About
The locals' guide to Manly. Written from here, not about it.
Visit Manly is the independent locals' guide to Manly, Sydney: the harbour beach town at the end of the Circular Quay ferry. We write the kind of guide we wanted when friends visited: honest, current, and with enough local context to make a day here feel less like a tour and more like time well spent.
What we cover
We publish standalone guides to Manly's beaches, the ferry from the city, the Spit-to-Manly walk and the restaurants worth booking. We track festivals and surf comps, write up what's new each season, and answer the questions visitors actually ask: when's the next ferry, where do locals eat, what's the surf doing today.
How we work
- Locally written. Everything on the Site is researched and written by people who live in or regularly spend time in Manly.
- Nobody can buy coverage. We don't accept payment for a write-up, a rating, or a place on a list. Restaurants, bars, and operators are listed because we think they're worth your time. Some of our booking links earn a commission — see below — but no partner gets a say in what we recommend or the order we put it in.
- Updated regularly. Schedules, prices, and opening hours change. We re-check our guides every season and date everything we publish.
- Source links. Where useful we link to primary sources: Surf Life Saving NSW for beach safety, Transport for NSW for ferry timetables, the Bureau of Meteorology for surf and weather.
How we fund the site
Visit Manly is free to read, and there are no ads. Hosting, photography, and the time it takes to keep guides current is paid for by the team behind the project, and partly by affiliate commission.
Some of our outbound links — mainly accommodation and tour bookings — earn us a small commission if you book through them. It costs you nothing extra, and the price you pay is the same either way. Where a page carries links like these, we say so on the page itself.
What that money never buys is influence. We choose what to cover before we look at whether it can be booked through a partner, we link to hotels' own websites alongside the commissioned route where direct booking is the better deal, and we've never removed or demoted a recommendation because it didn't pay. If that ever changes, this page changes first. See our Privacy Policy for details on how we handle your data, and our Terms for how we treat third-party links.
Corrections & tips
Spotted something out of date, or know a place we should be writing about? We genuinely want to hear from you. Email hello@manlysydney.com or use our contact form.
Acknowledgement of Country
We acknowledge the Gayamaygal people, the traditional custodians of the land and water that today is called Manly, and pay our respects to Elders past and present.