Should a beginner get a longboard or a shortboard?

A longboard, if those are the only two options. A shortboard carries too little foam to paddle a beginner into waves, so it delays the practice that would make it rideable. In practice a soft top or a funboard beats both for a first board: they catch waves like a longboard and they fit in a car.

What size surfboard should I start on?

Choose by volume rather than length. A beginner wants close to their own bodyweight in litres, so a 75 kg beginner is looking near 68 to 75 litres, which is a soft top or a funboard rather than anything shaped like a shortboard. The volume calculator on this site works it out from weight and ability.

Can a beginner learn on a 7 foot board?

Yes, if it is a wide, thick 7'0" funboard and you are not heavy. The number that decides it is the volume, not the length. A narrow 7'0" step-up of the same length has less than half the float and is not a learning board.

Your first board: longboard, shortboard, or neither

The question is usually asked as a choice between two boards, and the honest answer is normally a third one. What actually separates them, and which used boards are worth looking at first.

Updated September 2026 · 4 minute read

The choice as it is usually posed

A longboard is 8'0" and up, wide, thick, and it paddles into almost anything. A shortboard is roughly 5'6" to 6'4", thin through the rails, and it is built to turn once you are already up and moving. Between them there is more difference in what they ask of you than in what they look like.

A shortboard is not a smaller version of a longboard. It carries so little foam that it will not paddle you into a wave until you can already read where the wave will break and put yourself there. That skill takes months of standing up, which is the thing the board is preventing you from practising.

Which is why the answer is usually neither

Most people asking this question want to stand up on a lot of waves this month. The boards that do that are a soft top, a funboard, or a midlength, and none of them is what the question offered. A longboard will do it too, and it is a genuinely good first board, but it is 9 feet of board to carry down a path and onto a bemo.

Soft top: A foam deck and soft rails. It is the safest board to fall off and to fall near, which matters more than it sounds when you are still learning to hold on to it in whitewater. Cheap used, holds almost no resale value, and that is the trade. Buy one, use it hard for a season, do not expect to sell it well.
Funboard: Roughly 6'6" to 8'0", with real rails and a hard deck. It paddles nearly as well as a longboard and it fits in a taxi. This is the board most people should have bought first, and it is the one that most often comes up second hand here from someone who has moved on.
Midlength: Around 7'0" to 8'0", narrower and cleaner through the tail than a funboard. It rewards you for standing in the right place. Buy this second, not first, unless you have surfed before in another form.
Longboard: 8'0" and up. Catches the most waves of anything on this list and is the only one of them you can still be improving on in ten years. Heavy, awkward to travel with, and at a crowded beach break it takes a lot of space you have to be able to control.

Buy the litres, not the length

Two boards of the same length can be twenty per cent apart in float, so a length in a listing tells you much less than a volume does. Work out the litres you want first, then look at whatever shape carries them. That is also the order the filters on this site are in.

A beginner's figure lands close to their own bodyweight in litres, which is a number that surprises anyone who has been shown a shortboard chart. The calculator does the arithmetic and the volume guide explains where the factors come from.

What to look at in Bali specifically

Boards turn over fast here, so the used market is deep in exactly the beginner and intermediate sizes that are thin at home.
Warm water and no wetsuit means you float slightly less than you do in 4 mm of neoprene. Do not size down on arrival.
If you are here for two weeks, a rental is probably cheaper than buying and reselling. Past about three weeks the arithmetic flips.
Buy for the wave you will actually surf most, not the one you photographed. For most visitors that is a beach break, not a reef.

Common questions

Should a beginner get a longboard or a shortboard?: A longboard, if those are the only two options. A shortboard carries too little foam to paddle a beginner into waves, so it delays the practice that would make it rideable. In practice a soft top or a funboard beats both for a first board: they catch waves like a longboard and they fit in a car.
What size surfboard should I start on?: Choose by volume rather than length. A beginner wants close to their own bodyweight in litres, so a 75 kg beginner is looking near 68 to 75 litres, which is a soft top or a funboard rather than anything shaped like a shortboard. The volume calculator on this site works it out from weight and ability.
Can a beginner learn on a 7 foot board?: Yes, if it is a wide, thick 7'0" funboard and you are not heavy. The number that decides it is the volume, not the length. A narrow 7'0" step-up of the same length has less than half the float and is not a learning board.