TransientChef

What yacht and private chefs actually make

Real 2026 numbers from the agencies that do the hiring, by boat size and by household, plus the tips, rotation, tax and costs the guides leave out.

Google's first answer to "private chef salary" is about $81,000. It's wrong, and it's wrong in a way that costs people money. The aggregators that produce that number lump meal-prep cooks, part-time family cooks and estate chefs into one bucket. The agencies that actually place chefs in big households and on big boats are asking two to three times that. Here is what the people doing the hiring published this year, in their own numbers, and the parts they leave out.

Every figure below is base pay, before tips, before tax, and with the boat or the house feeding and housing you. Where a source quotes euros or pounds, the dollar figure next to it is rounded at roughly $1.10 to the euro and $1.30 to the pound. Sources and dates are at the bottom.

Yacht chefs, by boat size

The two 2026 agency guides, YPI Crew out of Antibes and Northrop & Johnson out of Fort Lauderdale, agree closely once you account for the fact that the US market pays a premium over the Med. Monthly base, head or sole chef:

Boat Med market (YPI, euros) US market (Northrop & Johnson, dollars)
Under 30m 4,500 to 6,000 5,000 to 6,000
30 to 40m 5,000 to 7,500 6,000 to 9,000
40 to 50m 6,000 to 9,000 8,000 to 11,000
50 to 60m 6,500 to 9,000 10,000 to 13,000
60 to 80m 7,000 to 9,000 10,000 to 15,000
80m and up 9,000 to 10,000 and up 15,000 and up

Sous chefs run 4,000 to 6,000 euros a month ($4,400 to $6,600) on 40 to 80m boats and 6,000 plus above 80m. Third chefs on the 80m-plus boats, 4,500 to 5,500 euros ($5,000 to $6,000). The bottom of each band is where you land if you're new to yachting; a restaurant CV with no sea time starts at the bottom of the band, not the midpoint.

Under 30m and on sailing yachts the job is rarely just cooking. Oyster Yachts, the British builder of 50 to 90 foot sailing yachts, surveyed the crews on its own boats for the 2025 season and puts combined chef/stew and chef/deck roles at 2,000 to 6,750 euros a month ($2,200 to $7,400) depending on the boat, with the big Oysters at the top of that and the 50-footers at the bottom. If the listing says cook/stew, read the pay as a cook/stew number, not a chef number.

The one placement median anyone published: Lighthouse Careers, 9,000 euros a month (about $9,900) for head chefs, from nine placements. Small sample, real money.

The numbers you'll hear at the crew bar, 14,000 to 16,000 euros a month ($15,000 to $17,500), exist. Quay Crew's 2024 survey of a hundred head chefs found a 16,000 euro floor at the 90 to 99m band, and Superyacht Content quotes 14,000 plus for the top of the 60m-plus head chef range. Those are the ceilings of a handful of programs, not what the next 80m is going to offer you.

Freelance and day rates

Freelance is where chefs between boats actually eat. Superyacht Content's 2025 figures, which match what the boards show, euros in the Med and dollars in the US and Caribbean:

Role Boat Per day, euros Per day, dollars
Crew chef cover 50 to 80m 200 to 275 215 to 300
Sole chef under 40m 230 to 350 250 to 380
Sole chef 40 to 60m 350 to 650 380 to 700
Head chef over 60m 500 to 1,200 540 to 1,300

The top of the head chef line is a few boats, not the market. The Oyster survey has sailing-yacht freelance chefs at 200 to 300 euros a day, call it $215 to $325. Charter-week cover in St Maarten or Antigua in January pays the top of these ranges because nobody is available; a September delivery pays the bottom.

Rotation, tips, and the things the guides leave out

Rotation. YPI calls 2:2 rotation "the norm in 2026" for galley crew at every level, meaning two months on, two off, full pay. That was not true five years ago. Quay Crew found over half of head chefs on time-for-time rotation and over 80 percent above 80m, and found that for head chefs specifically, rotational pay is not lower than full-time pay. The smaller the boat, the less likely rotation; a 40m is more likely to offer 30 to 60 extra vacation days than a second chef. When you compare two offers, a 7,000 rotational is 7,000 for six months of work. A 9,000 non-rotational is 9,000 for twelve. Do that arithmetic before you take the bigger number.

Tips. Every guide excludes them and they are the difference between a good year and a great one on charter. MYBA guidance is 5 to 15 percent of the charter fee; American charterers run 15 to 20. Captains split it equally across the crew whether you touched a guest or not. A $300,000 week at 10 percent across 15 crew is $2,000 each. A four-crew boat at $80,000 a week at 10 percent is also $2,000 each. A busy charter season can add a third to your base. A private boat adds nothing. Ask what last season's tips were before you sign; a captain who won't tell you is telling you.

Charter versus private. Charter pays more in guides and in practice, mostly through tips rather than base. Oyster found almost no base difference between private and charter on sailing yachts. Charter also works you harder and the galley is on from six in the morning until the last guest goes down.

Remote programs. A boat spending the season in the Maldives, the Pacific or Antarctica pays above band because you can't quit and fly home. Factor in what you'd pay to get out if you had to.

Private and estate chefs

The spread here is wider than on boats because a "private chef" can mean a family cook in a suburban kitchen or the head of a three-chef team feeding a principal who entertains four nights a week.

US, the top tier. Four real 2026 listings from the agencies on our Jobs page tell you what principal households are asking right now:

  • Manhattan, full-time live-out chef, $160,000 to $180,000, health insurance, holidays at 150 percent (British American Household Staffing, May 2026).
  • Plano, Texas, Tuesday to Saturday, travel to Cabo and Park City, $200,000, 15 to 20 days PTO, housing when travelling (DM Estate Staffing, 2026).
  • Miami base, travelling to New York, Aspen, London and St Tropez with yacht days, $180,000 to $200,000, health insurance, housing everywhere except Miami (Montclair Chef, April 2026).
  • Los Angeles, six-month contract, $165,000 to $195,000 (Montclair Chef, 2026).

That is the band: $160,000 to $200,000 for a full-time principal-household chef in New York, Miami, LA or Texas with travel. Morgan & Mallet's placement report for 2024 to 2025 puts the whole US range at $100,000 to $300,000; the $300,000 that made CNBC in July 2026 is their ceiling, not a typical offer. Lighthouse aggregates the 2026 guides to a $150,000 median for a resident chef and $200,000 for a travelling one. Travelling pays more because it is more.

US, the floor. Pavillion in New York puts a full-time private chef at $70,000 to $120,000 and a live-in around $90,000 with housing. That's the family-cook tier: one household, no entertaining, meals on the table. Still more than the restaurant median. Not the same job as the listings above.

UK. Greycoat Lumleys' 2024-25 survey: London live-in 50,000 to 90,000 pounds ($65,000 to $117,000), live-out 60,000 to 120,000 pounds ($78,000 to $156,000). Live-out pays 10,000 to 30,000 pounds more a year, which is less than London rent, so run the number. Morgan & Mallet have the UK top at 80,000 to 200,000 pounds ($104,000 to $260,000). Head chefs in principal households that entertain daily, 110,000 to 190,000 pounds plus ($143,000 to $247,000).

Europe and the Gulf. Monaco 90,000 to 110,000 euros ($99,000 to $121,000), Switzerland 110,000 to 130,000 francs (about $135,000 to $160,000), France 45,000 to 60,000 euros ($50,000 to $66,000; yes, that low, France is a bad place to be a private chef on a French contract), UAE 180,000 to 360,000 dirhams ($49,000 to $98,000), Saudi 180,000 to 500,000 riyals ($48,000 to $133,000), all gross annual, all Morgan & Mallet. Greycoat has the Middle East at 72,000 to 100,000 pounds ($94,000 to $130,000) "tax free," and the tax part is the point: compare net, not gross.

Chalet season. The real winter numbers from Silver Swan's 2025-26 listings: Klosters, 600 pounds a week ($780) when the chalet is empty and 800 ($1,040) when it's rented, with accommodation, a season pass, ski hire and flights. Courchevel 1850, 2,500 to 3,000 euros a month net ($2,750 to $3,300), live-in. It's not big money. It's a free ski season with your food and rent paid and a reference from a serious household at the end, and a lot of estate chefs started there.

Against a restaurant

US Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025: the median chef or head cook makes $62,470 a year. The top ten percent make over $98,560. The floor of every principal-household listing above is $160,000. A head chef on a 50m in the Med at the YPI midpoint is about 90,000 euros a year, call it $100,000, before tips, with no rent and no grocery bill. The private and yacht tiers start where the restaurant top decile ends. That is why the searches for this page went up five-fold in 2025, and it's also why every agency now has a stack of restaurant CVs with no sea time. The pay is real. So is the line.

What it costs you to earn it

Taxes, US crew on foreign-flag boats. The Foreign Earned Income Exclusion lets you exclude $130,000 (2025) or $132,900 (2026) of foreign earned income if you pass the physical presence test: 330 full days in foreign countries in a 12-month window. The trap nobody tells you: days in international waters count toward nothing. Not toward the 330, and the income earned on those days isn't foreign earned income. Only days inside a country's 12-mile limit or on its soil count. Keep a daily log, keep every passport stamp, keep the crew schedule. And a foreign-flag, foreign-employer paycheck usually has no Social Security withheld, which means no credits building either. Get a tax preparer who has done yacht crew before; most haven't.

Taxes, UK crew. Seafarers' Earnings Deduction can take your tax to zero if you build an eligible period of at least 365 days mostly outside the UK, no single UK visit over 183 days, and UK days no more than half the total. Superyachts qualify; offshore platforms don't. HMRC helpsheet HS205 has the half-day rule in detail and it bites people who come home for a long winter.

Paper. ENG1 is capped at 115 pounds ($150) in the UK, 120 to 150 euros ($130 to $165) in Europe, $140 to $175 in the US, and it's yours to pay. STCW basic runs about 850 pounds ($1,100) in the UK and $900 to $1,000 in Fort Lauderdale; the five-year refresher is 475 pounds ($620) in the UK or 690 euros ($760) in Palma or Antibes. Food safety level 2 is 20 to 100 pounds ($25 to $130). Under MLC the boat can't charge you a placement fee and the owner pays for visas, but the medical, the seaman's book and the passport are yours. Two real crew who totalled what it cost them to get from a landlocked home to a first job in Fort Lauderdale came to 6,170 euros and 6,400 pounds, call it $6,800 and $8,300, flights, crew house and six weeks of living included. Budget that before you quit the restaurant.

The gaps. Your health cover under MLC runs with your contract. The day the contract ends, so does the insurance, and your off-rotation months are usually uninsured unless you buy personal international cover. Flights home are repatriation at the end of a contract, not leisure flights during rotation, unless you got it in writing. On the estate side, of the four 2026 listings above only one mentions relocation flights, and that one says "may be available." Everything you want paid for goes in the contract. Nothing you were promised at the interview does.

Sources