AbstractThe fast rise of aquaculture practices during the last decades has increased the need of adopting culture strategies to optimize production and guarantee the sustainability of the sector. This study aimed to provide a management tool to help mussel farmers identify optimal culture strategies and use production inputs efficiently. For this purpose, we evaluated the productivity and efficiency of different stocking densities and culture durations by the joint application of parametric and nonparametric frontier analysis at the farm scale. The translog production function outperformed the Cobb–Douglas model currently applied in most farm‐scale frontier analyses. This model estimates that the optimal culture density is ca. 700 ind m−1, given that at lower densities, efficiency decreases (under‐usage of available space) and mussel quality did not improve, and at higher densities, mortality and dislodgements from the ropes led to economic losses. This work also showed that marginal analysis does not provide an accurate estimation of the economic efficiency when unitary costs and prices are not constant. According to the Malmquist indices, mussel farmers should shorten the culture period to improve their productivity. All these results support the joint use of parametric and nonparametric frontier analysis as management tool for optimizing input use and scheduling aquaculture production.