Updated for September 2026
The Best Zoos in São Paulo
How this list is ordered: by how complete our listing is — how much we hold on opening hours, ticket prices, accreditation, photographs, animals and facilities. It is a measure of our own coverage, not a judgement of the venue. We hold no visitor scores or conservation assessments, so “best” here means every zoo in São Paulo that qualifies for the list, fullest entry first.
Listed alphabetically
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Bauru Zoo
Zoo in Bauru
It opened on 24 August 1980 across 50,000 square metres, on the highway named for Comandante João Ribeiro de Barros. It has a national reputation for breeding species regarded as extinct and was the first in Brazil to achieve penguin reproduction, in 2013. It is one of 20 zoos worldwide featured on Google Street View.
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Municipal Zoological Park Quinzinho de Barros
Zoo in Sorocaba
The zoo occupies around 130,000 square metres in the Vila Hortência district on the city's east side. The grounds take in a strip of secondary transitional Atlantic forest, a lake and the Sorocaba history museum. A 1992 survey by the Brazilian zoo society counted 1,487 mammals, birds and reptiles of 353 species, seventy per cent of them Brazilian fauna, including 36 threatened species.
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São Paulo Zoo
Zoo in São Paulo
The grounds take in 824,529 square metres of original Atlantic Forest, crossed by four kilometres of walkways, and contain the headwaters of the historic Ipiranga stream in the city's southern zone. The zoo was inaugurated in 1958 with slightly more than 400 animals.
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Zoo Safari
Zoo in São Paulo
It was founded in 1971 by Francisco Luiz Galvão to imitate a safari for tourists, and held only lions at first; Simba is Swahili for lion. Visitors tour aboard the park's own vehicles, on a route of about 2.9 km through roughly 80,000 m2.
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Zoológico Municipal de Guarulhos
Zoo in Guarulhos
Wild free-ranging animals also live inside the grounds, whose lakes and gardens have been replanted with Atlantic Forest species. An enclosure for the endangered buffy-tufted marmoset opened in 2019.
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Parque Ecológico de São Carlos
Zoo in São Carlos
Named in tribute to the veterinarian Antônio Teixeira Vianna, the park belongs to the municipality and sits beside the federal university. Entry is free, and it opens from Tuesday to Sunday, 8am to 4.30pm.
Zoos nearby
Our ranking methodology
This is not a ranking. The 8 venues above are listed alphabetically by name, the same order used throughout this site. We do not collect visitor reviews, star ratings, ticket-sales figures or a conservation-impact score, so none of those exist here to rank by — “best” in this page’s title means every venue that qualifies for this list, not first-to-last by quality. If we ever add a data source robust enough to support an honest ranking, this note and the order above will change together.