Most "one week in Corsica" budgets you will find online rest on an invented average. We will not publish one. What we can do is give you the figures that are genuinely verifiable — the ones that do not move from one day to the next —, the method to work out your own, and above all the four lines almost nobody counts before leaving.
💶 Transparency: this article contains two partner links — a car hire comparison and a flight-compensation service. If you book through one of them we earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. No accommodation links: we have no partner in that category, and we would rather say so than send you anywhere at random.
Everything costs a little more in Corsica — and it has been measured
Let us start with the only official figure in this article, because it sets the right scale. Insee, the French statistics office, regularly compares price levels between Corsica and the mainland. Its survey conducted in March and April 2022 found a gap of +7% across overall consumption, compared with provincial mainland France, excluding the Paris region.
That average conceals wide differences by category. It runs from +1% for communications to +14% on food, with surcharges of +10% to +12% on meat, dairy products, fruit and vegetables.
📌 And the gap is widening. The same comparison, made in 2015, gave only +3.6%. In seven years the difference has doubled. Keep this for your own calculation: your usual grocery budget goes up by roughly 15% once on the island, and more if you cook a lot of fresh food.
Getting there: fly and hire, or take the ferry?
This is the first item in the budget, and the only one where a structural choice really changes the total. The two options are not compared on headline price, but on what they are made of.
A ferry does not sell one ticket, it sells three. The passenger first; then the vehicle, whose supplement depends on the length of the car, the season and the operator; and finally a cabin on overnight sailings. This is why the "average prices" shown by comparison sites mean nothing: on the same route they stretch from a few tens to several hundred euros depending on what is included.
The busiest route gives the right scale: Marseille to Ajaccio, roughly 409 kilometres and close to 12 hours 45 minutes at sea, sailed overnight by Corsica Linea and La Méridionale. From Nice and Toulon the crossings are shorter — but still count six and a half hours at minimum from the mainland.
🟢 The simple rule that settles it. Two people, one week: flying and then hiring a car is almost always simpler, faster, and often cheaper once the cabin is counted. A family with plenty of luggage over two weeks: the ferry becomes competitive again, because your car travels with you instead of being hired locally at summer rates.
⚠️ Either way, book early. On summer sailings the best fares are taken three to six months ahead, with some operators opening sales up to eleven months before departure. This is not a trick: it is the item where waiting costs the most.
A word on a scenario budgets always ignore: the flight that does not leave. European regulation provides for fixed compensation in the event of a long delay, a cancellation or denied boarding, and it applies to domestic flights to Corsica. If it happens to you, you can have your compensation claim assessed — the process costs nothing as long as no money is recovered, and the fee is taken only from what you actually receive. Do not confuse it with a ticket refund: these are two different rights.
The car and the fuel: the line everyone underestimates
In southern Corsica a car is not a convenience, it is a necessity: the beaches, the Bavella massif and the Sartène coast are not served in any usable way by public transport. The budget has to include it from the outset — and not only at the daily rate.
Two clauses weigh more than the daily price, and they are the ones nobody reads: the amount of the excess in case of damage, and the fuel policy. "Full to full" is the only one that does not make you pay for fuel you will not burn. For a pick-up at Figari or Ajaccio — the two airports where coverage is best established — comparing the rental desks on the ground lets you see both clauses before booking, rather than discovering them at the counter.
Fuel itself is structurally dearer on the island, because of sea freight and island storage. In 2026 diesel often exceeds €2.05 a litre, an average surcharge of around 15 cents compared with the mainland; readings above €2.18 have been recorded in southern Corsica, around Ajaccio. TotalEnergies keeps a cap of €1.99 a litre for petrol and €2.25 for diesel.
⚠️ A discount that stops at the sea. The same retailer's "fuel advantage" offer, at €1.99 a litre for any fuel for its gas and electricity customers, expressly excludes stations located in Corsica. If you were counting on it, take it out of your calculation.
🟢 The calculation you can do yourself. A week in southern Corsica, moving between Bonifacio, Porto-Vecchio, Bavella and Sartène, comes to roughly 700 kilometres. At 6.5 litres per 100 kilometres — a reasonable assumption for a compact car on mountain roads — that is about 45 litres, so €90 to €100 at €2.10 a litre. Change the assumptions and the result follows: it is the method that matters, not our figure.
The four costs nobody counts
These are what separate the planned budget from the final bill. None is huge; together they add up.
① Parking at the big beaches. At Palombaggia and Santa Giulia, near Porto-Vecchio, the car parks are paid: rates of the order of €8 to €12 a day are reported, depending on how close you park and on the season. These figures come from unofficial sources and should be taken as an order of magnitude, not as a firm price. Over four beach days that is still €32 to €48.
② The tourist tax. It is charged per adult per night and depends on the classification of the accommodation. The scale published by the Porto-Vecchio tourist office runs from €0.88 in a one-star hotel to €3.30 in a palace; residences and classified holiday rentals range from €0.88 to €2.20, guest rooms are €0.88 and campsites between €0.22 and €0.44. In Bonifacio, the published rate for 2025-2026 is €1.65 per person per day, and the Corsican Assembly has introduced an additional 10% levy. Under-18s are exempt.
③ Boat trips. At the Lavezzi islands, visitor numbers are now capped: a maximum of 200,000 visitors a year and, since 2026, 150,000 landings on the land part, with a maximum of 2,000 people present at any one time, holding a permit or a booking. The crossing is booked with the Bonifacio boatmen. We publish no price: we have no single official source, and an invented figure would have you build a false budget.
④ Driving time, which is paid in fuel and in days. Corsica has no motorway at all. On mountain roads an average of 45 to 50 km/h is already optimistic. A return trip from one half of the island to the other means about six hours of driving: that is a day of your holiday, plus the fuel.
What costs nothing — and it is a lot
The good news about a Corsican budget is that most of what you come for is free.
The Bavella shuttle is free. From 1 July to 31 August, a shuttle runs up to the pass every ten minutes from the paid car park at the Viseo racecourse in Zonza. You pay for the car park at the bottom, not for the climb — and you stop hunting for a space at the top, where the pass car park is full by around 9.30 am in July and August.
Hiking costs nothing, and the Bavella massif takes close to a million visitors a year on freely accessible paths. Nor do the beaches: what you pay for is the parking, never the sand. Bonifacio, Sartène and the Roccapina lion are all walked, with no ticket.
🟢 And one free habit that can save you an entire day. In southern Corsica, access to forest massifs is regulated from 15 June to 30 September, and a fire-risk map is published every day at 6 pm for the following day. Checking it the evening before costs nothing and stops you driving to a closed massif — which is exactly what happened on 17 July 2026, when two prefectoral orders closed Bavella and Illarata-Taglio Rosso and cut the RD268.
The table: what can honestly be costed
Two adults, seven nights, southern Corsica, hire car. Only the lines whose source we know appear here — the others are dealt with immediately after.
| Item | Order of magnitude | Where the figure comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Fuel, ≈ 700 km | €90 to €100 | calculated at 6.5 L/100 km and €2.10/L, prices recorded in Corsica in 2026 |
| Tourist tax | ≈ €31 | 2 adults × 7 nights × €2.20 — Porto-Vecchio five-star rental scale |
| Beach parking, 4 days | €32 to €48 | €8 to €12 a day, from unofficial sources |
| Food surcharge | +14% on your shopping | Insee price comparison survey, March-April 2022 |
| Bavella pass shuttle | €0 (parking aside) | summer service, 1 July – 31 August |
| Hiking, beaches, villages | €0 | free access |
| Car hire, flight or ferry, accommodation, restaurants | not costed | see the next section |
What we do not cost, and why
An honest budget has to say where it stops. Here are the three items we deliberately leave blank.
Accommodation. We have no partner in this category, so no interest in selling you a figure — and above all, the price of the same room varies sharply between June and the first half of August. An "average" would cover realities too far apart to be useful. What we can give you is a marker: the tourist-tax scale above tells you exactly which classification band you are booking into, and therefore what standard you are paying for.
Restaurants. No recent official survey allows an average bill to be published for Corsica. The only solid figure remains the Insee gap of +7% across overall consumption and +14% on food — and that covers consumer prices, not the bill at a seafront restaurant in August.
Crossings and flights. Prices are dynamic and change daily. On the same route, comparison sites display ranges running from a few tens to several hundred euros: an average built on that informs nobody.
📌 Our rule, in one sentence: we would rather leave a figure out than make one up. A false budget costs more than an incomplete one, because people act on it.
Three levers that genuinely bring the bill down
① Shift by a fortnight. June and September offer the same sea, distinctly lower accommodation and crossing prices than the first half of August, and beach car parks that are not full by 8.30 am. ⚠️ One caveat, though: the massif regulation runs until 30 September. September is cheaper, but it does not escape the risk map.
② Do not move base, or move once. Trying to see both north and south from a single base costs around six hours of driving per excursion — in fuel, and in days. One base per half of the island is the most economical formula on both counts.
③ Book the travel first, the accommodation second. This is the opposite of what most travellers do, and it is what costs the most: travel to an island is constrained and gets dearer as the date approaches, whereas accommodation supply stays more flexible. Three to six months ahead on the crossing or the flight, and the rest follows.
🟢 The last word. A week in Corsica is not expensive because the island is: it is expensive when you decide late. The items we have costed here come, for two people, to roughly €150 to €180 for the week, excluding travel, accommodation and restaurants. Everything else depends on a booking date — and that date depends only on you.