Standing up is the easy part. Finding the right beach is not.
Which beach forgives a first attempt and which one punishes it. What two hours with an instructor costs in Bali against Hawaii. Whether you need to swim before you book. Reviews of surf lessons, coaching and camps on every coast that teaches them.
Four beaches that teach beginners better than anywhere else.
Warm water, a long forgiving break and instructors who do this every day of the season. What each session costs and what the people who took it say.
01Canary IslandsSurfing Lesson for All Levels, Photos includedPlaya de las Americas breaks softly all year, so a January lesson is as easy as a July one. The photos come back with you.
02Bali2-Hour Surf CourseCanggu is black sand and waist-high whitewater for two hours. The cheapest way anywhere to find out whether you like this.- 03Sydney2-Hour Surf Lesson Experience for Any LevelBondi is busy, patrolled and unbelievably good at getting people upright. Bring nothing but a towel.
04MauiTwo Hour Beginner Group Surf Lesson in KiheiKihei stays calm while the north shore is closing out, which is why the beginner schools all set up on this side.
Six coastlines that run learn-to-surf sessions all season.
Hawaiian point breaks, the Portuguese Atlantic, the Canaries in winter, Bali reef on a soft board, Australian beach breaks and the Moroccan right-handers below Agadir. Pick a coast, then the session that suits how you learn.
American surf lessons split three ways: Waikiki, Maui and the mainland.
Every US sessionHawaii teaches on slow rolling walls that give you thirty seconds of ride; California and the east coast teach on beach breaks that ask more of you and cost less. Three kinds of American session, what each one costs to board, and where it happens.
Bali is where most people learn cheapest.
Canggu, Kuta and Legian run soft-board lessons on black sand from dawn, with warm water, no wetsuit and a second surfer in the water for every learner. Uluwatu and the Bukit reefs are the step up when the whitewater stops being enough.
The surf sessions more people book than any other.
Every session we have reviewed →Schools that have put thousands of people on a board, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Surfing Lesson for All Levels, Photos included
Meet Shaka Surf Tenerife 15 minutes early for a two-hour lesson at Playa de las Américas. You’ll get a board, wetsuit, water shoes, lycra, theory, warm-up, and coached water practice in a group of no more than six. Instructors including Rodri, Gabriele, Juan, Marco, Kaia, and Calvin teach several languages, with photos and a post-surf shower included.
From · $50
Read our review →
2
Group Surfing Lesson at Playa de las Américas, Tenerife
from $43
3
2-Hour Surf Course
from $23
4
Legian Beach, Bali: Beginner or Intermediate Surf Lessons
from $16
5
Private or Small-Group Surf Lesson
from $41
6
Two Hour Beginner Group Surf Lesson in Kihei
from $98
7
2-Hour Surf Lesson Experience for Any Level
from $70
8
Surfing Lesson with Equipment
from $35
Portugal turns a city break into a surf trip.
Costa da Caparica is forty minutes from central Lisbon and Matosinhos is a metro ride from Porto, which is why so many people take their first lesson here without planning a surf holiday at all. Cold-ish Atlantic, wetsuit supplied, waves that keep working through autumn.
Every Portuguese session →
One instructor to yourself, or eight of you learning together.
A group lesson is cheaper and more fun and you will get pushed into fewer waves. A private is twice the price and roughly twice the standing up. Most people book a group for the first go and a private the day they want to catch a green wave.
What a surf lesson actually costs, coast by coast.
Every session on the site, grouped by price. Indonesia and the Canaries sit at the bottom, Hawaii and multi-day camps at the top, and most of the world is in the middle.
Bali, the Canaries, Morocco and the Portuguese beach breaks: two hours, board and wetsuit thrown in.
The standard session almost everywhere else, plus Hawaiian group lessons and most one-to-one hours.
Private Hawaiian instruction, multi-day camps and the surf-and-yoga weeks that include beds.
- 1Private Surf Experiencefrom $199
- 2Kona Surf Lesson in Kahaluufrom $169
- 3Oahu Private Surfing Lessonfrom $226
Three breaks that made beginners out of people who could not swim straight.
Every coast claims to be good for learners. These three actually are, and for reasons you can point at: the shape of the reef, the temperature of the water and the length of the ride.
Waikiki, Oahu
The reef off Waikiki sits shallow and flat a long way out, so the swell stands up early and then rolls unbroken for a couple of hundred metres. That is why the boards here are ten feet long and why a first ride can last half a minute instead of three seconds. The paddle back out is the hard part. Water sits around 25C all year and the schools run from the beach itself, so there is no drive and no wetsuit.
- 1Open Group Surfing Lesson in Waikiki, Hawaii★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 582 reviews
- 2Beginner-Friendly Waikiki Beach Surfing Lesson★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 425 reviews
- 3Surfing Lessons On Waikiki Beach★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 317 reviews
Canggu and the Bukit
Canggu breaks over a black-sand bottom with enough sandbars that the whitewater keeps reforming, which gives a learner wave after wave without a long paddle. Lessons start at first light before the wind gets on it, and two hours costs less than lunch in most surf towns. When the soft board stops being interesting, the reefs round the Bukit peninsula at Uluwatu and Padang are twenty minutes away and an entirely different sport.
- 12-Hour Surf Course★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 1,053 reviews
- 2Legian Beach, Bali: Beginner or Intermediate Surf Lessons★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 1,019 reviews
- 3Beginner & Intermediate Surf Lesson with Equipment★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 832 reviews
Taghazout and Essaouira
The coast north of Agadir bends so that a winter Atlantic swell wraps into a run of long right-handers, breaking over sand and cobble with a channel to paddle out through. Essaouira up the coast is windier and better for a first stand-up in summer. The season is upside down here: December to March is when it works, the water needs a wetsuit, and most schools feed you lunch between the two sessions.
- 1Surf Lessons★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 412 reviews
- 2Taghazout Beach Surf Lesson with Lunch and Transfer★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 298 reviews
- 3Surf Lesson with local surfer in Essaouira Morocco★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 166 reviews
Four surf bookings that go before you have packed.
Most lessons can be arranged the evening before from a beach bar. These four cannot: the schools are small, the boards are counted, and the good slots are taken weeks out.
- 012-Night Byron Bay Surf CampCamps sell beds, not just water time. When the bunks are gone for a week, the week is gone.
- 02Private Surf ExperienceA private lesson is one instructor for one tide window. There are only so many of those in a day.
- 03Open Group Surfing Lesson in Waikiki, HawaiiWaikiki schools run to fixed morning slots before the trade wind comes up, and the morning is the one everyone wants.
- 04Surf, Yoga & Glamping Weekend in CornwallSurf-and-yoga weeks run to a calendar with fixed start dates. Miss the Saturday and you wait for the next one.
What a surf school will assume you already know.
Nearly every lesson on this site includes the board and the wetsuit, and nearly every one assumes you can swim comfortably out of your depth. Beyond that the rules vary: minimum ages run from six to sixteen, some schools cap the group at four and some do not cap it at all, and a two-hour session usually means ninety minutes in the water. Read the session, not the sport.
Surf camps, coaching weeks and the mornings that start before sunrise.
A single lesson teaches you to stand. A week teaches you to read water. These are the multi-day packages, the improver coaching and the dawn sessions people book once the two-hour class has stopped being enough.
By coastline
Chase the swell: six stops that keep a beginner in waves all year.
The newest surf sessions on the site.
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