The PortMiami parking rate you pay is the one your terminal comes with
PortMiami cruise parking costs $25 or $35 per vehicle per day, and the terminal assigned to your ship decides which. Six of the ten cruise terminals Miami-Dade County lists are served by $25 facilities, two by $35 facilities, and two carry no published county rate. Eight billed days come to $200.00 or $280.00.
Most parking decisions are decisions. A driver looks at a schedule, weighs a cheaper lot against a closer one, and picks. At PortMiami that step does not exist. Instead the county assigns each cruise terminal to a named garage or surface lot, the ship decides the terminal, and the rate arrives attached to the facility. Two travelers sailing the same week in identical cars pay $200.00 and $280.00 for the same eight days.
What follows sets out that assignment as Miami-Dade County prints it, garage by garage, with the rate each one carries and the eight day total it produces. Every figure was read from the county’s own pages and from PortMiami Terminal Tariff No. 010 in August 2026. The premises stay fixed throughout: one car, one seven night sailing, one space.
| Cruise terminal named by Miami-Dade County | Parking facility the county assigns to it | Long term rate the county publishes | Eight billed days at that rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cruise Terminal AA | Multi-Level Garage AA, 2200 N Cruise Blvd. | $35 per vehicle, per space, per day, overnight or greater | $280.00 |
| Cruise Terminal A | Multi-Level Garage A, 2000 N Cruise Blvd. | No figure printed by the county | Not calculable from county pages |
| Cruise Terminal B | Multi-Level Garage B, 1756 N Cruise Blvd. | $35 per vehicle, per space, per day, effective January 1, 2025 | $280.00 |
| Cruise Terminal C | Multi-Level Garage C, 1648 N Cruise Blvd. | $25 per vehicle, per space, per day or a fraction | $200.00 |
| Cruise Terminal D | Multi-Level Garage D, 1400 Cruise Blvd., and Surface Lot D | $25 per day at Garage D; Surface Lot D appears in no rate line | $200.00 at Garage D |
| Cruise Terminal E | Surface Lot E, 625 Florida Way | $25 per vehicle, per space, per day or a fraction | $200.00 |
| Cruise Terminal F | Multi-Level Garage G, 921 N America Way | $25 per vehicle, per space, per day or a fraction | $200.00 |
| Cruise Terminal G | Multi-Level Garage G, 921 N America Way | $25 per vehicle, per space, per day or a fraction | $200.00 |
| Cruise Terminal V | Multi-Level Garage G, 921 N America Way | $25 per vehicle, per space, per day or a fraction | $200.00 |
| Cruise Terminal J | Multi-Level Garage J, 1122 Caribbean Way, and Multi-Level Garage K, 1124 Caribbean Way | No figure printed by the county | Not calculable from county pages |
Three rate outcomes, ten terminals, and no column in that table that a traveler gets to fill in. The booking fills it in.
How Miami-Dade County pairs ten PortMiami terminals with eight garages and two lots
The assignment is published as a plain list under the heading Cruise Terminals, split into a northside group of nine and a southside group of one. Nine terminals draw on eight northside facilities, because Multi-Level Garage G absorbs three of them: Cruise Terminal F, Cruise Terminal G and Cruise Terminal V all park at 921 N America Way, on the $25 long term line. No garage serves Cruise Terminal E at all, only Surface Lot E at 625 Florida Way, while Cruise Terminal D draws on a garage and a surface lot together.
Southside is a single line. One terminal, Cruise Terminal J, is paired with Multi-Level Garage J at 1122 Caribbean Way and Multi-Level Garage K at 1124 Caribbean Way, two facilities two street numbers apart, and the County lists no other cruise terminal on that side of the water. Northside holds the rest, from Multi-Level Garage AA at $35 per day down to the $25 group.
Two things follow from a list built this way. The first is that the facility is not a choice a driver makes on the day, since the county sells parking at every cruise terminal and pairs each one in advance. The second is that a change of ship changes the price of leaving a car behind, without anything in the reservation looking different. How the terminals themselves are laid out, and which ones sit north or south, is set out in the reference on how PortMiami organizes its cruise terminals and the roads that reach them.
The garage is downstream of the ship. The rate is downstream of the garage.
Reading the PortMiami rate schedule turns on the words overnight or greater
Each priced facility at PortMiami carries two lines, and only one of them can apply to a cruise. The county prints a short term line for Garages C, D, F, G and Surface Lot E at “per vehicle, per space, per day (no overnight) or fraction of $10”, and a long term line at “(overnight or greater), per vehicle, per space, per day or a fraction of $25”. The same pair repeats at Multi-Level Garage AA, at $20 short term with no overnight, and $35 long term.
A car left for a seven night sailing sleeps at the port seven times. That places it on the long term line by definition, so the $10 and the $20 are unreachable for a cruise passenger, whatever the sign at the entrance shows first. The gap between the two lines is $15 per day at both price points, which is the same $15 whether the terminal is a $25 one or a $35 one.
Over eight billed days that misreading costs $120.00 in either direction. Budget $10 a day at Cruise Terminal C and the shortfall is $120.00; budget $20 a day at Cruise Terminal AA and the shortfall is again $120.00. Two different garages, two different rates, one identical error.
A third long term line sits alongside the others, for high density parking, and it carries the same $25. Density changes the packing, not the price.
The eight day count lives in Tariff No. 010, not on the PortMiami parking page
The rule that turns seven nights into eight billed days is published by the Miami-Dade County Seaport Department in PortMiami Terminal Tariff No. 010, effective October 1, 2025, at item 710. Its wording is that established parking rates are “applied to the day a vehicle enters the parking lot and to each succeeding day it remains on the lot”. Entry day plus each succeeding day is nights plus one, so a Saturday to Saturday sailing bills eight days rather than seven.
The same document settles the tax question the parking page leaves open. Section Two of the tariff states that “Rates and charges contained in this tariff are exclusive of any sales tax”, and adds that the Florida Legislature has set the general sales tax rate at 6%. The parking page itself says nothing about tax in either direction. Read together, $200.00 is a floor and not a total, and at the general rate the tariff names, eight days at $25 reach $212.00 while eight days at $35 reach $296.80.
| Rate schedule item | What the PortMiami parking page prints | What Terminal Tariff No. 010 prints | What the difference does to a driver |
|---|---|---|---|
| Long term parking, overnight or greater | “per day or a fraction of $25” | “$25.00” per vehicle, per space, per day or fraction | Nothing; the two documents agree |
| Day counting rule | Not printed anywhere on the page | Applied to the entry day “and to each succeeding day it remains on the lot” | Seven nights bill as eight days, worth $25 to $35 |
| Sales tax | Not mentioned in either direction | Rates are “exclusive of any sales tax”; general state rate given as 6% | $200.00 becomes a floor rather than a total |
| Special events parking | “no less than $15” | “$15.00” with the qualifier “(No Overnight Parking)” | A floor on one page, a fixed charge on the other |
| Lost ticket | “for a maximum of $275” | “$275.00”, described as equivalent to an 11-day cruise | A ceiling on one page, a flat charge on the other |
| Privately owned garages | Garage A carries a link out instead of a figure | Private facilities “such as the Cruise Terminal A parking garage, may apply different rates” | The county cannot quote a rate for one of its own terminals |
Nothing in that table is a secret. It is simply filed in a 68 page tariff rather than beside the number a traveler reads. The comparison of what PortMiami and Port Canaveral each publish about parking and airports was written against the parking page alone, where that counting rule does not appear.
Two PortMiami cruise terminals have no county parking rate at all
Cruise Terminal A and Cruise Terminal J are the exceptions, for different reasons. The county’s entry for Multi-Level Garage A carries no figure, only a link out to a separate parking site, and Tariff No. 010 explains why in a single clause: parking facilities that are privately owned, “such as the Cruise Terminal A parking garage, may apply different rates”. A privately owned garage inside a county port is outside the county’s own schedule.
The southside pair is stranger, because nothing on the page explains it. Multi-Level Garage J and Multi-Level Garage K appear in the address list, at 1122 and 1124 Caribbean Way, and both appear in the garage clearance table with first floor heights of 8 feet 2 inches. Neither appears in any of the rate blocks. The long term $25 line names Garages C, D, F, G and Surface Lot E, and the letters J and K are not among them.
The same schedule has a mirror image problem. Garage F is priced in that $25 line and appears nowhere else on the page: no terminal is assigned to it, no address is listed for it, and no clearance is published for it. Surface Lot C sits at 1720 Africa Way in the address list with no terminal and no rate. One facility carries a price and no terminal. Four carry a terminal and no price.
Eight of the ten terminals can be budgeted from the county’s pages. Two cannot, and one of those two is on the wrong side of the water to walk over and ask.
What a seven night PortMiami sailing costs at each rate, and which terminals win
Six terminals win on published cost, by $80.00 over eight days, namely Cruise Terminals C, D, E, F, G and V. The premises are two adults, one car, seven nights and one space. At the $25 facilities the count is 8 days at $25 for $200.00 before tax; at Multi-Level Garage AA and Multi-Level Garage B it is 8 days at $35 for $280.00 before tax. Split between two adults, that is $100.00 each against $140.00 each.
Applying the 6% general rate the tariff names, the same eight days read $212.00 and $296.80, and the gap widens from $80.00 to $84.80. The nuance is that the tariff says its rates exclude sales tax without stating which rate applies to parking specifically, so $212.00 is the arithmetic of a stated general rate rather than a figure Miami-Dade County publishes for a garage.
The favorable case is a $25 terminal on a short sailing. A two night cruise bills three days for $75.00, and the same three days at a $35 terminal come to $105.00, a difference of only $30.00. The normal case is the seven night sailing above, at $200.00 or $280.00. The unfavorable case is a long itinerary at Cruise Terminal AA or Cruise Terminal B: a fourteen night cruise bills fifteen days for $525.00, against $375.00 at a $25 terminal, and the $150.00 spread is now three quarters of the entire eight day bill at a $25 terminal.
Three situations take the decision out of the terminal’s hands, and they are worth naming because the table above does not cover them. A stay that never goes overnight is billed on the short term line at $10 or $20 rather than on the long term one. An oversized van, recreational vehicle or vehicle with a trailer is priced separately at Surface Lot E at $25 per space, per day, on a schedule of its own. And a vehicle at Cruise Terminal A or Cruise Terminal J has no county rate to compare against, which makes the $80.00 spread irrelevant to it.
Everyone else is holding a decision that was made when the ship was booked. The way a single flat rate produces a parking bill at Port Canaveral shows the alternative structure, where one number covers every terminal in the port.
What else arrives with a PortMiami terminal assignment
- Clearance comes with the garage too. The county publishes first floor heights from 7 feet 2 inches at Multi-Level Garage A to 9 feet 6 inches at Multi-Level Garage G, and remaining floor heights that fall as low as 6 feet 8 inches at Multi-Level Garage D. A single clearance of 7.0 feet covers Multi-Level Garage AA.
- The drop between floors is where the surprise sits. Multi-Level Garage G measures 9 feet 6 inches on the first floor and 6 feet 11 inches on the remaining floors, a fall of 2 feet 7 inches inside one building, while Multi-Level Garage K holds 8 feet 2 inches on every floor the county lists.
- Three terminals share one building. Drivers using Cruise Terminal F, Cruise Terminal G and Cruise Terminal V all park at Multi-Level Garage G, so a $25 rate and a 6 feet 11 inch upper clearance reach three ships at once.
- The free shuttle is conditional. Miami-Dade County states that free shuttle service is available only on cruise days, and that all garages are staffed by a parking attendant from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. on those days. Outside them the page gives a phone number, 305-347-4800, rather than an hour.
- The lost ticket charge is arithmetic, not a penalty. At $275 for a lost ticket, described as equivalent to an 11-day cruise, the figure is exactly 11 days at the $25 long term rate. On a seven night sailing that is $75.00 above the $200.00 the stay would otherwise bill.
- Crew pay by the week and passengers by the day. Crew Member Parking is listed at $50.00 per week against $25 per day for a passenger, so seven days cost $50.00 on one line and $175.00 on the other, a factor of 3.5 for the same asphalt.
- No maximum length of stay appears in the schedule or in item 710 of the tariff. The rate simply applies to each succeeding day the vehicle remains, which is also how long stay parking is counted at Port Canaveral.
Five ways a PortMiami parking budget misses before the barrier
Budgeting the short term line is the first and the most expensive. The $10 and $20 figures both carry “no overnight” beside them, and a cruise stay is overnight by construction, so the real numbers are $25 and $35 and the shortfall is $120.00 across eight days.
Assuming one rate covers the port is the second. A single figure works at ports that publish one, and the County publishes six separate rate blocks for PortMiami, so quoting “PortMiami parking” without a terminal letter is quoting a range of $25 to $35 and calling it a price.
Counting nights instead of days is the third. Item 710 of Terminal Tariff No. 010 applies the rate to the entry day and to each succeeding day the vehicle remains, which makes a seven night cruise an eight day charge. The gap is one day, worth $25.00 at six terminals and $35.00 at two.
Treating the published rate as the amount on the card is the fourth. Miami-Dade County writes nothing about tax on its parking page, while the tariff behind that page states its rates are exclusive of any sales tax. A total built from $25 alone is a floor, and the same is true of the “$20.00 per day plus tax” the Canaveral Port Authority publishes at the other end of the state, where the rate behind those two words is also unpublished.
Assuming the county can quote every garage is the fifth. A privately owned garage serves Cruise Terminal A, and the tariff expressly allows its rates to differ, while the two garages behind Cruise Terminal J appear in the address list and the clearance table but in no rate line. For those two terminals the honest budget is a phone call, not a number.
How these PortMiami parking figures were checked
The figures in this guide were verified in August 2026 against the sources named in each section. Two county documents meet in any total here that runs on $35 a day. Item 710 of PortMiami Terminal Tariff No. 010 carries $25.00 as its only long term figure and states that the tariff’s rates are exclusive of any sales tax, while the $35 line is published on the county’s PortMiami parking page instead, so a $35 total with 6% added crosses both. Parking rates usually change in January, shuttle fares and cruise line transfer prices change by season, and ship schedules change weekly; check the issuer’s page before you travel. No provider paid for placement here, and none can pay to appear. Where a booking link earns Lot and Gate a commission it is marked as sponsored and flagged in this line, and as of September 2026 no affiliate link is live anywhere on this site.
Questions travelers ask about parking rates at the Port of Miami
The six answers below use the rate schedule Miami-Dade County published on its own parking page and item 710 of PortMiami Terminal Tariff No. 010, both read in August 2026, with every total calculated at the published $25 and $35 before sales tax.
Either $25 or $35 per vehicle, per space, per day, depending on the terminal. The County publishes $25 at Garages C, D, F, G and Surface Lot E, and $35 at Garage AA and Garage B. Eight billed days come to $200.00 or $280.00 before sales tax.
Every pairing is published by Miami-Dade County. Terminal AA uses Garage AA, Terminal A uses Garage A, Terminal B uses Garage B, Terminal C uses Garage C, Terminal D uses Garage D and Surface Lot D, Terminal E uses Surface Lot E, Terminals F, G and V all use Garage G, and Terminal J uses Garages J and K.
Because the rate belongs to the facility, not to the driver. Under the county schedule, Garage AA and Garage B are priced at $35 per day and the Garages C, D, F, G group at $25, and each cruise terminal is assigned to one facility in advance. The ship sets the terminal, and the terminal sets the rate.
Eight. Item 710 of PortMiami Terminal Tariff No. 010, effective October 1, 2025, applies the rate to the day a vehicle enters the lot and to each succeeding day it remains, so nights plus one is the count. Eight days come to $200.00 at $25 and $280.00 at $35.
The parking page says nothing either way, but Terminal Tariff No. 010 states that rates and charges in it are exclusive of any sales tax, and gives the general state rate as 6%. On that reading eight days at $25 reach $212.00 rather than $200.00, and eight at $35 reach $296.80.
A short term rate that no cruise passenger can use. On the Miami-Dade County schedule it is printed as per vehicle, per space, per day with the qualifier no overnight, alongside a long term line for overnight or greater at $25. A car left for a sailing sleeps at the port and bills on the long term line.
A parking rate that belongs to the berth, not to the driver
Buried in item 710 of Terminal Tariff No. 010 is a paragraph headed Port’s Partial Retention of Increased Parking Revenues. It records that the previously established parking rate was $22.00 per vehicle before FY 2024-2025, and gives the county the right to retain $1.50 above it under written consents with multi-day cruise lines that hold parking revenue sharing incentive rights. The $25 on the sign is the visible end of a contract about berths.
Which reframes the whole question. Shopping for a cheaper PortMiami garage is not a thing a passenger can do, because the garage was assigned before the booking existed and the rate was negotiated before the assignment. The lever that moves a PortMiami parking bill is not the garage. It is the ship.
Related guides
- PortMiami cruise terminals, northside and southside layout and how to reach them
- PortMiami and Port Canaveral compared on parking rates, airports and published data
- What the eight day count does to a Port Canaveral parking bill
- How Port Canaveral counts and prices a long stay in its terminal garages
- Port Canaveral cruise terminals, garages and the flat rate that covers all of them