Ranking · the East Coast · 68 tariff lines read 07/28–08/01/2026
East Coast ports rank differently by disclosure than by price, and the cheapest of the four we read has no profile at all
- East Coast port groups in our reading run from $260 at Charleston to $360 at New York and New Jersey. Seven of the fifteen port groups priced across the whole country are on this coast, which makes it the best-covered coast on this site and still leaves three of five cost lines unread everywhere on it.
- East Coast ports are ranked here by how much each publishes rather than by what each charges, and the two orders do not match. Savannah discloses most and sits mid-price at $265; New York and New Jersey ties for the most tariff lines and has no dwell figure at all; the cheapest group on the coast, Charleston at $260, is named by no tariff as a group of its own.
- Container ports on this coast show the two widest intra-port spreads in the country, and both come from split billing rather than from price. New York and New Jersey runs $80 to $625 because four carriers bill line demurrage only there, and Miami and Port Everglades runs $110 to $490 because one carrier publishes a rate at one terminal and passes the rest through at cost.
- East Coast questions above these results ask which port is biggest, in ten formulations out of ten. Size is not what this page ranks and not what the query asks: no comparable volume series exists across these ports, and the one cost line read in full puts them in an order that has nothing to do with their size.
The seven East Coast ports, ordered by how much each publishes
East Coast ports carry 68 of the 134 tariff lines we have transcribed, the only port authority rule read end to end anywhere on this site, and the cheapest group in the country. They also carry the widest spread — and that spread belongs to one specific port rather than to the coast.
How this table is built · what we are paid
- This table is ordered by what each port publishes, not by what it costs — and the two orders disagree in every position, which is the finding of the page. Sorting it by the median column would reproduce the cost ranking and destroy that.
- Medians are taken over rows that cover the whole bill. Fifteen figures on this coast — among them $80 at Maher and $88 at Baltimore’s Ports America Chesapeake berth — are half-invoices rather than prices, because the terminal invoices storage separately, and none of them enters a median.
- Every port here carries a median now, and three of them did not before 08/01/2026. Charleston, Baltimore and Jacksonville were blank because six of the nine tariffs were unread PDFs, not because the sources declined to distinguish them. Where a carrier still prices a port only through an "all other ports" group, that group is the port’s line and the row says so.
- The port the carriers call Norfolk is the one this catalogue profiles as Virginia. Both names are in the row, because a reader holding a tariff will search for the first.
- No port has paid to appear here or to be positioned here, and no link on this site is a referral link.
| Port | The authority’s own document | Median first paid day | Tariff lines | What the tariffs do with it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Savannah | Rule 34-025 read — the count starts at the first 12:01 AM after discharge | $265 | 8 | singled out by Yang Ming — five working days against four in California |
| New York / New Jersey | the authority tariff located, not opened | $355 | 14 | both ends of the national table — $80 at Maher, $625 at Hapag-Lloyd’s other berths |
| Virginia — Norfolk in the tariffs | not checked yetgap B | $270 | 9 | named by four carriers; Hapag-Lloyd, ONE, HMM and COSCO each give it a line |
| Miami / Port Everglades | not checked yetgap B | $262 | 12 | the cheapest median on this coast — two ports counted as one group, and no profile here |
| Charleston | not checked yetgap B | $260 | 8 | named by three carriers; the cheapest median on this coast |
| Baltimore | not checked yetgap B | $265 | 9 | four of its nine lines are line demurrage only — more than any port but New York |
| Jacksonville | not checked yetgap B | $265 | 10 | named by three carriers, and by COSCO only at its inland rail port |
| The two orders disagree in every position. The best-disclosed port on this coast is mid-priced; the dearest publishes a tariff it has not opened for us; and the cheapest group we measured anywhere in the country — Miami with Port Everglades, at $262 — publishes nothing we located and has no profile on this site at all. That row stays here rather than being dropped, because dropping it would hide the cheapest thing we measured. | ||||
nine US import demurrage tariffs · read 07/28–08/01/2026
Six of the seven medians fall inside $10 of each other — $260 to $270 — and the seventh, New York, sits $90 above the rest. On this coast the choice of port moves the first paid day by about four per cent, and the choice of carrier inside New York moves it by 680. The profiles say the same thing one port at a time: what it costs to land a box at virginia, what it costs to land a box at baltimore, what it costs to land a box at jacksonville.
Why this order is not the price order
East Coast ports are not a price market. The seven ports here span $100 on the median — from $260 at Charleston to $355 at New York — and six of the seven sit within $10 of one another. Nearly the whole of that width is one port, and inside that one port the spread is $545.
How the coasts actually compare, measured rather than asserted: how east coast and west coast actually differ.
How this East Coast ranking is built, and who paid for a place in it
What we are paid
- Nothing on this page has been paid for. No port, terminal or carrier has paid to appear here, to be positioned here, or to be left out, and no outbound link on this site is a referral link.
- If that ever changes, the rate goes on the page carrying the link, at one rate, the same for everyone — and a position in a table still will not be for sale.
The same thirty lines with their full tariff detail, and the West Coast group beside them: the cost stack ranked port by port.
What is missing from every row on this coast
Two figures on this coast look like the cheapest prices in the country and are not prices at all.
How each figure on this site is sourced and what each status permits: how every figure here is sourced.
What the market publishes when asked about East Coast ports
Asked which East Coast port to import through, the market answers which one is biggest. These are our own counts on the queries this page was built from.
| What we measured | Value |
|---|---|
| What every question above the results asks | all ten ask which port is biggest, busiest or largest |
| What the related searches carry | top-ten and busiest lists, plus two terms about the opposite coast |
| What the query itself asks | which port fits a given shipment — a different question |
| Comparable volume figures across these ports | none — no two share a period or a measure |
| Ports on this coast with a dwell figure of any kind | one of seven, and it is consensus |
our own capture of the East Coast queries, Google US, 07/26/2026
The market answers size because size is published and fit is not. This page has no position column by volume for the same reason it appears nowhere else on this site: the figures do not share a period.
Who bills what at an East Coast port, and why two invoices are common here
Two things on this coast change who bills you, and both are properties of specific ports rather than of the region.
| What happens | Where | Who bills | What it does to the figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Line demurrage only | New York and New Jersey, at four carriers and five terminals | the carrier for its half, the terminal for its own | the published rate is half the bill — $80, $82, $125 and $130 all sit here |
| A rate published at one port only | Port Everglades | the carrier there; the terminal, at cost, everywhere else | a $65 figure that describes one berth and no other |
| The top tier of the whole reading | New York and New Jersey | the carrier | $1,000 per day from day 30 — the highest figure in the nine tariffs |
| A free-time carve-out | Savannah and New York — the only two anywhere | the carrier | five working days at one, four days at the other |
If an East Coast demurrage invoice arrives
An invoice for these days answers to 46 CFR Part 541, in force since 05/28/2024 and before the D.C. Circuit twice since — the decision of 09/29/2025 changed who may be billed. Read the current text at eCFR rather than a summary of the 2024 announcement. On this coast one check comes first: establish whether your figure is line demurrage or all-in, because at one port here the difference is the whole second invoice.
Descriptive, not legal advice. The tariff and the invoice in your own file govern.
The three East Coast ports we have read most, and what each is missing
Three ports on this coast are worth reading before the others, and none of them is the cheapest.
Savannah — the port that publishes the hour
The only port authority rule read end to end anywhere on this site: the count starts at the first 12:01 AM after discharge. A median of $265 across eight lines, and one carrier gives it five working days where it gives four in California.
New York and New Jersey — the dearest median and the lowest-looking figures
A median of $355 over twelve lines, more than any other port, and every line-demurrage-only row extracted before 31 July 2026. Both facts have one cause: the bill is split, and the terminal’s half sits in a document nobody here has read.
Charleston — three terminals and no tariff line
No carrier names it, so it has no median. What it does have is structure: three container terminals under one port name, which means a quote that names the port without the terminal has left out the field that decides the road distance.
Where this East Coast ranking does not apply
This ranking stops applying in four places.
- Where the tariff does not name your port. Three of the seven rows are in that position, and the rate that applies to them was written for a group.
- Where the figure is line demurrage only. Then it is half the bill, and the other half comes from the terminal on its own clock.
- Below the port level. Terminal storage tariffs are unread everywhere on this coast — gap A — and at New York the terminal decides both the amount and the number of invoices.
- When the question is size. Nothing here ranks these ports by volume, because no two of them publish a figure for the same period.
See alsohow savannah and charleston actually differ →how new york and norfolk actually differ →
How often these East Coast figures change
The only tariff revision we caught inside our own reading window changed nothing on this coast. The HMM tariff expired 07/31/2026 and its successor, effective 08/01/2026, moved exactly two lines — both on the West Coast — while every East Coast group stayed as it was.
A revision that leaves a ranking intact is exactly as informative as one that reorders it, and it is the honest example to give: these figures move by amendment, and the last amendment we watched did not touch them.
What would move this page fastest is not a new tariff but an old one: the authority tariff located at New York, and the two rules located at Savannah, are all unopened.
Questions about East Coast ports and imports
Which East Coast port is best for imports?
It depends what best means. On the one cost line read in full the cheapest is Miami and Port Everglades at a $262 median; the most legible is Savannah, which publishes a port rule we could read end to end. Those are two different ports.
What is the number one port on the East Coast?
No size ranking is published here: no comparable volume series exists across these ports. The figures that circulate carry different measures and different periods, so no position column appears.
What is the busiest port on the US East Coast?
The same answer. New York and New Jersey alone has two figures circulating that differ by roughly half, and neither names its measure or its period.
How much is demurrage on the East Coast?
Seven port medians: $260, $262, $265, $265, $265, $270 and $360 for the first paid day. Six of the seven sit within $10 of each other. The full coast range runs $80 to $625, and the low end is a half-invoice rather than a whole one.
Why is New York so expensive?
Its all-in median of $355 is the highest in the country. The same port also carries the lowest-looking figures, because four carriers there bill line demurrage only and the terminal invoices storage separately.
Which East Coast port publishes the most?
Savannah. It is the only port on this site whose own authority rule has been read end to end, giving a free-time start of 12:01 AM, and it also carries dwell figures and a terminal handling range.
Are Norfolk and Virginia the same port?
Yes. Carrier tariffs call it Norfolk and this directory profiles it as Virginia. A reader holding a tariff needs both names to find it.
Why isn't Miami in your port directory?
It has no profile in any wave, even though its group carries the lowest median we measured. The absence is named here and on the directory rather than quietly left out.
The East Coast is where this site has read most and where the most obvious next documents are. The two pairs of ports worth comparing directly are linked above, along with every profile behind the rows of this table.