Bergen fjord cruise price: $68 to $427 a person

This is the first thing to understand about booking a fjord cruise in Bergen, and no listing tells you: three operators sell the same three-and-a-half-hour trip. Bergen to Mostraumen and back, out through the Byfjord and Osterfjord, through the strait, under a waterfall, and home.

$68 — the local operator. The lowest price on the page, and 4,426 reviews at 4.6 behind it. Same water, same strait, same waterfall.

$75 — the original. Ten thousand and sixty-four ratings at 4.7, which is more than twice as many as anything else here. If you want the version the largest number of people have actually judged, this is it.

$85 — with a live guide. The difference is a person talking you through the fjord for three hours rather than a recording or silence. For some people that is worth the seventeen dollars over the cheapest; for others it is noise.

Compare them on departure time and review count. The descriptions are describing the same stretch of water.

$88 buys the Hardangerfjord. Seven hours: two on the water each way down a fjord 179 kilometres long and up to about 860 metres deep, and about three and a half hours ashore at Rosendal, where the manor was built in 1665.

$94 and $136 buy an open boat. RIB trips from Norheimsund and Ulvik, seventy-five and a hundred and five minutes, fast and wet and much closer to the water. Both run on the Hardangerfjord rather than from Bergen.

$299 and $427 buy a whole day. Eleven hours or so, collecting the Flåm Railway, the Stegastein viewpoint and a cruise on the UNESCO-listed Nærøyfjord. Worth knowing before you book: only a couple of those hours are on the fjord itself.

Above that are private charters. They are priced per boat rather than per seat, which makes the headline number misleading for a group and accurate for a couple.