South Africa's best and worst-rated beaches named, with seven of the 10 lowest-rated in KwaZulu-Natal

We used the DataForSEO Business Listings database to pull the Google Maps listings in South Africa that Google files as a beach, public beach or beach pavilion on 5 October 2026, along with listings with Beach in their name filed under beach-like categories such as tourist attraction, park or scenic spot, 430 candidates in all.

We kept public sea beaches only. Resorts, hotel and private beaches, tidal pools, inland swimming spots, beach pavilions that aren't beaches and other listings that aren't beaches were left out, as were duplicate listings for the same beach (listings within 100 metres of each other, or with the same name within 2.5 km). Star counts were refreshed from each beach's live Google listing. That left the 119 beaches with at least 200 Google reviews, 162,655 reviews in all.

Each beach was ranked by its exact average rating, worked out from its count of one, two, three, four and five-star reviews rather than the rounded score Google displays, so beaches that show the same rating on Google are still put in order. Where two beaches have exactly the same average, the one with the larger share of one-star reviews ranks lower. Every beach in the top and bottom 10 was also checked for a sudden burst of reviews in a short period that could skew its score, and none was found.

Each province's average gives every one of its beaches equal weight (the mean of the beach averages). All of the ranked beaches are in the Western Cape, the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.