What king crab costs, and why

After the animal’s name, «how much» is the most asked question about king crab. We publish a single price, the only one we could verify with a date and an origin, and we accompany it with what sits behind the number. A king crab price expires within weeks and changes from one dock to the next: without knowing what it measures, it is useless.

The five variables behind the price

• Format. Whole, claws or picked are neither the same dish nor the same work. Comparing prices across formats tells you nothing.
• Yield. You pay for live weight but you eat meat. The ratio between the two is the part of the price that never appears on the menu.
• Regulation. Harvesting is trap-only, the minimum size in force is 12 centimetres of carapace length, and females are under permanent closure. These are supply limits set by rule, not by the restaurant.
• The season. The 2026 harvest window runs from 15 July to 15 December. Outside it what you get is frozen, and that carries a different cost.
• Fresh or frozen. Neither is a flaw. The cost difference is real and should show on the menu.

A high menu price does not mean a good price at the dock

This is the most widespread confusion and it is worth undoing. In September 2025 Chile’s National Economic Prosecutor accused seven processing companies and eight executives before the Competition Tribunal of having coordinated, between 2012 and 2021 at least, the price they paid artisanal fishermen for live king crab. The case has no ruling. But it shows that the menu price and the dock price are independent numbers: the second can be depressed while the first rises.

How to tell whether the price is reasonable

• Ask format and weight before the animal reaches the table. A price per kilo with no declared weight is not a price.
• Ask whether it is fresh or frozen. The answer changes what is reasonable to pay.
• Compare only against the same format in the same week. Last year’s price is no benchmark.

The only price we could verify

As of 31 August 2026, an online retailer with a declared address in Recoleta, Santiago, listed Magallanes king crab premium meat, frozen, at CLP 26,850 for 500 grams. That is a real, checkable price, but it is worth being exact about what it measures: it is meat already picked from the shell, frozen, sold for takeaway, in the capital region. It is not the price of a whole fresh animal, not the price of a plated dish, and above all not a Magallanes price.

The comparison with a restaurant dish is not direct, and the difference is not margin. Between those 500 grams of meat and a plated dish there is picking, cooking, service and the whole animal’s yield, the variable that never appears on any menu. Comparing the two numbers as if they measured the same thing is the source of much of the feeling that king crab is expensive.

And there is something worth saying about that price: it is from Santiago. The meat is processed in Magallanes, travels to the centre of the country and is sold there with a price published online. In Punta Arenas, by contrast, we found no published price at all. That the only verifiable figure for Magallanes king crab we could cite comes from a shop in Recoleta, and not from the region where it is fished, is itself a fact about how this product circulates.