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Pontoon boat thrusters: bow, stern or both, and what you can buy
The wind arrives at the slip before you do, and a pontoon has very little under the water to argue with it. The usual thruster advice is no use to you either, because there is no hull to put a tunnel through. This guide shows what you can actually order for a pontoon or A pontoon boat with three logs instead of two. today, what each unit does to your boat and what it costs. It also says plainly where the published record stops.
The short answer
One thruster at the bow is the standard setup. The section bow, stern, or both explains why, and when a stern unit helps.
The easiest fit is DockStar’s unit on its pontoon track, at about $4,570. It bolts to the deck and needs no boat wiring. Sideshift’s PT230 retracts under the deck, at $4,495 for the kit. It also needs cranking batteries, heavy cable and more hours to fit, so compare the fitted estimates.
Kits run $4,495 to $6,995, depending on whether you cover one end of the boat or both. Nobody publishes an installed price, so our estimate adds a boatyard’s hours.
Search for one and you get five products. Of those, two publish no price and are not really on sale to you. Only one publishes a thrust rating.
A pontoon has no hull body to bore through. Every product any maker markets at a pontoon is external or retractable by design, and nobody sells a tunnel kit for one.
Bow, stern, or both on a pontoon
Short answer: one thruster at the bow is the standard setup. Your outboard steers the stern while it is pushing, so the bow is where the steering is missing.
At the bow, the easiest fit is a removable unit that sits on a track on top of the deck. It carries its own battery, so there is no boat wiring. It stays on its track: you lower it to dock and lift it clear of the water once you are underway.
Sideshift’s PT230 is the other choice. It bolts under the deck and drops down on a switch, and it goes on with the boat still in the water. The section what is sold for a pontoon compares the two.
At the stern, the units bolt to the outboard’s cavitation plate, the flat plate above the propeller on the outboard’s leg. Nothing goes through the hull. Sideshift says they can go on with the boat afloat, but we recommend fitting them with the boat out of the water, where the leg is easier to reach. They help when the back of the boat swings with the motor in neutral. The section the stern option nobody mentions lists them.
At both ends, Sideshift sells a pair as one system, the PT360 Pontoon Joystick System. It is a PT230 at the bow and an outboard-mounted stern unit, both on one wireless joystick, at $6,995 for the kit. The section what it costs prices it fitted by a yard, and our page on bow and stern thrusters together explains what a unit at each end does.
Buying only one? Our page bow or stern first? helps you choose, and our page on what a stern thruster costs has the dated prices for the back of the boat.
A 24 ft pontoon boat, stopped, turning about her middle. The arrows point the way each unit pushes to turn her: the bow one way, the stern the other.
Why a tunnel is off the table
Start here, because it rules out most of the advice you will find online. 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. thruster needs a hull to go through. It is a tube passed side to side through a solid section of hull below the waterline, with a propeller in the middle.
A pontoon does not have that. It has two sealed aluminum logs with air between them. There is no hull body forward to bore through. A hole through a buoyancy tube is also the last thing you want in it.
Where that claim comes from. No manufacturer or dealer we found states outright that you cannot tunnel a pontoon. What the record shows is that every product any maker markets at a pontoon is external or A thruster that lives inside the hull and drops down through a hatch when you press the button, then pulls back up. It leaves no permanent hole in the water flow. by design, and nobody sells a tunnel kit for one.
So every length band, every installed-cost table and every “what does a bow thruster cost” article (including ours) describes a job your boat cannot have.
What is sold for a pontoon
There are two purpose-built bow products, from two makers. Both mount to the deck or under it. Neither puts anything through a log.
| Product | Kit price | Thrust published | How it mounts | Boat length |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DockStar Smart Thruster with pontoon track | $4,570 | 90 lb | T-track fixed to the top of the deck. Self-contained battery, so it draws nothing from the boat. | Not stated |
| Sideshift PT230 Retractable Pontoon Thruster
The maker’s own listing, read 28 August 2026. Full page: fit, cost and wiring See it on the maker’s site | $4,495 | Not published | Retracts up under the pontoon deck on a helm switch and drops for docking. Nothing goes through a hull, and it goes on with the boat afloat. The manual's limit is 3 mph: retract it before running faster. It runs on one 12 V starting battery of 850 cold cranking amps on 1/0 AWG cable, up to 30 ft from the controller. Bursts only: the manual asks for pushes of 3 to 5 seconds as normal practice, and never more than 20 to 30 seconds at a time. Its warranty does not cover a motor burned out by overuse. On 17 September 2026 sideshift.com was running an end of summer sale, with ten percent off every thruster. The price here is the list price. The sale was still on when the page was read again on 2 October 2026. | Up to 35 ft |
| Sideshift PT360 Pontoon Joystick System
The maker’s own listing, read 28 August 2026. Full page: fit, cost and wiring See it on the maker’s site | $6,995 | Not published | A PT230 retracting bow unit and an outboard-mounted stern unit on one wireless joystick, for a pontoon, priced as the pair. Both are 2.5 hp 12 V motors of the 230 series. The manual runs them off one 12 V starting battery of 850 cold cranking amps on 1/0 AWG cable. The manual's limit is 3 mph: retract it before running faster. Bursts only: the manual asks for pushes of 3 to 5 seconds as normal practice, and never more than 20 to 30 seconds at a time. Its warranty does not cover a motor burned out by overuse. On 17 September 2026 sideshift.com was running an end of summer sale, with ten percent off every thruster. The price here is the list price. The sale was still on when the page was read again on 2 October 2026. | Up to 35 ft |
The two are different machines.
- The Sideshift PT230 retracts. It lives under the deck and drops down on an A small electric motor and screw that pushes a part into position. On a retractable thruster it is what lowers the unit out of the hull and raises it again. when you press the switch. Nothing hangs below the boat the rest of the time.
- The PT360 is a bundle: a bow and a stern thruster with one wireless joystick driving both. That is why it costs about half again as much.
- The DockStar sits on top of the deck on a track and brings its own battery, so there is no boat wiring.
The DockStar figure in the table is their unit plus their pontoon track, the Stanchion Track (Extended), from DockStar's build-and-price list.
Their pontoon installation guide bolts the track to a stanchion on the edge of the deck, braced back to the deck at the bow. A second guide covers mounting it to a plate under the deck.
The two kit prices in the table above do not buy the same job. The note below says what Sideshift adds for wiring, in its own published figure for the PT kits.
Compare the whole job. A Sideshift unit runs off the boat’s cranking batteries. Budget up to $1,000 for batteries and heavy cable, Sideshift’s own published figure for its PT pontoon and HB houseboat units, and about 4 to 16 hours to fit it by our estimate. A DockStar needs none of that wiring, because its battery and charger are inside, and DockStar puts fitting at 1 to 3 hours.
Our fitted estimate counts each Sideshift kit’s own batteries, heavy cable and a charger, at $0 to $1,067. The fitted estimate adds both to every kit, so compare those figures.
The two you cannot buy
Both are advertised as pontoon thrusters. Neither publishes a price or a thrust rating. It is not clear you can order either one for a boat you already own.
Pelegasus Marine's “Dynamic Axial Thruster System” publishes none of the basics: no price, thrust figure, mounting detail, length range or voltage. The page describes a patented system with dual 360-degree nozzles working in twelve inches of water.
It states that the company is seeking OEM partners, which means boatbuilders who would fit it on the production line. It also says that “more information will be released in the near future” (pelegasusmarine.com, read 30 August 2026). There is nothing for you to fit this season.
QMI's AccuThrust is the odd one out, and worth understanding even if you cannot buy it. It is four thrusters built into the pontoon tubes themselves, one at each corner, flush with the bottom of the log. Rocker switches on the dash run them (qmigroup.com, read 30 August 2026). No other maker in this category builds anything like it.
What is known about ordering one. AccuThrust appears on JC TriToon Marine's own site. That site says the system “sets JC TriToon apart from other pontoon manufacturers”, which reads like a factory feature.
No page states that it is factory-only. None gives a price, a thrust figure, a dealer route or a retrofit answer either way. If you want it on a boat you already own, nobody has published how. You would be starting that conversation from scratch.
Nobody publishes a thrust rating
Of the five products marketed at your boat's bow, one publishes a thrust figure. For the other four there is no number at all.
- Sideshift publishes no thrust rating in pounds or Kilogram-force, the metric thrust rating most European makers publish. One kgf is about 2.2 pounds of push, so a 50 kgf unit is roughly 110 pounds. for any model in its range, not only the pontoon units. It publishes horsepower and amperage instead, and our no-hole page has every model. The PT230 is 2.5 hp and 300 amps at 12 volts.
- Pelegasus publishes no thrust figure.
- QMI's AccuThrust publishes no thrust figure.
- DockStar publishes 90 lb, captured 23 September 2026. A published figure gives you something to hold the maker to.
What this means when you shop. You cannot compare these products on power, because four of them give no figure. Compare them on what is published and what you can check yourself. What does each do to your deck? Does it retract? Does it need boat wiring and batteries? Does it cover one end of the boat or both? What happens when it needs service?
What it costs
Kit prices first, before anyone fits them. They run $4,495 to $6,995. What moves them is mostly whether you are buying one end of the boat or both.
The most expensive is the PT360 Pontoon Joystick System at $6,995, which covers both ends. The cost strip further down adds a boatyard's hours to each of these, so every figure there is higher.
Nobody publishes an installed price. The main forum thread asking exactly this (a 25 ft Harris tritoon, November 2019) names Sideshift and calls it expensive. It contains no dollar figure anywhere in the discussion. We could not find a single pontoon owner stating what a fitted thruster cost them.
Do not let anyone price your boat off a length table. Most installed figures you will find, including the length table on our cost page, come from fiberglass monohulls having a tunnel cut and glassed in. That means a 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., a fiberglass hand and about a week on the hard.
Your job involves none of that, so a number built from it says nothing about your boat. Our cost-by-boat-type page works through which line moves when the hull changes for each kind of boat.
The part that usually costs the most is the part you do not have. There is no haul-out. Sideshift's own FAQ states that “all mounting locations and cable connections are routed above the waterline”, and their units can be fitted with the boat in the water. A DockStar bolts to the deck.
If you use a yard, you are paying for a few hours of bolting and wiring instead of days of glasswork. What your own hours are worth against yard rates is on the DIY page.
Our estimate, since nobody else publishes one. It is the kit at its published price plus a boatyard's hours to fit it on a 24 ft pontoon:
| External | Tunnel | Retractable |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
A different length, or a different boat? The thruster finder prices your own, and the comparison by boat type puts this row next to every other kind of boat.
The stern option nobody mentions
Almost every conversation about this is about the bow, and one thruster at the bow is the standard setup. A stern unit helps when the back of the boat swings with the motor in neutral.
The product family aimed at that rarely comes up: thrusters that bolt to your outboard's cavitation plate.
| Model | Kit price | Power | Boat length |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sideshift OB230 Outboard Stern Thruster
The maker’s own listing, read 28 August 2026. Full page: fit, cost and wiring See it on the maker’s site | $4,495 | 2.5 hp, 12 V, 300 A | Up to 30 ft |
| Sideshift OB230-D Outboard Stern Thruster
The maker’s own listing, read 28 August 2026. Full page: fit, cost and wiring See it on the maker’s site | $4,995 | 5 hp, 12 V, 500 A | Up to 40 ft |
| Sideshift OB240 Outboard Stern Thruster
The maker’s own listing, read 28 August 2026. Full page: fit, cost and wiring See it on the maker’s site | $4,995 | 3.5 hp, 24 V | Up to 35 ft |
| Sideshift OB240-D Outboard Stern Thruster
The maker’s own listing, read 28 August 2026. Full page: fit, cost and wiring See it on the maker’s site | $5,495 | 7.5 hp, 24 V, 400 A | 35–50 ft |
The trade-off is different from the bow units. These sit in the water permanently, on the outboard's leg, where debris and shallow ramps are. Think about the launch ramp at the end of the season, with the trailer already half in. The PT230 retracts, and a DockStar lifts clear of the water on its track.
Fitting one also means drilling three small holes. Sideshift publishes no thrust rating for these either.
Which end you need depends on how your boat misbehaves. If the bow blows off as you slow down, that is a steering problem with a specific cause. It is worth understanding before you buy either one.
What the forums recommend
Ask this on a boating forum and the answer with the most support is none of the products on this page. It is a fabricated bracket between the logs carrying a 24 volt bow-mount trolling motor, on an actuator, driven from the helm.
On a pontoon, that answer holds up. A trolling motor works as a docking aid on a light boat with a lot of side for the wind to push on. A pontoon is exactly that boat: light, flat and high, with a great deal of The area of the boat the wind can push on: the hull sides, the cabin, the mast and rigging, or the canopy. A tall, boxy boat has a lot of it, and wind force does not care how slowly you are moving. for its weight.
The costs are the ones any one-off fabrication job carries. There is no manufacturer behind it and no warranty. You or a shop have to design the bracket. The motor lives in the water, and in the way.
Our page on where a trolling motor works and where owners report it does nothing shows the answer splits sharply by boat.
What to settle before you order
Since you cannot compare these on thrust, compare them on the questions a maker will answer:
- What does it do to the deck? A retractable needs a hole through it and space under it. A deck-mounted track needs fasteners and a run of clear deck. Ask for the mounting drawing before you order.
- Where does the power come from? A self-contained unit brings its own battery and adds nothing to the boat's wiring. A wired unit wants heavy current at the bow of a boat that has none there. That difference can be the biggest line in the job.
- One end or both? A bow unit alone will not stop the stern walking. Sideshift’s PT360 Pontoon Joystick System bundle exists because a stern unit is the common second purchase.
- How does it come off? Think about winter, the trailer, and the day someone in the slip next to you is careless. Some of these lift off, and some do not.
- What is the thrust rating? Ask anyway. Most of this category will not answer, and a refusal is worth knowing before you buy.
What this means when you dock
If the bow blows off as you slow down, you have the standard pontoon problem. One thruster at the bow is the usual answer, and the bow units are compared above.
If you want nothing wired into the boat, a deck-mounted unit with its own battery adds nothing to the boat's wiring. It lifts clear of the water when you are underway.
If you want nothing hanging below the boat between trips, the PT230 retracts under the deck on an actuator.
If the back of the boat swings with the motor in neutral, look at the outboard-mount stern units, or at the PT360 Pontoon Joystick System. It covers both ends on one joystick.
Kit prices and specifications from each maker's own product pages, captured 28 August 2026. DockStar's unit and pontoon track prices read 17 September 2026 and checked 23 September 2026. Pelegasus and QMI pages read 30 August 2026. Forum thread from The Hull Truth, November 2019, cited for what it does not contain.