Route brief · SFO → ZNZ
San Francisco → Zanzibar
$1,068
round-trip · too little price history on this route to compare
Sep 24 – Oct 9 · 15 nights
SWISS2 stops
Cached fare — the booking search re-prices live before you pay.
Destination briefZNZZanzibarStone Town’s carved doors and spice markets, then white sand on the east coast — often bolted onto a safari.Best windowJun–OctAirportsAbeid Amani Karume (ZNZ)All routes into ZanzibarWhen this route gets cheap.
Best time to be in Zanzibar: Jun–Oct. Fare history for this route is still thin, so we make no seasonal call yet.
The cheapest itinerary we are tracking makes 2 stops and takes about 23 hours outbound, on a 15-night trip — ticketed under SWISS, which on a connecting fare need not operate every leg. At $1,068 for 16,039 km each way, that works out to about $33 per 1,000 km flown. That is below the $40 typical of ultra-long-haul fares here. Across the 9 departure cities we track at a similar distance from Zanzibar, this fare ranks 2nd — 36% above the $784 from New York. For context, the middle fare among the 18 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) ↔ Abeid Amani Karume (ZNZ)
- Flight time
- ~23 hours outbound
- Distance
- ~16,039 km each way
- Airlines on the board
- SWISS
- Itineraries
- Connections on current fares
- Best months to visit
- Jun–Oct
SF → ZNZ, answered.
How far in advance should I book SF → Zanzibar?
We do not publish a number for this, because we cannot measure it yet.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 Zanzibar?
The current cheapest fares involve a connection, ticketed under SWISS. 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 Zanzibar?
Lock the flight first — then compare stays for Sep 24 – Oct 9 · 15 nights.
Browse hotels ↗
Missed it?
Cached fares expire. This route has a feed of its own — follow it and the next SF → ZNZ drop reaches you as soon as we find it.
Follow SF → ZNZ