The 50 Best Beach Towns in New Jersey

A beach town, for this ranking, is an incorporated New Jersey municipality in Monmouth, Ocean, Atlantic, or Cape May County that contains at least one public swimming beach — on the Atlantic Ocean, a barrier island, or a bay or tidal-estuary shore. That definition admits 59 municipalities, and every one was scored on the same published composite: public schools (25%), safety (25%, banded from FBI / NJ State Police UCR offense data), household income and home values (20%, U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, 2024 5-year estimates), beach quality & access (20%, a disclosed judgment layer scored against fixed criteria — sand and beach width, guarded swimming, public access and badge burden, amenities and boardwalks), and town character (10%, also disclosed). School scores follow the same district logic as our New Jersey high schools ranking, send/receive relationships included — which is how Bay Head and Mantoloking, whose students attend Point Pleasant Beach High School, carry a school score most shore towns can't match.

Then every name went through the existence gate: each entry is a real, incorporated municipality, matched to its Census county-subdivision (GEOID) record, in the county printed next to it. The gate is why the labels are so precise — Ocean Grove is a neighborhood, not a municipality, so Neptune Township holds its spot (#39); Ortley Beach is a section of Toms River Township (#36); Strathmere belongs to Upper Township (#28); and Ocean Township, despite the name, has no oceanfront at all and was never eligible. The composite also measures the best beach town to live in, not the best beach to visit: Wildwood earns the highest beach score on the entire list and still lands at #48, because its school, safety, and year-round income numbers sit at the other end of the table, while Spring Lake pairs a guarded beach and boardwalk-free quiet with Manasquan High School and the shore's strongest household numbers to take #1. Argue the placements all you want — every town here exists, is named correctly, and earned its spot on the same numbers.