Best Beginner Surf Spots in California
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Download LazySurfer →These 10 California breaks are at their best on small, forgiving surf — the most approachable size to learn on — ranked by how highly LazySurfer surfers have rated them. Conditions change daily, so open any spot for its live report before you paddle out.
- Lower Jetties — best on a 0–2 ft swell from the west, high incoming tide
- Santa Monica Beach South — best on a 0–2 ft swell from the west, high incoming tide
- El Porto North — best on a 0–2 ft swell from the southwest, high incoming tide
- Malibu First Point — best on a 0–2 ft swell from the southwest, high incoming tide
- Malibu Surfrider Beach — best on a 0–2 ft swell from the southwest, high incoming tide
- Venice Breakwater — best on a 0–2 ft swell from the southwest, high incoming tide
- Venice Pier Northside — best on a 0–2 ft swell from the southwest, high incoming tide
- Venice Beach — best on a 0–2 ft swell from the west, high incoming tide
- Venice Pier Southside — best on a 0–2 ft swell from the southwest, high outgoing tide
- El Porto — best on a 0–2 ft swell from the southwest, high incoming tide
Frequently asked
What's the best beginner-friendly surf spot in California?
By LazySurfer's session ratings, Lower Jetties is the top-rated beginner-friendly surf spot in California. Santa Monica Beach South and El Porto North rank close behind. Each spot's page shows its ideal conditions and a live NOAA buoy and tide report.
How does LazySurfer rank surf spots in California?
LazySurfer ranks each break by the surf-quality ratings real users logged there, and trains a custom deep-learning model — a PyTorch neural network with per-user embeddings, retrained weekly on those logged sessions — to predict the 1-to-5 star rating you personally would give, rather than a single average for everyone.
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