100+ hand-picked beaches. Thousands of photos. Human-curated tips to get the most out of every visit. Now live on the App Store and Google Play.
How many hidden gems can one country hold? Travelling through Portugal with friends, Peter Bustin found the answer was: countless. Every trip through the country seemed to end with the discovery of a river beach — stunning, little-known destinations with almost no reliable information attached to them. Directions were vague, amenity details were sparse or out of date, and the beaches themselves were genuine hidden gems: beautiful, undervisited, and hard to reach for most people. That experience stayed with him.
"We decided to bring all of that information together and make these beaches more reachable for everyone," says Bustin. "Portugal has hundreds of these places — rivers, lakes, dams — and they deserve the same attention as the ocean beaches. We just want to make them easier to find."
The result is River Beaches, the first mobile app dedicated entirely to discovering Portugal's river, lake and dam beaches — now available on both the App Store and Google Play.
What you'll find in the app
River Beaches is free to download on iOS and Android, and brings together in one place:
- 100+ river, lake and dam beaches across Portugal, hand-picked by the team
- Thousands of photos from across the beaches in the database
- Human-curated descriptions and tips to get the most out of every visit
- Detailed amenity filters: parking, toilets, restaurants, lifeguard on duty, wild beach status, kid-friendly, dog-friendly, and more
- Interactive map to discover beaches near you — perfect when travelling
- Save option to build your personal wishlist
- Real reviews from the community
- Available in English, Portuguese and Spanish
For everyone — families, friends and adventurers
River Beaches was designed with four types of visitor in mind:
- Families looking for a beach with the right amenities for a great day out — parking, shade, a lifeguard, good facilities
- Groups of friends looking for somewhere they can relax, swim and enjoy each other's company
- Adventurers chasing wild and remote escapes, far from the summer crowds
- Tourists wanting to experience Portugal beyond the coastline and discover the country's stunning interior
With summer under way, the timing is right. The vast majority of river beaches are free to access with no entry fee — cooler, quieter, and within easy reach. River Beaches makes them easy to find.
The app is available in English, Portuguese and Spanish, making it equally relevant for international visitors to Portugal as well as local users.
A mission beyond discovery
River Beaches carries a deliberate environmental commitment. 50% of any revenue generated by the app, now and in the future, will go directly to river restoration and water retention projects in Portugal, with particular focus on regions such as the Alentejo, which face severe and worsening drought.
The app also wants to shine a light on the remarkable work done by Portuguese municipalities (câmaras) and local parishes (freguesias) that maintain many of these beaches to an outstanding standard — investing in facilities, services and the health of the river itself. These places deserve more visitors, and more recognition.
Beyond the managed beaches, River Beaches also covers wilder, more remote spots tucked into small villages and aldeias across the Portuguese interior — places rarely reached by the tourist trails that run along the coast. With better information and easier discovery, the hope is that some of the attention currently concentrated on ocean beaches finds its way to these communities too.
Built to grow across Europe
Portugal is the starting point, but the ambition is broader. An expansion to Spain is already in preparation, with Italy, France, Germany, Poland and further European countries to follow — with the aim of covering all of those markets before the end of the year.
"We believe it will now be much easier to discover and explore these hidden gems — and that those who are doing such great work maintaining these places will get more back from the community in return. That is what this is really about."
— Peter Bustin, Founder, River Beaches
about the App
App name: River Beaches — Praias Fluviais
Platform: iOS (App Store) and Android (Google Play)
Languages: English (Spanish in preparation)
Price: Free to download
