Hospitals treated 22 people after the crash, which involved an Indonesian Lion Air plane carrying 101 passengers and seven crew.
Photos posted on Twitter showed the jet with its fuselage cracked, sitting in water near rocks, with dinghies nearby.
The Boeing 737 was on a domestic flight from Bandung in West Java.
It missed the runway and landed in the ocean nearby.
Terrified passengers made their way ashore through the shallow water in life jackets as police in rubber dinghies rowed out to rescue them.
A transport ministry official told BBC News it was too early to talk about what had caused the plane - a new Boeing 737-800 - to crash.
At least one foreigner was aboard the plane - a Frenchman, according to AFP news agency.
Light rain was falling at the time of the crash, which occurred at around 15:00 (07:00 GMT).
Most of those hurt had head wounds and broken bones with one report of a passenger suffering a life-threatening brain haemorrhage.
"The plane plunged into the sea at high speed," passenger Ignatius Juan Sinduk, 45, told AFP from his hospital bed in Denpasar, where he was being treated for a chest injury.
"Everybody screamed and water suddenly surged into the plane. Passengers panicked and scrambled for life jackets. Some passengers fell, some ran into others, it was chaos.
"I managed to grab [a lifejacket] and slowly swam out of the plane and to the shore."
Dewi, a passenger who sustained head wounds in the crash, told AP news agency he had watched the plane descending towards the sea.
"All of the passengers were screaming in panic in fear they would drown," he recalled.
"I left behind my belongings and went to an emergency door. I got out of the plane and swam before rescuers jumped in to help me."
The discount airline Lion Air, Indonesia's biggest commercial carrier, has been expanding rapidly in recent years.
Bali is one of Indonesia's top holiday destinations, popular with foreign tourists.
Source: BBC News
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