Aerial view of waves on a beach

Download the Swim Guide app


Swim Guide makes it easy to know the water quality at your beach. Explore and enjoy the best beaches in Canada, the USA, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, and the Bahamas with Swim Guide.

With 7,000 freshwater and marine beaches and swimming sites on the Swim Guide app and website makes finding clean, swimmable water simple. The new iOS app is available in English, French, and Spanish. And thanks to Pulse Energy, Swim Guide now has water quality information for over 600 New Zealand beaches.

Swim Guide is the only charity app of its kind. Swim Guide provides you with current recreational water quality information for you favourite beaches and swimming holes. Every beach is marked with a Green or Red icon so you know when the water at your favourite beach is clean for swimming and when the water quality is poor.

With Swim Guide, finding the right beach for you and your family is easy:

  • Green icon tells you your beach has met water quality criteria. Red icon tells you the water quality has failed the latest water quality test
  • Tap on a beach status for more information
  • Source section tells you who samples the water at each beach and what water quality standards apply
  • Date/time stamp tells you when a beach status was last updated in Swim Guide
  • Historical status tells you percentage of time that beach has passed water quality tests
  • Compare real-time and historical water quality information for many different beaches
  • Pie and bar charts show you historical water quality of each beach when you tap on a beach status. Access historical data reports by year, month, or quarter.
  • Get alerted to other water quality issues like blue-green algae and sewage bypasses through alerts on the beach pages.

Finding a beach with clean, swimmable water for you and your family is each with Swim Guide:

  • Use the app to find your closest beach
  • You can find the cleanest closest beaches to you by browsing the map, or by searching for a beach by name.
  • Beach description tell you about amenities, lifeguards, where to park, and everything else you need to know to enjoy a day at the beach.
  • Discover a wide variety of beaches, ranging from city parks to remote lakes ideal for camping
  • Get directions to the beach of your choice
  • Bookmark your favourite beaches for easy access
  • Use the app to tell your friends on Facebook and Twitter
  • Panoramio integration shows up to 20 photos of every beach
  • Swipe between different photos
  • Original descriptions with photographs of 7,000 different beaches so you can learn a bit of history and geography as you explore!

Get involved! Use Swim Guide to report Pollution, support your local water organizations, and learn about the issues facing your homewaters.

Have you noticed pollution at your local beach? Let us know.