Every beach on Maui is free to enter. After the flight and the room, the money goes to tours, and that’s the one to drop: a mask, snorkel and fins set runs about $40, against upwards of $100 a head for a half-day snorkel trip. A poke bowl lunch is under $10, and a pound from a grocery-store deli runs $10 to $15 and feeds two.
Non-residents pay $5 per person at ʻĪao Valley State Monument plus $10 per vehicle to park, and both now have to be reserved in advance. Haleakalā is $30 per vehicle for three days, plus a separate $1 reservation per vehicle to enter between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m. Arrive after 7 a.m. and you skip that one.
Below are our favorite free and very cheap things to do on Maui. Every price on this page was checked against the operator or the agency in August 2026. Where something needs an advance reservation, we say so, because on Maui that is now the difference between getting in and being turned around at the gate.
Outdoor Adventures
The outdoors is where the free days are:
Mountain Hikes
Maui is loaded with good hikes, and they are free or close to it (hikes within Haleakalā National Park, such as the Sliding Sands Trail in the video below, require the park entry fee).
Check out our guide to hiking on Maui to help you choose a trail!
Coastal Walks/Beach Walks
If you would rather not climb anything, the coastal walks give you the same coastline without the elevation. The paved beach path at Kāʻanapali beach runs about three miles end to end and is flat the whole way; the lava rock at La Perouse Bay is the other extreme, black, sharp and completely exposed. Go in the morning on either one. By mid-afternoon the trade wind is up and the Kāʻanapali path is busy.
The walk down to the Nakalele Blowhole is short and crosses bare lava. The rock around the vent is wet whenever the spout is working, so keep well back from it. Image credit: Dan, source.
Beach Bumming
This one needs no explanation. All beach access in Hawaiʻi is free. Grab a chair, towel, and a book, and beach bum your way around the island. Check out our guide to Maui Beaches if you are looking for inspiration.
Kāʻanapali beach runs about three miles, with a paved path along the back of it and cliff diving off Black Rock at the north end. Credit: Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority (HTA) / Tor Johnson
Snorkeling
A half-day snorkel tour runs upwards of $100 per person, once. A mask, snorkel and fins set costs about $40 and works every morning of the trip. Plenty of the good reef is reachable from shore without a boat, Kapalua Bay and Olowalu among them. Go with someone else rather than alone, and check whether the spot you pick is lifeguarded before you count on it.
Honolua Bay is part of the Honolua-Mokulēʻia Bay Marine Life Conservation District, and its coral reefs are home to many types of colorful fish and Hawaiian green sea turtles. Image credit: Edmund Garman, source.
Find more in our list of 10 favorite Maui snorkeling spots.
Surfing
A surf lesson runs over a hundred dollars a session. If you already know how to stand up, a board rental costs a fraction of that and you can keep it for the day.
Hoʻokipa sits at mile marker 9 on the Hāna Highway and carries some of the biggest surf on this coast, which is why the lookout above it is usually full. Credit: Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority (HTA) / Tor Johnson
Sunset Picnic
The sunset is free from the sand and about $60 a couple from the table behind it. Pack a cooler bag from any grocery store, bring the drinks and snacks, and sit down on the beach in front of the restaurant instead of in it. The view is the same and often better, because nothing is between you and the water.
Do you like sunsets? Check out our 16 favorite spots to watch the sun set on Hawaiʻi (including 4 on Maui).
Sunset from the Front Street waterfront in Lāhainā, photographed before the August 2023 fire. Image credit: Kent Buckingham, source.
Haleakalā Summit
The drive to the summit of Haleakalā costs $30 per vehicle, and that pass is good for three days and covers the Kīpahulu district on the Hāna side as well. At the top you can walk out into the crater on the trails, and on a clear morning you can see Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa across the channel.
Good to know: sunrise is the part that needs planning. Entering the park between 3:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m. requires a separate $1 reservation per vehicle, booked on recreation.gov up to 60 days ahead, and it is on top of the entrance fee rather than instead of it. Arrive after 7:00 a.m. and you need no reservation at all. The entrance station takes cards only, no cash. If you are also doing the Big Island, the $55 Hawaiʻi Tri-Park pass covers Haleakalā, Hawaiʻi Volcanoes and Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau.
Sunset at the Paliku wilderness campsite, on the slopes of Haleakalā. Photo by Lyle Wilkinson on Unsplash
Road to Hāna
The Road to Hāna costs a rental car and a tank of gas. Every stop along it, the waterfalls, the short hikes and the overlooks, is free. For more, see our guide to the Road to Hāna.
The Road to Hāna is a 64.4-mile stretch of Hawaiʻi Routes 36 and 360, connecting Kahului to the town of Hāna in east Maui. Image: Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority (HTA) / Tommy Lundberg.
History & Culture
The island’s history is one of the cheapest things on it. Most of the museums charge less than a lunch:
Museums
Two of Maui’s museums are cheap and both are open. The Sugar Museum in Puʻunēnē covers the plantation era for $12 adult, $5 child, and free for kamaʻāina. Hale Hōʻikeʻike at the Bailey House in Wailuku is $10 adult, $8 senior, $5 student.
Check the day before you drive. Both keep short weeks. The Sugar Museum is open Monday to Thursday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., with last admission at 1 p.m., so a Friday arrival finds a locked door. Hale Hōʻikeʻike runs Tuesday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The four-museum $12 pass no longer exists. It was run by the Lāhainā Restoration Foundation, and two of the four museums it covered, the Baldwin Home and the Wo Hing Museum, were destroyed in the August 2023 fire. The Foundation’s own site now states that its historic properties “can no longer be visited”. The two surviving museums are run by unrelated organizations and sell their own tickets.
Take a free guided walk through the history of Kihei
This one is free, and it is not a rehearsed script. The guides built it out of one-on-one interviews with county officials, historians, cultural advisors and families who have lived in Kihei for generations, so what you get is closer to oral history than a tour commentary.
The walk is 80 minutes and about a mile, it runs Mondays and Wednesdays, and it starts on the sidewalk at the Kihei Public Library. The start time moves through the year so that the walk finishes at sunset: 5:00 p.m. from March to mid-September, 4:30 p.m. from mid-September to the end of October, 4:00 p.m. in November and December, 4:30 p.m. in January and February. It is free, and you do need to reserve a place on the Maui Walking Tours website.
Good to know: the equivalent self-guided historic trail through Lāhainā is not available. Almost all of the stops on it were destroyed in the August 2023 fire, and the organization that ran it states that its historic properties can no longer be visited. Anything you find online describing that walk in the present tense predates the fire.
The walking tour ends at the coast just before sunset, so bring something warm for the last half hour. Image credit: Maui Walking Tours.
ʻĪao Valley State Park
This small state park is built around the ʻĪao Needle, which rises 1,200 feet off the valley floor, and the walk to the viewpoint is a paved 0.6 miles. Interpretive signs cover the 1790 battle between the armies of Maui and the Big Island that was fought here.
Book before you drive up. Non-residents pay $5 per person to enter and $10 per vehicle to park, and both now require an advance reservation through gostateparks.hawaii.gov. Two people arriving in one rental car pay $20, not $5; four people in one car pay $30, not $60, because only the entry fee is per head. Hawaiʻi residents with a state ID or license are free for both. Open 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. daily.
The ʻĪao Valley trail is paved and short, and the valley walls close in on both sides of it. Image credit: Xavier Lafarge, source.
More History and Culture on Maui
If that is your thing, our overview and map of historical places on Maui covers the sites from before western contact in 1778 through the decades after it, including the heiau, the churches and the museums.
Agritourism
Many of Maui’s communities are based around agriculture. Here are some affordable ways to explore it:
Botanical Gardens
Three gardens, three prices, and the cheapest is the most interesting if you care about native plants. Maui Nui Botanical Gardens in Kahului is $10, free for under-12s and free for kamaʻāina with a Hawaiʻi ID, open Tuesday to Saturday 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and it grows Hawaiian plants rather than ornamental tropicals.
Kula Botanical Garden is $15 adult and $5 for ages 6 to 12, open daily, and the garden itself closes at 3:15 p.m. even though the gift shop stays open until 4:00. Garden of Eden at mile marker 10.5 on the Hāna Highway is the priciest at $20 adult and $10 for ages 5 to 16, open daily 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. None of the three needs a reservation.
Farm Tours
Farm tours on Maui have got a lot more expensive since we first wrote this list, and only one of them still counts as cheap.
The one that is still a bargain: Aliʻi Kula Lavender charges $5 a head, $2 for seniors, military and kamaʻāina, and nothing for under-12s. It is not a guided tour: you buy admission and walk the ten acres yourself, which takes about an hour. The catch is the opening days. They are open Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday only, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. with last entry at 3:45, and closed Tuesday to Thursday, which is a long drive up Waipoli Road to waste. The ground is sloped throughout.
The rest are proper outings now, not cheap ones. Surfing Goat Dairy is $33 adult and $24 for ages 3 to 11 for a 30-minute farm walk that ends with a chèvre tasting and a goat-cheese truffle, running at 10, 11, 12 and 2 with a 24-person cap.
The Maui Dragon Fruit Farm walking tour is $45 adult and $35 for ages 3 to 12, one hour. The Maui Pineapple Tour at Hāliʻimaile is $95 adult and $75 child for 90 minutes, and you leave with a pineapple packed for the flight home.
A Maui chocolate tasting is also $95 a head. Tastings at Ocean Organic Farm & Distillery in Kula, which is what Ocean Vodka is called now, run $33.43 before tax, over-21s only. All four need booking.
Our full list is in Maui farm tours.
Food, Drink, and Shopping
Eating and drinking in Hawaiʻi can be expensive. Here are some tricks to save money:
Poke Picnics
Poke and a couple of drinks in a restaurant can put a tab into triple digits. The same fish, from the counter it came from, does not.
A pound of poke from a grocery store deli (Foodland) or a poke shop (Tamura’s) costs $10 to $15, which feeds two. A poke bowl, poke over rice, is often under $10. Take it to a beach park and you are eating the same fish, looking at the same water, for a fifth of the price.
Poke is raw fish, most often marinated with soy sauce, onion and sesame oil, though the combinations vary by shop. Pictured here is a bowl with Ahi (tuna) poke with green onions and avocado. Image credit: Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority (HTA) / Ben Ono
Local Grocery Stores
This is not unique to Hawaiʻi, but the gap is wider here because everything on a restaurant menu has been shipped in. A condo with a kitchen usually pays for itself against a hotel room within a few days, so it is worth filtering for one when you book your accommodation.
ABC Stores
We don’t love that ABC Stores have taken over every hub in Hawaiʻi, and we always encourage folks to shop at locally-owned, independent stores whenever possible.
That said, if you’re looking to grab a couple to-go drinks, snacks, or souvenirs, the ABC Store’s prices are easy to love. T-shirts can be had for just a couple dollars, and there are a variety of other trinkets that won’t break the bank. If your budget is hurting but you need to bring a few things home for people, the ABC Store is a great option.
More free and affordable activities guides
We keep the same list for the other islands: