The 5 Best Water Shoes of 2025
To find the best water shoes, we began by scouring social feeds, customer reviews, and best-seller lists on various websites. For the first edition of this guide, we researched 76 different pairs in men’s, women’s, and unisex sizes across a variety of styles, considering size ranges, availability, price, color options, and overall aesthetics. We cut any shoes that we considered ugly, came in limited sizes, or had terrible reviews.
This process left us with 15 pairs of water shoes to try out in person. The first author of this guide ordered each pair of shoes in his regular size, men’s 11, and wore them for a day of dry testing and then a day of wet testing in Brooklyn, New York.
For a later update to this guide, we tested the Crocs LiteRide 360 Pacer pair, which is the updated model of our previous Crocs water-sneaker pick.
Throughout testing, we looked for the following criteria:
Protectiveness: We wore the water shoes, wet, around Prospect Park in Brooklyn, walking over rocks and uneven ground.
Comfort: We paid close attention to how comfortable the shoes were. What did it feel like to slip them on and off? Did they retain water and drag our feet down, or did they drain seamlessly? We also made sure to note how aggressively the shoes squished and squelched.
Drying time: We wet the shoes completely under a faucet and then left them out to dry in the sun, setting a timer and checking the shoes for dryness every 15 minutes.
Style: We assessed the shoes’ overall aesthetics. Did they have a water-specific look? Would we be comfortable wearing these to a restaurant or bar? Ideally, we wanted understated water shoes that were available in several different color options.
Inclusivity: We prioritized water shoes that came in a wide range of sizes, and we made sure to include options that would be easy to slide on, forgoing straps, buckles, or ties.
Price: We focused on water shoes in the $40 to $60 range, since that seemed to be the sweet spot for getting a pair that could deliver both style and function, but we also included some higher- and lower-priced options.
