Starlink Maritime Top-Up Data Cost: $2 to $6 a GB

Updated 4 September 2026 · starlink, connectivity, maritime-internet, crew-welfare

The Starlink maritime top-up data cost lands somewhere between about $2 and $6 per gigabyte as of September 2026, and which end of that range you pay depends entirely on which plan the ship or boat is on. Commercial Mobile Priority top-ups have sat at $2 per GB across multiple published plan tables. The new Personal Maritime plan charges $6 per GB for ocean data from day one. Roam Unlimited holds at $2 per GB only until 26 September 2026, then goes to $6.

That last date is the part almost nobody has written about clearly, so start there if you are a cruiser or a small-boat owner rather than a ship's officer.

The one date that matters right now: 27 September 2026

Roam Unlimited ocean data overage triples on 27 September 2026. RV Mobile Internet reported in late August 2026 that Starlink is charging $2 per GB for Roam Unlimited ocean data through 26 September 2026, and $6 per GB starting the next day. Same plan, same dish, same water, three times the bill for anything past your included allowance.

If you are running a Roam Unlimited setup with ocean data switched on, the practical move is to look at what you actually burned in ocean mode over the last two months, then decide before the end of September whether that habit still makes sense at triple the rate. A 30 GB month that cost $60 in overage becomes $180.

I want to be honest about what this research can and cannot tell you. The figures below come from Starlink's own maritime page, from resellers who publish full plan tables, and from specialist trackers who watch these prices weekly. Where two sources disagree, I say so instead of picking the number that makes a tidier article. Starlink changes maritime pricing more often than any other satellite provider I have dealt with in an engine room, and a screenshot from six weeks ago is already a historical document.

What "top-up" actually means on a Starlink maritime plan

A top-up is data you buy after you have used the priority allowance included in your monthly plan. There are two shapes of it, and the difference matters for how you budget.

The first shape is per-GB overage. You blow past the cap, the meter keeps running, and you get billed by the gigabyte at a rate tied to your plan. The second shape is fixed blocks. You buy a chunk, say 25 GB or 250 GB, and you have that chunk. Global Satellite, a Starlink reseller, published a plan table last updated on 20 August 2026 that shows both mechanisms side by side, describing an existing pay-per-GB model alongside a newer top-up option in 25 GB and 250 GB blocks. The reseller did not publish the price per block in the material available, so I am not going to guess at it.

What happens when you hit the cap also depends on the plan. Starlink Insider, updated 6 May 2026, describes service continuing at Standard data priority after the priority allowance runs out on most Mobile Priority plans. On the 50 GB plan specifically, that source says normal internet access stops once the threshold is crossed, leaving only access to the Starlink account page so you can buy more. If your vessel is on the entry tier, that is a hard stop rather than a slowdown, and it is worth knowing before it happens on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of a crew video call.

A Starlink support article in Dutch, dated 28 August 2026, confirms that a mobility product includes 50 GB per month with optional overage billed per GB. Starlink's own consumer-facing documentation in that source does not state the dollar figure for maritime per-GB overage. So the $2 number that everyone quotes comes from resellers, integrators and trackers rather than from a headline on Starlink's site.

Starlink maritime top-up data cost by plan: the numbers

Here is what the published sources say, with who said it and when. Treat every row as a starting point for a quote, not as a price you can hold anyone to.

The pattern across four independent sources spanning early 2025 to mid 2026 is that $2 per GB has been the durable commercial maritime rate. The $6 per GB figure is new, it applies to the consumer-facing ocean products, and it arrived in August 2026.

Reseller pricing looks nothing like the headline rate

Reseller overage rates scale with the size of your base plan, and the small plans are punished hard. Global Satellite's table, last updated 20 August 2026, shows overage falling as the monthly commitment rises:

• 10 GB plan at $300/month, overage $7.00 per GB
• 50 GB plan at $372/month, overage $5.00 per GB
• 100 GB plan at $492/month, overage $3.50 per GB
• 300 GB plan at $800/month, overage $3.00 per GB
• 500 GB plan at $925/month, overage $2.80 per GB
• 1 TB plan at $1,400/month, overage $2.50 per GB
• 2.5 TB plan at $3,650/month, overage $2.50 per GB
• 5 TB plan at $5,700/month, overage $2.50 per GB
• 10 TB plan at $11,390/month, overage $2.50 per GB

That is a spread from $7.00 down to $2.50 per gigabyte on the same constellation. A reseller adds markup and bundling on top of Starlink's own tariffs, so these are effective rates for that vendor rather than Starlink list prices. The lesson for anyone specifying a vessel plan holds anyway: the cheapest monthly line item can be the most expensive per gigabyte once the crew starts streaming, and the gap widens every month you overrun.

There is one outlier worth flagging because it contradicts everything above. Marine Data Solutions, in a Fort Lauderdale guide updated 10 June 2026, describes an opted-in arrangement where data tops up in 50 GB increments at $25 per 50 GB, with no rollover. That works out to $0.50 per GB. That guide appears to be describing a Roam or Local Priority arrangement rather than the commercial maritime product, so do not budget a fleet on it. It does show that Starlink's top-up mechanics vary by product line far more than the marketing suggests.

The plan price confusion nobody has resolved

Starlink's published maritime plan prices and the data allowances attached to them do not line up cleanly across sources, and you should know that before you quote a number to your superintendent.

The Starlink Business maritime page shows four headline monthly prices: $250, $650, $1,150 and $2,150. Marine Data Solutions reports those as US Global Priority maritime plans for 50 GB, 500 GB, 1 TB and 2 TB. Our own earlier reporting, last updated 10 August 2026, recorded Global Priority at 500 GB for $250 per month, 1 TB for $650 and 2 TB for $1,150. Meanwhile Starlink Insider (6 May 2026) and StarlinkSpot (3 February 2025) both describe a different ladder entirely: $250 for 50 GB, $1,000 for 1 TB and $5,000 for 5 TB.

Those cannot all be true at the same time in the same region. Pricing varies by country, by whether you are buying direct or through a reseller, and by when the page was last crawled. The honest position is that the exact mapping of price to data tier is uncertain right now, and the only figure that has stayed stable across every source is the $2 per GB commercial top-up.

If you are the one signing, get the tier written into the quote in gigabytes and dollars, dated, on the vendor's letterhead. That has saved me an argument more than once when the invoice arrived looking nothing like the conversation.

How to think about top-ups if you are crew, not the owner

Crew rarely control the plan, so the useful question is how top-up pricing shapes what you get. Ships that buy the cheapest maritime tier hit their cap and either slow to Standard priority or stop, and both of those land in the middle of a month when everyone is calling home. The vessels where crew connectivity actually works tend to be the ones with a plan sized above real usage rather than at it.

At $2 per GB, an hour of 1080p video streaming, roughly 3 GB, costs about $6 of ship money. At $6 per GB it costs about $18. A 4K stream is several times that again. This is exactly why so many companies throttle or block streaming on crew WiFi and why crew WiFi is slow for reasons that are usually commercial rather than technical. The bandwidth exists. The budget does not.

The practical countermeasures are the boring ones. Download in port over local data instead of pulling it over the satellite link, keep automatic backups and cloud photo sync switched off, and cap app updates to WiFi you actually chose. A single phone that decides to back up 12 GB of video at sea has just spent $24 to $72 of somebody's data budget without asking anyone.

For personal connectivity in port, a data eSIM is still far cheaper per gigabyte than any satellite top-up. I have covered the best eSIM options for seafarers and how the pricing compares in detail, and Airalo is the one I keep loaded for port calls because the regional plans cover most of a rotation without swapping profiles. That does nothing for you mid-ocean, and it takes a lot of pressure off the ship's plan when you are alongside.

Honest cons: what is wrong with Starlink maritime top-ups

The pricing is genuinely hard to pin down. Four credible sources give three different plan ladders. That is not a research failure on my part, it reflects a product whose pricing changes by region and by month. Anyone who publishes a clean, confident table without caveats is guessing.

Consumer ocean rates just tripled. Going from $2 to $6 per GB on Roam Unlimited from 27 September 2026, per RV Mobile Internet's August 2026 reporting, is a big move on a product a lot of small-boat owners already budgeted around. The new $185 per month Personal Maritime plan launches at $6 per GB for ocean data with no introductory period.

Top-up data does not roll over. The Marine Data Solutions guide from June 2026 states this plainly for the 50 GB block arrangement it describes. Buy 50 GB on the 28th of the month, use 10, and the rest evaporates. Buy late in the billing cycle and you are lighting money on fire.

The entry tier can hard-stop you. Starlink Insider's May 2026 description of the 50 GB plan cutting internet access entirely, except for the account page, is a real operational risk. On a ship, that is the kind of thing that happens at 0200 when the person with the billing login is asleep ashore.

Reseller markup is invisible until you compare. The same overage can be $2.50 or $7.00 per GB depending on who sold you the plan and how large it is. Nothing on the invoice tells you that.

Who should not buy Starlink maritime top-ups

Do not buy per-GB top-ups if your monthly overrun is predictable and large. If you consistently blow 100 GB past your cap, you are paying $200 to $600 for data that a larger base plan would have included at a far lower effective rate. Look at the reseller ladder above: moving from a 50 GB plan to a 100 GB plan cuts the overage rate from $5.00 to $3.50 per GB and raises the monthly by $120. Two months of heavy overrun pays for the upgrade.

Do not buy them late in a billing cycle if the data does not roll over. Check the rollover terms for your specific product before you click.

Do not lean on ocean top-ups for crew entertainment. At $6 per GB, an evening of group streaming costs more than a decent shore-side broadband subscription costs for a month. Ship's business, weather routing, remote support for a machinery fault, that is what expensive gigabytes are for. Crew Netflix over ocean priority data is a budget conversation you will lose. If entertainment is the goal, loading media before you sail is still the answer.

Do not assume a top-up fixes a coverage or terminal problem. Buying data does not improve a marginal mount position, a fouled dish or a saturated cell. Check the link before you check the wallet.

Practical budgeting: a method that survives price changes

Work backwards from gigabytes, not from dollars, because the dollars move and the gigabytes do not.

Pull a full month of usage from the router, split it into ship's business and crew welfare, and multiply the total by your current top-up rate. Then multiply it again by $6 per GB. If the second number would trigger a serious conversation with the office, your plan is sized wrong and no amount of top-up discipline will fix it. If the second number is survivable, you have headroom and the September change is noise for you.

Set a monthly usage alert well below the cap, at around 70 percent, so somebody sees the trend rather than the invoice. Every maritime router I have worked with can do this or can be made to do it with a small amount of effort, and it is the single highest-value hour of configuration on the whole system.

Keep the ship's operational traffic on a separate network from crew traffic. This is worth doing for security reasons as well as accounting reasons, and I have written about how to separate crew WiFi from the ship's network in more depth. When both share a link, you cannot tell whose gigabytes triggered the overage, and the argument that follows never ends well.

FAQ

How much does Starlink maritime top-up data cost per GB?

Commercial Starlink maritime and Mobile Priority top-ups have been listed at $2 per GB by Elcome (February 2026), Starlink Insider (May 2026), StarlinkSpot (February 2025) and RV Mobile Internet, which traces the rate to Starlink terms updated in November 2022. Consumer ocean data on the Personal Maritime plan is $6 per GB as of August 2026. Reseller rates range from $2.50 to $7.00 per GB depending on plan size. Check the current price with your provider before relying on any of these.

Is Starlink ocean data getting more expensive in 2026?

Yes, for consumer-facing plans. RV Mobile Internet reported in August 2026 that Roam Unlimited ocean data overage stays at $2 per GB through 26 September 2026 and rises to $6 per GB from 27 September 2026. The new Personal Maritime plan, at $185 per month, launched with $6 per GB ocean data. The commercial maritime $2 per GB rate was not reported as changing in that same coverage.

What happens when you run out of Starlink maritime priority data?

On most Mobile Priority plans, service continues at Standard data priority, which means slower speeds during congested periods rather than a cutoff. Starlink Insider reported in May 2026 that the 50 GB plan behaves differently: once the threshold is exceeded, normal internet access stops and only the Starlink account login remains reachable so you can buy more data. Confirm which behaviour applies to your specific plan before you need to know.

Are Starlink top-up blocks cheaper than per-GB overage?

Sometimes, and it depends entirely on the product line. Global Satellite's plan table from August 2026 lists 25 GB and 250 GB top-up blocks alongside per-GB overage but does not publish the block prices. Marine Data Solutions described a 50 GB block for $25, working out to $0.50 per GB, in a June 2026 guide that appears to cover a Roam or Local Priority arrangement rather than commercial maritime. Ask your vendor for both numbers in writing and compare them against your actual usage.

Does unused Starlink top-up data roll over to the next month?

No, at least for the block arrangement Marine Data Solutions documented in June 2026, which states plainly that data does not roll over. Buying a large block near the end of a billing cycle wastes whatever you do not use. Buy smaller amounts more often if your usage is uneven, and check the rollover terms attached to your own plan because they vary by product.

Why do published Starlink maritime plan prices disagree with each other?

Because they were captured at different times, in different regions, and through different sales channels. Starlink's business maritime page shows headline prices of $250, $650, $1,150 and $2,150 per month, while independent trackers describe a $250 / $1,000 / $5,000 ladder for 50 GB, 1 TB and 5 TB. Both sets of figures come from real pages at real dates. The safest approach is to get a dated written quote for your vessel and your country rather than trusting any published table, including this one.

Verdict

If you run a commercial vessel, budget $2 per GB for maritime top-ups and treat anything cheaper as a pleasant surprise. If you are a cruiser on Roam Unlimited or the new Personal Maritime plan, the number to plan around from 27 September 2026 is $6 per GB, and that is expensive enough to change how you use the connection rather than just how you pay for it. Either way, the fix for a painful top-up bill is almost always a correctly sized base plan plus disciplined device settings, because the Starlink maritime top-up data cost only becomes the problem after the plan sizing already went wrong.

About the author

I work as a marine engineer and have spent the last several contracts on vessels where the satellite link is both a work tool and the only thing keeping the crew sane on a long passage. I have sat through the conversation about who used the data, I have watched a plan hit its cap mid-month, and I write about connectivity here because the vendor material almost never tells you what a system feels like to live with. Every price in this article is attributed to a named source with a date, and where the sources contradict each other, I have said so rather than smoothing it over.

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• What connectivity at sea costs in 2026 and what you can buy yourself
• Running a Starlink Mini in a crew cabin: the honest reality

Latest updates

• Ship Crew Monthly WiFi Data Usage: Real Quotas — our newest guide on this topic.