The objective of this paper is to investigate the impact of the spiral coil shape of inductive coupled power transfer on its performance. The coil shapes evaluated are: circular, square and pentagon spiral shapes. The coils are modelled in Ansoft Maxwell software. Simulations are carried out to determine the mutual inductance, coupling coefficient and magnetic flux density. The performance in term of magnetic flux density, mutual inductance and coupling coefficient of the three coils shapes are compared. Of the three shapes, the pentagon is shown to have the best performance in term of its mutual inductance, coupling coefficient and magnetic flux density. © 2018 The Authors, published by EDP Sciences.