What DiveScanner is
DiveScanner compares real liveaboard prices from every provider in one place, so you don't have to click through to each operator and check availability yourself. We do the clicking and checking for you. We are not a booking agent and we do not resell trips - when you find the right boat, you click through to the operator or travel partner to book. Final price, cabin availability, payment and terms are handled by them.
Where prices come from
For each boat and each month, DiveScanner reads the current price directly from the provider that sells it - the operator's own booking system or the travel agency's live listing. There is a real price on every provider row we show. The engine runs continuously and refreshes prices on a schedule, walking every boat, every month, through the booking horizon.
Prices are read exactly as the provider lists them, keyed to the specific departure where the provider prices per departure (as PADI Travel and liveaboard booking systems do), so a September price is really a September departure.
Operators vs. agencies
There are two kinds of provider, and knowing the difference is the heart of the comparison:
| Original operators (own boats only) | Travel agencies / aggregators (resell many operators) |
|---|---|
| Emperor Divers | PADI Travel |
| Aggressor Adventures | Bluewater Dive Travel |
| Khao Lak Scuba Adventures (Manta Queen) | Master Liveaboards |
| ScubaSpa, Deep Andaman Queen, Blue Force Fleet | liveaboard.com |
| MV Bavaria, Carpe Diem, Discovery Divers, Sea Breeze |
An operator's price is the authoritative price for its own boats. Agencies resell many operators' boats. So for one boat we compare its original operator's own price against the agencies that resell it - side by side. That is the whole comparison.
Real prices only
- Real reads, not estimates. No currency conversion, no rounding, no arithmetic. Each price is shown exactly as the operator lists it, in its own currency.
- No borrowed numbers. A provider row shows that provider's own real price or nothing. We never relabel one provider's number as another's, and never copy a sister ship's price.
- No placeholder prices. If a value has no real source, it does not go in.
- Human-verified prices are protected. Where a price is confirmed by a person, an automated read never overwrites it, and a working price is never wiped because a single read failed.
What we show - and what we hide
This is a comparison engine, so the goal is a real number on every row:
- Only real-price rows. We only show a provider row when it has a real price for your month. If a provider can't be read, we omit the row rather than showing an empty "check availability" line.
- No departure, no boat. If no provider has a real departure for a boat in the month you chose, the boat isn't shown at all - like a seasonal boat out of season.
- We don't lead with resellers. liveaboard.com is shown last, and a boat that appears only on liveaboard.com is not advertised on its own.
How trips are ranked
Within your search, boats are ordered so the best-value, best-matched trips surface first - cheapest real price leads, and when you choose a marine species, results are ranked best-place-first for that animal and season. Each boat card lists every provider that carries it with its own price, cheapest first, so the comparison is transparent.
How the Cruise Director advice is built
Alongside prices, DiveScanner gives advice from curated knowledge bases - never invented:
- Marine life uses a seasonal knowledge base of where and when each species (sharks, hammerheads, tiger sharks, whale sharks, mantas, dolphins, lionfish) is realistically seen, so you get an honest probability and the best destination and time.
- Wrecks are handled separately (wrecks have no season). We match the real wreck itinerary sailing that month and show the certification level that route needs - and always note that diving inside a wreck needs the Wreck Diver specialty.
- Dive level filters boats and routes to your certification and logged dives, so you're only shown trips suited to your experience.
Honesty about limits
We read public prices and availability from provider websites and booking systems to power the comparison. Some providers put prices behind JavaScript or internal APIs; we read what is publicly available and keep expanding coverage. Where a provider genuinely has no readable price for a month, that row is simply left out - we would rather show you less than show you a number we cannot stand behind.