Tohatsu MFS9.9EEFTUL Price: What This 9.9 HP Outboard Costs

If you’ve been pricing outboards for a sailboat auxiliary or a small runabout, you’ve probably already landed on the same question we get asked every week: what’s a fair Tohatsu MFS9.9EEFTUL price, and is it actually worth paying for the electric-start, long-shaft, power-tilt version instead of the bare-bones model? Short answer — yes, and we’ll walk through exactly why. We sell this exact 2023 model MFS9.9EEFTUL here at S.H Continental Marine, it’s in stock right now, and at $3,385.00 it’s one of the more honest deals you’ll find for a 9.9 HP outboard carrying this particular combination of features.

This isn’t a generic “here’s what a 9.9 HP outboard is” article. We actually stock, test, and ship this engine, so what follows is the real breakdown of what you’re paying for, what the numbers mean in practice, and why the MFS9.9EEFTUL keeps showing up as the go-to pick for sailors who are tired of their old two-stroke smoking up the transom locker.

What Exactly Is the Tohatsu MFS9.9EEFTUL?

The MFS9.9EEFTUL is Tohatsu’s 9.9 horsepower four-stroke outboard, built on the same core block Tohatsu has refined for decades, but dressed out with the features that make day-to-day ownership less of a chore. The naming isn’t random — the “E” designations tell you it has electric start and power tilt, and the “L” tells you it’s a long shaft, 20 inches, which matters more than most first-time buyers realize when they’re matching a motor to a transom.

Where a lot of budget 9.9s ship as manual-start, manual-tilt units — fine if you don’t mind pull-starting a cold engine every morning and muscling the motor up by hand — the MFS9.9EEFTUL skips all of that. Push a button, it starts. Flip a switch, it tilts. That combination isn’t common in the 9.9 HP class at all; most manufacturers reserve electric start and power tilt for their 15 HP-and-up lineups. Tohatsu built it into their 9.9, and that’s a big part of why the Tohatsu MFS9.9EEFTUL price sits a bit above the stripped-down versions you’ll see advertised elsewhere.

Full Specs: What You’re Actually Buying

Here’s the rundown, straight from the unit we have sitting in our shop right now — this is the 2023 model, tested and ready to go.

On paper that reads like a spec sheet. In practice, the shaft length and the tilt function are what most buyers get wrong when they’re shopping on price alone. A short shaft on a sailboat with a deep transom well means the prop cavitates in a chop — you lose thrust exactly when you need it most, backing out of a slip in a crosswind. Get the long shaft right and the motor just works the way it’s supposed to. That’s part of what you’re actually buying when you look at the full Tohatsu MFS9.9EEFTUL price and not just the number on a competitor’s stripped listing.

Weight and Handling

The 9.9 sits right in that sweet spot — light enough that two people can manage it off a mount without a hoist, heavy enough that it isn’t buzzy or flimsy under load. Tohatsu also builds this block to share a huge amount of internal architecture with their 8 HP and 6 HP siblings, which is a big reason parts availability and long-term reliability on these engines has stayed strong for years. If you’ve ever had to hunt for a carburetor kit for some obscure motor that never got proper distribution, you’ll appreciate why that matters.

Full specs, current photos, and the exact serial batch we have on hand are all listed on the product page for this unit, if you want to see it beyond what fits neatly into a table here.

Break-In, Fuel, and What to Expect the First Season

New four-strokes need a proper break-in period, and the MFS9.9EEFTUL is no exception — Tohatsu specifies a graduated break-in schedule for the first several hours of run time, varying throttle and avoiding sustained wide-open running until the rings have seated. Skip it and you can shorten the life of the motor; follow it and this engine will comfortably outlast a lot of the “budget” alternatives people compare it against on price alone. We include the manufacturer’s break-in guidance with every unit, and honestly, it takes maybe two outings to get through properly.

Fuel-wise, it runs on standard unleaded, and Tohatsu recommends keeping ethanol content at 10% or below for long-term fuel system health — standard advice across the small-outboard world at this point. At typical cruising RPM for a sailboat auxiliary, you’re looking at very modest fuel burn. This isn’t a motor that’s going to eat through your tank on a weekend outing, which is part of the appeal for anyone running it as backup power rather than a primary engine.

What Actually Drives the Tohatsu MFS9.9EEFTUL Price

People ask us this constantly: why does this one cost more than the manual-start 9.9 sitting two rows over? It comes down to four things, and none of them are padding.

• Electric start hardware — a starter motor, solenoid, and the wiring harness to run it, none of which exists on the base model.
• Power tilt assembly — a hydraulic tilt system that replaces the manual tilt lever, genuinely useful if you’re single-handing a boat and don’t want to climb back to the transom every time you need to raise the motor.
• Long shaft configuration — a longer driveshaft and lower unit housing, machined and assembled as part of the base build rather than bolted on after.
• Pre-delivery testing — every unit we sell gets run, checked, and verified before it leaves our shop, which isn’t free labor and isn’t something every seller actually does, whatever their listing claims.

Strip any one of those out and the price drops. Strip all of them out and you’re basically buying a different motor that happens to share a displacement number. When people ask us to justify the Tohatsu MFS9.9EEFTUL price against a cheaper listing somewhere else, this is usually the conversation — what, specifically, did the other seller leave out, and did they actually test the unit before boxing it up?

Who Should Actually Buy This Motor

We sell a lot of these to three kinds of buyers, and if you fall into one of them, this is very likely the right engine for you.

Sailboat owners looking for an auxiliary motor are probably our single biggest customer group for the MFS9.9EEFTUL. A 9.9 HP long shaft with electric start is close to the ceiling of what most sailboat transom brackets or well mounts are rated for, and the power tilt means you’re not wrestling the motor up out of the water every time you kill the engine under sail. If your current auxiliary is a tired old carbureted two-stroke that smokes on startup and won’t idle clean, this is a straightforward upgrade — quieter, cleaner, and it’ll actually start on the first try in cold weather, which after a few seasons with a stubborn two-stroke starts to feel like a minor miracle.

Small boat and jon boat owners who want more push than a trolling motor but don’t need — or want to pay for — anything in the 15-25 HP range. The 9.9 is legal on a lot of horsepower-restricted lakes precisely because it sits under that threshold, and it’ll move a light aluminum hull at a very respectable clip without the extra weight and fuel burn a bigger motor brings.

Dinghy and tender owners running a rigid inflatable or a hard dinghy off a larger vessel. The long shaft variant specifically suits deeper-transom tenders and RIBs where a short shaft would leave the prop too high in the water. If you’re supporting a larger sailboat or motor yacht and need a reliable tender motor that starts every time without a fight, the electric start alone pays for itself the first time you’re doing it one-handed while holding a dock line.

There’s also a smaller but steady group of buyers replacing an aging Tohatsu of the same displacement — people who ran a 9.9 from fifteen or twenty years ago into the ground and simply want the modern version of the same reliable motor. If that’s you, you already know what you’re buying, and the MFS9.9EEFTUL price will feel like a fair continuation of that relationship rather than a gamble on an unfamiliar brand.

Why Tohatsu Specifically

Tohatsu’s been building outboards since the 1950s, longer than most of the brands that get more marketing attention today, and a fair amount of that engineering lineage runs straight through this 9.9 HP line. If you want to see how they talk about their own history and current lineup, Tohatsu’s official site lays it out — decades of small-outboard focus rather than trying to be everything to everyone.

That focus shows up in small ways on the MFS9.9EEFTUL: the cooling passages, the corrosion-resistant alloys on the lower unit, the way the powerhead is tuned to run clean at low RPM rather than just peak output on a dyno sheet. None of that shows up as a bullet point on a spec sheet, but it’s the difference between an outboard that’s still running smoothly in ten years and one that’s nickel-and-diming you with parts by year four.

A lot of recreational boaters don’t realize Tohatsu also builds outboards for other well-known brands under licensing and OEM arrangements, which tells you something about how the engineering side of the marine industry actually views this company, separate from retail marketing.

How We Test and Verify Every Unit Before It Ships

We don’t box these up straight from a pallet. Every MFS9.9EEFTUL that leaves our shop gets started, run under load on a test tank, and checked for proper cooling flow, throttle response, and shift engagement before it’s cleared for shipping. If something’s off — a loose fitting, a rough idle, anything — it gets addressed before the unit ever gets crated, not discovered by the customer three states or three time zones away.

That testing step is baked into the Tohatsu MFS9.9EEFTUL price, and honestly, we think it should be baked into anyone’s price. An outboard motor is not the kind of purchase where you want to gamble on “probably fine.” We ship worldwide, which means by the time an issue would surface, you’re often looking at weeks of delay and shipping costs to sort out a warranty claim. Testing upfront just makes more sense for everyone involved, and it’s part of why buyers keep coming back to us for their next engine instead of chasing the lowest number on a marketplace listing.

We also crate every unit properly for international freight — fuel system drained and secured, moving parts braced, connections isolated and protected. It sounds like a small thing until you’ve seen what a poorly packed outboard looks like after a rough ocean crossing.

Warranty and Support After the Sale

This isn’t a “sold as-is, good luck” transaction. The MFS9.9EEFTUL carries Tohatsu’s standard manufacturer warranty coverage, and because we’ve actually run and verified the unit before it ships, you’re starting that warranty period on a motor we’ve already confirmed runs correctly — not hoping it does once it arrives. If a question comes up after delivery about setup, break-in, or anything else, you can reach us directly rather than getting routed through a call center that’s never touched the specific engine you bought.

Comparing the MFS9.9EEFTUL Against the Rest of the Tohatsu Lineup

If 9.9 HP isn’t quite enough for what you’re doing — maybe you’re pushing a heavier hull, or you want more speed on a larger tender — it’s worth glancing at where this motor sits in Tohatsu’s broader range. We’ve written up the bigger end of that lineup in our Tohatsu 60 HP outboard guide, which covers what changes once you’re into the mid-range four-strokes — different mounting requirements, different fuel delivery, a genuinely different category of boat entirely.

For most sailboat auxiliary and small-boat applications, though, the 9.9 is plenty, and stepping up to something bigger usually just means more weight on the transom and more fuel burn for a use case that doesn’t need it.

For a broader look at how Tohatsu’s engines get evaluated, tested, and priced across the range we carry, our outboard motor guides section has more detail on individual models, so it’s worth a look if you’re still narrowing down between horsepower ranges before committing to a purchase.

Mounting Notes and Things Buyers Ask Before Ordering

The long shaft on this model is a 20-inch measurement from the top of the transom clamp to the anti-cavitation plate, and that’s the number you need to check against your own transom, not just “long shaft” as a general label — shaft length conventions can get sloppy in casual listings elsewhere. If you’re mounting this on a sailboat with a deep well or a stern-mounted bracket that sits the motor lower relative to the waterline, the 20-inch long shaft is almost always the correct call. Short shaft on that same setup and you’d be cavitating in anything but flat water, which defeats the purpose of buying an auxiliary motor in the first place.

Weight-wise, buyers ask about this a lot before ordering because a lot of transom brackets and sailboat mounts have a rated capacity, and you don’t want to be right at the edge of it once you add the battery for the electric start. The MFS9.9EEFTUL stays reasonably light for what it packs in, but if your mount is already older or marginal for a 9.9, it’s worth double-checking the rating before you commit rather than finding out the hard way on the water. We’re happy to talk through this with you before you buy — better to ask a slightly obvious question upfront than to have a motor sitting on a bracket it was never meant for.

Steering and control setup is another thing to plan for. This model comes configured for tiller-style operation, which is standard for the 9.9 HP class and works well for the sailboat-auxiliary and small-boat crowd this motor is built for — you get direct feel and don’t need to run remote control cables back to a console. If your boat is set up differently, it’s worth confirming compatibility before ordering rather than after the crate shows up.

Common Questions We Get About This Engine

Is the Tohatsu MFS9.9EEFTUL price negotiable for multiple units?

If you’re outfitting a fleet — a charter operation, a marina rental program, a boat dealer stocking tenders — reach out directly and we’ll talk numbers. Single-unit pricing is what you see listed, and at $3,385.00 it’s already priced tight against comparable electric-start, long-shaft 9.9s from other sellers.

Does the price include shipping?

The Tohatsu MFS9.9EEFTUL price listed above is for the unit itself. Shipping is calculated separately based on destination since we ship worldwide and freight costs vary a lot by region. Reach out through the product page and we’ll get you an accurate landed cost before you commit to anything.

What’s actually in the box?

The outboard itself, the standard Tohatsu owner’s documentation, and whatever accessories are listed on the current product listing at time of purchase — this can shift slightly as Tohatsu updates their standard kit, so check the listing for the exact current inclusions.

Why not just buy the cheaper manual-start version?

Plenty of people do, and if you’re mounting this on a small tender you rarely use, manual start is a perfectly reasonable way to save some money. But if this is going on a sailboat you’ll be relying on regularly, or a boat where you’re single-handing and don’t want to fight a pull cord in rough conditions, the electric start and power tilt on the MFS9.9EEFTUL earn their keep fast. It’s the difference between a motor you enjoy using and one you occasionally curse at.

How does this compare to buying used?

A used 9.9 with electric start and power tilt can look tempting on price until you factor in unknown hours, a compression test you can’t run before buying, and zero testing history. We’ve seen plenty of “barely used” listings turn into a rebuild within the first season. A new, tested MFS9.9EEFTUL at this price point removes that guesswork entirely, and you’re not inheriting someone else’s deferred maintenance.

Ready to Buy This Tohatsu 9.9 HP Outboard?

We’ve got this exact configuration in stock, tested, and ready to crate for shipping — not on backorder, not “available in 6-8 weeks,” actually sitting here ready to go. If the Tohatsu MFS9.9EEFTUL price we’ve listed fits your budget and this engine fits your boat, head over to the MFS9.9EEFTUL product page to lock in your order. You can also browse the rest of what we’ve got in stock on our shop page if you’re still comparing options across horsepower ranges or shaft lengths.

Got questions before you buy — mounting height, shipping timelines to your region, whether this is the right shaft length for your specific transom? Reach out before you order rather than after. We’d rather spend five minutes confirming fit now than deal with a return later, and we’d genuinely rather you buy the right engine the first time than the cheapest one that shows up in a search.

At the end of the day, the Tohatsu MFS9.9EEFTUL price reflects a motor that’s built to be used, not just sold. Electric start, power tilt, long shaft, tested before it ships, backed by a manufacturer that’s been building nothing but small outboards since the 1950s — that’s a lot of engineering packed into a 9.9 HP block, and it’s why this remains one of our most consistently reordered engines. If you’re ready, the unit’s in stock and waiting.