10 Best Beaches & Coastlines (Costs & Tips, 2026)

TripAdvisor keeps naming this the world's best beach, and for once the ranking undersells it — you climb down a ladder wedged into a cliff crevice to reach it, which is half the reason it feels untouched. The $15 environmental fee (valid 10 days) is the easy part; the real cost is the flight to the island from Recife or Natal.

The beach itself is free and public — a barrier reef offshore kills almost all the waves, leaving some of the calmest, clearest water anywhere. Don't be fooled by the $0 entry: flights and accommodation on the island are genuinely expensive, with little in the way of budget options, so this is the one splurge on the list worth budgeting for separately.

No road gets you here — a day-trip boat from Airlie Beach runs around AUD $150, and there's no honest way around that cost. What you get for it: 98% pure silica sand that stays cool underfoot in full sun and never needs raking, which sounds like marketing until you're standing on it.

Land access doesn't exist, so everyone arrives by boat from Porto Vromi (€20–25 return) and everyone takes the exact same photo — a rusted 1980 shipwreck on white sand under sheer limestone cliffs. It's a cliché shot because the place genuinely earns it.

Rent a bike in La Digue town and cycle out — the $10 entry through L'Union Estate is the only real cost. Giant pink granite boulders frame shallow turquoise water in a way that's been photographed so often it looks fake in person, in a good way.

No roads reach Railay either — a longtail boat taxi from Ao Nang costs about 100 baht (~$3), and the beach itself is free once you're there. Towering limestone karsts do the rest of the work; this is one of the most climbed-and-photographed beaches in Southeast Asia for a reason.

Book 'Tour A,' the standard island-hopping route (~$22 with lunch and snorkel gear included) — limestone cliffs rise straight out of turquoise lagoon water in a way that consistently tops "most beautiful island landscape" lists, and no single beach here beats the combination.

Always free, no exceptions. The 4km mosaic promenade designed by Roberto Burle Marx is as recognisable as the sand itself. Go at sunrise if you want to see the beach the way locals actually use it — calisthenics on the beachfront bars, long before the crowds arrive.

Free, always, and the Twelve Apostles mountain range rises directly behind it — one of the more dramatic urban beach backdrops anywhere. Get there an hour before sunset for a spot on the palm-lined promenade; it fills up fast and for good reason.

A 15-minute walk from the car park at Cala Macarella gets you here, and it's free the whole way. Menorca's protected coastline means zero beachfront development, so this cove still looks essentially untouched — a rarer thing in the Mediterranean than it should be.