseboat.
If a tunnel does not fit, the price table does not apply at all. You are pricing a different product, and those are published.
What this means for your boat
If you have a fiberglass monohull, the length bands on the cost page are a fair start. Expect labor to be roughly half the bill.
If you have a welded houseboat, ask where the batteries will go before you look at the hull work. On the one itemized breakdown, the electrical side was the biggest line.
If you have a pontoon or tritoon, a tunnel is out. Price the kits in the table and read the pontoon and tritoon guide.
If a builder's options sheet priced a thruster at five figures, look at the bolt-on kits. One wake boat owner paid about half of the factory price.
Houseboat breakdown from a public Wayne's Words thread, December 2016. Its prices are of that date, and this page uses it for the split between lines. Fast-boat figures are from the forum posts captured 30 August 2026, sourced in full on the ski and wake page. Where a hull has a guide of its own on this site, that guide is the fuller answer and this page is the comparison.