Cebu to Negros ferry: timetable, fares and which crossing to use, re-checked August 2026

The two crossings, and which one to use

Liloan (Santander), on Cebu’s south-east tip, crosses to Sibulan, effectively a northern suburb of Dumaguete: the city centre is 15 to 20 minutes away and Dumaguete’s airport is minutes from the pier. Bato (Samboan), around the corner on Cebu’s south-west coast, crosses to Tampi in San Jose, further up the Negros coast road. Both are Maayo Shipping RORO crossings that take cars and motorbikes as well as passengers.

• Coming down Cebu’s east side? Cross at Liloan

  The east-coast road through Oslob runs to Cebu’s southern tip, and Liloan Port at Santander is on it. This is the crossing with the verified nine-sailing timetable above, it lands you closest to Dumaguete, and a passenger-only fast craft works the same corridor if you are travelling without a vehicle.

• Coming down Cebu’s west side? Cross Bato to Tampi

  The west-coast road through Barili, Moalboal and Alcantara does not pass Liloan; it reaches Bato in Samboan, around the corner from the southern tip. Cross there to Tampi and pick up a bus (or your driver) on the Negros side, rather than doubling back along the coast to Liloan.

• Bato-Tampi times and fares

  Every schedule we found contains the same seven departures each way, although some add eight more. We publish that common floor below and leave the disputed extras out. Fares remain unpublished because current figures differ by more than double and none comes from Maayo Shipping. The Negros-side road leg is covered on our Tampi to Dumaguete page.

• Travelling light? There is also a fast craft

  A passenger-only fast craft runs Liloan-Sibulan in about 20 to 30 minutes. No vehicles: for a car or motorbike you want the RORO timetable above.

Bato to Tampi: the seven departures all sources share

The online schedules look contradictory at first: one lists seven daily sailings and three list fifteen. The useful fact is underneath that disagreement. The seven are included in every list, while the other eight appear only in one identical timetable repeated across three sites. We therefore publish the common seven as a dependable floor, not a claim that only seven boats run.

Maayo Shipping operates this RORO crossing in both directions, carries vehicles and takes about 30 minutes. These times were re-checked on 10 September 2026. Confirm the posted board at the pier if your connection depends on one of the additional sailings.

• Departures from Bato and from Tampi

  5:00 AM, 8:00 AM, 10:30 AM, 2:00 PM, 5:00 PM, 8:00 PM and 11:30 PM. The same seven times appear in both directions.

• Watch the middle-of-day gap

  The corroborated list has no sailing between 10:30 AM and 2:00 PM. Do not assume one of the disputed extra boats will run if you have a flight or onward connection to make.

• Useful for a late west-coast arrival

  The last corroborated Bato-Tampi boat is 11:30 PM, one hour later than the 10:30 PM last sailing on Liloan-Sibulan. Bato is also the natural port when you come down Cebu through Moalboal and Badian.

• No fare published

  Current third-party figures range from ₱80 to ₱200 and none is from the operator. Buy at the counter and check the posted fare notice rather than planning around an online price.

Doing it overland by bus: which service goes to which port

If you are travelling Cebu to Dumaguete by bus, the whole trip is one long land journey down Cebu with a short boat at the end, and the part people get wrong is which bus reaches which port. Every southbound service leaves from the Cebu South Bus Terminal on N. Bacalso Avenue in Cebu City. Vallacar Transit, the company behind Ceres Liner, runs the southern routes, with Sugbo Urban working some of the same loops.

Two of those services run all the way to Cebu’s southern end, one down each coast, and they do not call at the same port. Pick by the coast, not by the destination on the windscreen, because both are signed for Bato.

• Down the east coast, via Oslob: this one calls at Liloan Port

  Ceres times this service as Cebu City to Bato (Samboan) via Oslob, Liloan Port and Santander. It is the bus to take if you want the short crossing to Sibulan and the closest landing to Dumaguete. Sugbo Urban also runs a Cebu City to Siquijor service down the same east-coast road via Oslob and Liloan Port.

• Down the west coast, via Moalboal: this one ends at Bato

  The sister service runs Cebu City to Bato (Samboan) via Barili, Dumanjug, Ronda, Alcantara and Moalboal. It never touches Liloan, so if you are coming down the west coast, or breaking the trip at Moalboal, cross Bato to Tampi instead of backtracking.

• Prefer not to change at all? Take a through bus

  Ceres runs direct Dumaguete to Cebu City services from its Dumaguete terminal on Calindagan Road, timetabled via Bato and Oslob and via Bato and Barili. The bus itself rolls onto the RORO, so you stay in your seat for the crossing and keep your luggage with you the whole way.

• Fares and departure times

  We do not print bus fares or departure times here, because we have not verified them against the operator the way we have the ferry timetable above. Tickets are bought at the terminal on the day. Check the current times at the Cebu South Bus Terminal or the Dumaguete terminal before you plan around a specific departure.

Fares: the base fare, and the surcharge on top of it

• Regular passenger base fare: ₱120

  Verified live on Maayo Shipping’s booking portal on 7 July 2026. That is the base fare, and a fuel surcharge may be added to it at the counter (see the section below). Pay at the pier ticket counter, or when booking online.

• Why we have not changed that number in August 2026

  On 28 August 2026 we could not re-verify the fare at source: Maayo Shipping’s booking portal now sits behind a login, so the live price is no longer publicly readable. Third-party ferry sites currently quote ₱130, ₱190 and ₱200 for this crossing, all with different dates attached, so we are not going to pick one and call it verified. The ₱120 above is the last figure we saw on the operator’s own portal, and we have dated it rather than quietly refreshed it.

• Discounted fares

  Discounts exist for eligible passengers (students, senior citizens and PWD are the standard categories on Philippine ferries), but we have not verified the current amounts. Bring a valid ID and confirm at the counter.

• Vehicles and motorbikes

  Vehicle rates change more often than passenger fares and we have not verified the current amounts. Check directly with Maayo Shipping before travelling with a car or motorbike.

Why every website quotes you a different fare

Search this crossing and you will be told it costs ₱120, ₱130, ₱190 or ₱200. None of those sites is necessarily lying, and the fare is not really the number any of them printed. Philippine ferry tickets are a base fare plus a fuel surcharge, and through 2026 the surcharge has been the part that moves.

The rule behind it is public. MARINA, the Maritime Industry Authority that regulates domestic shipping, sets a ceiling on how much of a fuel-related surcharge an operator may add. MARINA Advisory No. 2026-15, signed on 30 March 2026, raised that ceiling from 20 percent to 30 percent nationwide, as part of the measures taken under a declared national energy emergency when global fuel prices spiked. Cebu-based operators moved almost immediately: Lite Ferries, Roble Shipping and Aznar Shipping each announced an additional 10 percent fuel surcharge effective 3 or 4 April 2026, and Maayo Shipping itself re-timed this very crossing from 16 March 2026, saying in its advisory that the change was a direct response to changes in fuel surcharges.

The surcharge is meant to be temporary and to come off again when fuel prices normalise. Whether it does is being argued in public: after fuel prices fell, the Cebu Provincial Board passed a resolution in June 2026, authored by Board Member Andrei Duterte, urging MARINA 7 to review surcharges still being charged on the Cebu to Camotes route, following a similar request from the San Francisco Municipal Council on 12 May 2026. So the number can fall as well as rise, and a fare copied off a blog in March is not the fare you will pay.

• What you will actually pay at the counter

  The base fare, plus whatever fuel surcharge is in force on the day, plus a terminal fee, which is collected separately at the port and is not part of the ferry ticket. Bring more small cash than the headline fare suggests.

• Where to find the real current number

  Operators are required to notify MARINA and the public at least three days before putting an increase into effect, by publication or by posting the notice in ports, terminals, vessels and their official platforms. That means the authoritative current fare is on a printed notice at Liloan and Sibulan piers and on the operator’s own channels, not on a travel blog. It is worth a glance at the posted notice when you buy.

• Overcharging is a regulated offence, not a local custom

  MARINA has said it monitors adjustments and that any form of overcharging will be met with administrative fines and sanctions, and it kept the lower 20 percent ceiling for basic commodities. If a counter price looks far off the posted notice, the posted notice is the one that counts.

• What this means if you are quoting a private transfer with us

  It is the reason we quote rather than publish a price list. When you accept a quote from us, that is the figure for your trip, agreed before you travel. The ferry ticket itself is yours to buy at the pier and moves with the surcharge, so we tell you what the base fare was when we last checked instead of pretending it is fixed.

How to book

Tickets are sold at the pier on the day, and for most mid-day crossings that is all you need. Maayo Shipping also runs an online booking portal at book.maayoshipping.com. When we checked on 28 August 2026 the portal required an account login before it would show sailings and prices, where it had previously been readable without one, so treat it as a booking tool rather than a way to look up today’s fare. It is worth booking ahead for the first and last boats of the day, or whenever your onward plans depend on making a specific crossing.

Getting to and from the ports

• Sibulan pier to Dumaguete and beyond (what we arrange)

  A private car meets you at Sibulan pier, timed to your sailing, and has you in central Dumaguete in 15 to 20 minutes, or takes you straight on to Dauin, Valencia, the Twin Lakes or an Apo Island morning boat. The same works in reverse: we get you to the pier comfortably ahead of your departure.

• Tampi pier to Dumaguete (what we arrange)

  If you cross at Bato instead, you land at Tampi in San Jose, about 18 km up the coast. Your driver meets that sailing too and runs you south into Dumaguete in roughly 30 to 45 minutes, or straight on to Dauin or Valencia.

• The Cebu-side road leg

  The drive between Cebu City and Liloan port is the long part of the journey, around 4 to 5 hours door to door. Our sister site cebu.travel arranges the Cebu-side transfer, timed to the same sailing.

• Public transport

  Public buses serve both sides of the crossing, and tricycles cover the short hop between the piers and the nearby towns. It works, it just takes longer and needs more juggling with luggage and boat timings.

Why so many ferry timetables online are wrong

Schedules on this crossing genuinely change. In May 2026 Maayo Shipping ran a reduced timetable for several weeks, then restored the full nine-sailing schedule from 1 July 2026. Any page written during the reduced period, and any page that copied one, now lists boats that do not sail, and pages older than that miss the current times entirely.

That is why this page tells you when it was last verified and against what. When the operator changes the schedule, we update the table and the date rather than leaving a stale copy online.