Route brief · SFO → CPT
San Francisco → Cape Town
$1,649
round-trip · too little price history on this route to compare
Oct 30 – Nov 7 · 8 nights
British Airways1 stop
Cached fare — the booking search re-prices live before you pay.
Destination briefCPTCape TownTable Mountain, two oceans and winelands 40 minutes out — the long-haul that overdelivers.Best windowNov–MarAirportsCape Town (CPT)All routes into Cape TownWhen this route gets cheap.
Best time to be in Cape Town: Nov–Mar. Fare history for this route is still thin, so we make no seasonal call yet.
The cheapest itinerary we are tracking makes one stop and takes about 22.5 hours outbound, on a 8-night trip — ticketed under British Airways, which on a connecting fare need not operate every leg. At $1,649 for 16,486 km each way, that works out to about $50 per 1,000 km flown. That is above the $40 typical of ultra-long-haul fares here. Across the 12 departure cities we track at a similar distance from Cape Town, this fare ranks 9th — 2.5× the $671 we hold from New York. For context, the middle fare among the 17 routes of similar length we watch out of San Francisco is $912. We have 1 month of cached prices for this route so far — not enough to call a fare cheap or expensive, so we publish the price without a percentage.
The one day we hold a cached fare for
Tap a date → live search
These are the only days we have a cached price for on this route so far — not the only days it flies. The search above covers any date.
Route facts
- Airports
- SFO · Oakland (OAK) · San José (SJC) ↔ Cape Town (CPT)
- Flight time
- ~22.5 hours outbound
- Distance
- ~16,486 km each way
- Airlines on the board
- British Airways
- Itineraries
- Connections on current fares
- Best months to visit
- Nov–Mar
SF → CPT, answered.
How far in advance should I book SF → Cape Town?
We do not publish a number for this, because we cannot measure it yet. Answering it honestly means watching the same departure date on this route over many weeks as it approaches, and that archive is still filling up — so any "book N days ahead" figure here would be borrowed from somewhere else rather than measured. See /guides/what-moves-a-flight-price/ for the levers we can measure.
Are there nonstop flights from San Francisco to Cape Town?
The current cheapest fares involve a connection, ticketed under British Airways. Nonstop options exist on many dates at higher prices — check the live search for your exact dates.
Are these prices guaranteed?
No — these are cached fares found on real searches (this one on September 1). Airlines reprice constantly, so the booking search re-checks the live price before you pay. Fresher finds are far more likely to still be available.
Next step
Sleeping in Cape Town?
Lock the flight first — then compare stays for Oct 30 – Nov 7 · 8 nights.
Browse hotels ↗
Missed it?
Cached fares expire. This route has a feed of its own — follow it and the next SF → CPT drop reaches you as soon as we find it.
Follow SF → CPT