How Much a Costa Rica Trip Costs: The Official Figure, and the Prices Behind It

Verified on 26 August 2026. Government figures were read from ICT, SINAC, ARESEP, RECOPE and BCCR publications on that date. Live quotes were priced for 12–19 October 2026 (rental cars), 15 October 2026 (shuttles, domestic flights, hotels) and 12–19 January 2027 (high-season rental cars).

Costa Rica’s tourism institute puts average spend at USD 1,848.0 per person for the whole trip — non-resident tourists arriving by air in 2025, over an average stay of 10.3 nights. Across all entry routes the same year the figure is USD 1,728.2; by land border it is USD 420.5.

The prices underneath that headline describe a country where the advertised number is rarely the number you pay: national park fees carry 13% IVA on top, rental-car liability cover is compulsory and can cost more than the car, domestic flight taxes exceed the base fare, and some tour operators quote before tax while others quote after. Where a single route or a single purchase is priced in more detail, it has its own page: the jeep-boat-jeep crossing from La Fortuna to Monteverde and what a local SIM or travel eSIM costs are both worked out separately.

What the tourism board actually publishes

Prior years, by air: 2024 USD 1,601.8 over 12.2 nights; 2023 USD 1,892.8 over 12.9 nights; 2019 USD 1,438.2 over 12.6 nights. The 2025 sample at Juan Santamaría was 10,200 travellers.

ICT explains the airport gap itself: “Guanacaste concentrates a higher proportion of tourists with greater purchasing power and more intensive consumption patterns, associated with sun-and-beach destinations.”

A per-night figure is not published, and dividing gets you into trouble. ICT’s headline series is explicitly whole-trip: “GMP: Gasto Medio por Persona durante la estadía en US$.” Dividing 1,848.0 by 10.3 nights gives about USD 179 a night — that is our arithmetic, it is a ratio of two independently weighted means, and it is not an ICT figure. Run the same division across the market rows and the ranking inverts: Europe departing SJO spends the most per trip (USD 2,227.3) but about USD 132 a night, while US visitors departing Liberia spend about USD 287 a night. Long stays dilute the daily rate.

ICT’s two “spend” numbers differ by roughly 2×, and the reason is documented

• Survey basis (GMP): US tourists departing SJO in 2024 spent USD 1,475.1 for the whole trip over 10.4 nights — about USD 142 a night.
• Credit-card basis (GMDxP): US leisure tourists departing SJO in 2024 spent USD 294.8 per day over a 9.7-night average — implying roughly USD 2,860 a trip.

Both are ICT, both are 2024. The cause is stated in ICT’s own methodology line: “Se promedia el gasto reportado por tarjetas de crédito y el número de días de gasto con tarjeta” — the denominator is days on which a card was used, not nights of stay. Days with no card activity drop out of the denominator while trip-level card spend stays in the numerator. The same pattern holds for Canada (survey USD 1,657.3 over 15.2 nights, about USD 109 a night, against a card figure of USD 227.50 a day), so it is systematic. The two are not averaged here. The 9.7-night stay is also a narrower population than the 10.4: it excludes business, family-visit and study travellers.

One widely repeated figure is not used on this page, and is deliberately not reprinted even to refute it. A higher “average visitor spend” for 2024, paired with a “12.2 days” stay, circulates in press coverage and a payment-network study. That spend figure appears in no ICT document we fetched, and a number quoted inside a refutation travels without the refutation attached, so it is left out entirely. ICT’s own 2024 figure is USD 1,601.8 by air, and 12.2 is nights, not days.

ICT publishes the spending ranking in words only — “el mayor porcentaje se destina a alojamiento, seguido por alimentación y transporte interno”: lodging first, then food, then internal transport. The percentages behind that sentence are not published in the closing report, the Anuario or the survey documents.

For scale: 2,943,991 international tourists arrived in 2025 (2,689,278 of them by air; USA 1,594,882, Canada 260,347, Europe 419,820), and the first half of 2026 recorded 1,733,596 arrivals, up 7.0% on the same period of 2025. Tourism foreign-exchange receipts reached USD 5,543.7 million in 2025 (preliminary), 13.4% of Costa Rica’s total goods-and-services exports.

National park entry: the 13% IVA is charged on top

This is the single most consequential correction on the page. SINAC publishes its non-resident fees both ways across different park pages — Manuel Antonio prints "$ 16 + IVA", Carara prints "$10 + VAT", while Braulio Carrillo prints “Tarifas de ingreso con IVA incluido … $13,56” and Cahuita prints "$ 5,65 (IVA included)". Those tax-inclusive figures are exactly the decree tariffs of USD 12 and USD 5 grossed up by 13%. A budget built on the advertised number is 13% short.

The “with IVA” column is our arithmetic at the 13% rate SINAC itself applies on the Braulio Carrillo and Cahuita pages. For most parks SINAC does not print the gross figure.

⚠ Seven rows in that table have no live source behind them, and you should treat them differently from the rest. Chirripó, Tortuguero, Cabo Blanco, Marino Las Baulas, Caño Negro, Gandoca-Manzanillo and Isla del Coco are priced from SINAC’s consolidated tariff PDF alone — a document that prints no date on its face and whose file metadata records creation on 21 December 2018. Every other row is confirmed on that park’s own live SINAC page. Where the PDF has been cross-checked against a live park page it has been shown out of date on hours — it gives Manuel Antonio a 4 p.m. close and a seasonal Monday closure that the live page contradicts, and it still describes Volcán Turrialba as closed for the 2014–2015 eruptions. Its fees have so far survived cross-checking: where a live page appears to disagree, as at Rincón de la Vieja (PDF USD 15, park page USD 16.95), the two are the same fee quoted before and after the 13% IVA — 15 × 1.13 = 16.95. Treat those seven as the last figure SINAC published, not as a confirmed current rate.

Children 2 to 12 pay USD 5 plus IVA (USD 5.65) at most parks. Under-2s are free. What children pay on the tours, where each operator’s own minimum age starts, and the national car-seat decree are on our Costa Rica with kids page. The over-65 exemption exists but is for nationals and residents only, not foreign visitors. Non-resident fees are denominated in US dollars “or their equivalent in colones at the moment of purchasing the ticket.”

Charges that are not admission:

• Poás parking: ₡1,000 motorcycle / ₡2,000 car / ₡4,000 microbus or bus.
• Irazú parking: ₡1,000 / ₡2,000 / ₡2,500 microbus / ₡3,000 bus.
• Corcovado camping: USD 4 at San Pedrillo and Sirena, own tent required.
• Santa Rosa camping: USD 4 per person per night plus the entry ticket, which is daily.
• Braulio Carrillo camping: ₡5,000, Volcán Barva sector only.
• Sirena station, Corcovado: lodging USD 30, breakfast USD 20, lunch USD 25, dinner USD 25, locker USD 4 — the same for nationals and foreigners. Bed and three meals is USD 100 a day by our addition.

Two free-admission rules, from SINAC’s own reservations portal: 24 August, National Parks Day, is free for every visitor including non-residents. The third Wednesday of each month is free for residents and nationals only — foreign visitors still pay. And park entry buys admission and nothing else: “guiado, alquiler de equipos especiales, alimentación, traslados” are all arranged and paid separately. Manuel Antonio’s online sale is capped at six tickets and one transaction per user per day; tickets are personal, non-transferable and non-refundable.

One conflict, printed unresolved. SINAC’s Manuel Antonio park page states Wednesday to Monday, 07:00–15:00, closed Tuesday. SINAC’s consolidated tariff PDF states “Todos los días durante la temporada alta (diciembre a abril). Cerrado los lunes durante la temporada baja (julio a noviembre). De 7 am a 4 pm.” They disagree on both the closed day and the closing time. The fee, USD 16, matches on both. The consolidated PDF prints no date on its face; its file metadata records creation and modification on 21 December 2018, which we read from the file itself on 26 August 2026. That is the same document, and the same dating, we flag on our Manuel Antonio and Tamarindo pages.

Fuel is set nationally — and regular costs more than super

Costa Rican pump prices are fixed by regulator decree and revised monthly, so they are identical at every filling station in the country. The prices in force from 11 August 2026 (resolution RE-0039-IE-2026, La Gaceta 149, Alcance 104, published 10 August 2026):

The cheaper-sounding grade is the dearer one: Plus 91 costs ₡54.00 a litre more than Súper 95, 7.7% more. RECOPE’s own component columns explain it — Plus 91’s pre-tax price is ₡66.46 higher, partly offset by a ₡12.25 lower single tax. Those two components net to ₡54.21. The ₡54.00 quoted in the line above is the difference between the two rounded pump prices RECOPE publishes, ₡758.00 less ₡704.00; the 21-céntimo gap between the two figures is that rounding and nothing else. The station margin is identical at ₡71.1145 across all three grades.

A five-day-old conflict worth knowing about. The immediately preceding resolution, RE-0037-IE-2026 of 5 August 2026, set Súper 95 at ₡701, Plus 91 at ₡755 and diésel at ₡604. That is a sequence, not a disagreement — RE-0039 superseded it — but press coverage from early August quotes the superseded set, and both are printed here so the difference is not mistaken for an error.

Renting a car: the mandatory liability cover is the hidden line

Costa Rican law requires third-party liability cover on every rental, and it is billed as a separate daily rate. Two rental companies state this in their own words — but a rental company is not a primary source for the content of a law, and the statute itself was not obtained, so what follows is what the companies publish, not a statement of the law.

Adobe: “Costa Rican law requires third-party (PLI) coverage for all rentals and rental car agencies… The daily TPL rate is included in your rental agreement and is mandatory.” Hertz: “The purchase of Third-Party Liability (TPL) coverage is mandatory. This coverage cannot be declined using a credit card.” Alamo states it is obligatory unless the renter shows written proof of existing liability cover valid in Costa Rica. Economy states liability cover bought on third-party travel sites or through a credit card is not accepted.

On an economy car, the compulsory insurance costs more than the car. A live Vamos quote, SJO, 12–19 October 2026:

On the Economy the compulsory cover is $14.00 more than the car itself. On the Intermediate SUV it is 76% of the car rate, and the all-in total is almost exactly double the advertised car price. Vamos’s SLI runs $15.95/day from Economy to Full Size SUV and $17.95/day on Premium; its optional collision waivers are quoted including the SLI, at $24.95/day Basic (with a $975 deductible) and $42.95/day Full.

The deposit ladder runs inversely to the cover bought: taking only the mandatory liability triggers Vamos’s largest credit-card hold, USD 2,000, against $750 with Basic CDW and $100 with Full CDW. Hertz holds an additional USD 3,000 if the collision waiver is declined; Economy requires a USD 2,500 minimum deposit in the same case. Adobe requires a USD 1,000 (USD 1,130 with tax) deposit, does not accept debit, cash or virtual cards, and sets a minimum driver age of 23.

Adobe itemises the same mandatory line at USD 13.56 a day, and it scales with vehicle class: $13.56/day on sedans and compact-to-mid 4x4 SUVs, $19.21/day on a Santa Fe, Montero Sport or Palisade, $23.73/day on a Staria van. Over seven days that is $94.92, $134.47 and $166.11.

The mandatory charge does not move in high season — the car rate does. Adobe’s liability line is USD 94.92 per seven days in both October 2026 and January 2027, while its cheapest advertised daily rate rises from USD 25.32 to USD 61.95, about 2.4 times. On a Kia Picanto in October the seven-day breakdown is base $177.24 + liability $94.92 = $272.16; on a Hyundai Grand i10 in January it is base $433.65 + the same $94.92 = $528.57.

Vamos’s seasonal move is larger, and it is not uniform across categories — check the one you want rather than the headline:

Vamos’s own specials page states “we discount all vehicle rates by 20% until November 20th”, so those October figures sit inside a published discount window.

Other published fees: Budget charges USD 4.99 per day plus taxes for an additional driver, USD 1.50 per day plus IVA for personal-accident cover, and a USD 50 plus taxes young-driver surcharge for ages 21–24. Vamos publishes a comparison table claiming most Costa Rican rental companies add airport fees “from $6.40 per day to 14% of total rental”, licence-plate fees of $1.50–1.90 a day, an environmental fee of $0.40 a day and additional-driver fees of $5–10 a day, totalling "$212 to $306 per week" — that is one company characterising its competitors, not any competitor’s published tariff, and it is labelled as such.

Getting between towns

Shared shuttles, live Interbus quotes for 15 October 2026, per adult. Children pay exactly half on every route checked, and extra luggage is USD 15 a bag.

That last row is a fact about Interbus, not about the route. The endpoint returned a single PRIVATE row for the pair and no REGULAR one on 15 October 2026 — but two other operators do sell a shared seat on the same road: Tropical Tours Shuttles at USD 30 (one 09:15 departure, 2 hours) and Easy Ride at USD 39 (09:30, 12:30 and 15:30, about 1.5 hours), both read from those companies’ own route pages and set out on our Costa Rica 10-day itinerary page.

Where private becomes cheaper depends on the route, and it is not one number. Comparing Interbus’s own shared and private quotes, adults only:

Children change the answer. Two adults and two children to La Fortuna cost $183 shared — 61 + 61 + 30.50 + 30.50 — against $241 private, so at four people shared still wins on that route.

Interbus publishes multi-stop circuits as its only headline fares: San José → La Fortuna → Manuel Antonio → San José from USD 140 per person plus tax, and San José → Caribbean → La Fortuna → Tamarindo → San José from USD 185 plus tax, both shared, with a footnote crediting stacked discounts (“3rd service 25% off, 4th+ service 30% off, plus additional circuit discount”). Its own single-leg quotes for the first two legs of that first circuit — $61 and $63 — already total $124.

Tropical Tours Shuttles publishes hub-level “from” figures rather than a fare table: shared from USD 50 per person out of SJO (private from $200), USD 54 out of La Fortuna and out of Monteverde (private from $240), USD 45 out of Liberia airport (private from $145) and USD 50 out of Tamarindo (private from $270). It adds USD 20 per person above six people and USD 20 for pickups between 21:00 and 06:00.

⚠ Those hub figures are not floors, and the operator’s own route pages prove it. On the same day we read them, Tropical Tours’ Liberia–Tamarindo route page published USD 30 shared and USD 100 private against a Liberia hub that says from USD 45 and from USD 145; its San José–La Fortuna route page published USD 180 private against a San José hub that says from USD 200. A “from” price that the seller’s own route page undercuts by a third is a marketing figure, not a minimum. Quote the route page, not the hub — the route-page fares are set out on our rental car versus shuttle and Liberia airport to Tamarindo pages. The hub figures are reproduced above only because they are what the operator publishes at that level, and the conflict is the finding.

Regulated public bus fares. These are set by law by ARESEP and published as an open dataset, with the route distance alongside. The per-kilometre column is our division:

The short local Quepos run is the dearest per kilometre in the set at ₡55.6 — 1.7 times the dearest intercity route here (San José–Puerto Viejo, ₡32.0) and 2.4 times the cheapest (San José–Liberia direct, ₡22.7). Both multiples are our division on ARESEP’s own fares and distances.

Over-65 fares are set by the same regulator, and the wording matters: seniors pay a share, they do not get that share off. Free under 25 km; pay 50% on routes of 25 to under 50 km; pay 75% on routes over 50 km. The dataset confirms it, though only one of its examples lands on the number exactly. Liberia–Tamarindo, ₡2,000 regular against ₡1,500 senior, is exactly 75%. San José–Monteverde is ₡3,910 against ₡2,930, which is 74.94% — three-quarters of ₡3,910 is ₡2,932.50, and the published senior fare is that figure rounded down to the nearest ten colón. And the 7.02 km Quepos run, well under the 25 km free threshold, shows a senior fare of ₡0.00.

Two operators publish fares that differ from the regulator’s, printed here unresolved:

Note that Trans Monteverde’s own figure is lower than the regulated fare on one route and higher on the other, while its site states that its prices are the ARESEP tariffs. Both figures, and the separate online service charge it adds on top, are set out on our Monteverde page. TRACOPA, by contrast, matches ARESEP to the colón on Quepos (₡4,450), Manuel Antonio (₡5,770) and Dominical (₡5,560). Buying a ticket online also adds a separate “Cobro por Servicio” on top of the regulated fare, which Trans Monteverde describes as the cost of the payment platform and site administration.

Domestic flights, live Sansa quotes for 15 October 2026, one-way, one adult:

On the San José–Quepos fare, tax exceeds the fare. The breakdown is base USD 40.83 plus USD 48.67 in tax — USD 6.40 San José airport plus a USD 42.27 fuel surcharge — for the USD 89.50 total. Tax is 54% of what you pay. Against Interbus’s USD 62 shared shuttle to Manuel Antonio the flight looks USD 27.50 dearer, 44% higher — but that comparison flattens the tax treatment, which is exactly the error this page warns about two sections later. Sansa’s USD 89.50 is a total with the USD 48.67 of tax and surcharge already inside it. Interbus’s USD 62 is a base fare, with tax added at checkout, and Interbus does not publish the rate it adds. Grossed up at the 13% IVA applied everywhere else on this page, the shuttle is USD 70.06 and the flight is USD 19.44 more, 28% higher. That gross-up is our arithmetic on an unpublished rate, not an Interbus figure; the honest statement is the basis, not either single percentage.

The Light fare carries no checked bag at all: 10 lb carry-on included, checked allowance 0 lb, excess at USD 1.50 plus VAT per pound. The aircraft on the Quepos run is a 12-seat single-engine Cessna turboprop.

Hot springs, ziplines and guided walks

Two of those deserve arithmetic. The Manuel Antonio group tour at USD 60 includes an entrance ticket that costs USD 18.08 on its own, so the guiding and transfer come to USD 41.92; on the private tour at USD 80, USD 61.92. And the Río Celeste hikes are 34% apart — different operators, different pickup regions, and the cheaper one requires four people — so there is no single “Río Celeste tour price”.

Baldi publishes a fuller grid than most. Costa Rican nationals pay a third less for the same day pass — USD 34.00 against USD 51.00. During Holy Week (Thursday to Sunday) the foreign springs-only rate rises to USD 61.00, 20% above standard. Children under 5 are free (maximum five), and the adult rate starts at age 11. Towels take a USD 10 refundable cash deposit; lockers are USD 6.78. Unlike the parks that sell online only, no advance booking is required — “just show up and buy the tickets when you arrive at the front desk”. Open 09:00 to 22:00 daily.

Tax treatment differs by operator and must not be flattened when comparing these prices. Selvatura and Sky Adventures quote pre-tax. Tabacón and Baldi quote tax-inclusive. Don Rufino’s menu includes 10% service and 13% IVA. Nogui’s and Orgánico Fortuna state no tax note at all, so their menu figures may still take IVA and service at the till.

Lodging: from USD 10 to USD 1,312 a night

The published range across every property whose own site or booking engine gave a figure is 131 times wide — and the caveat on the floor belongs here, before the table, not after it. The USD 10 figure is Monteverde Backpackers’ 7-bed dorm, and that rate page carries a 2013 copyright and no validity date. It is the cheapest published figure found, not a guaranteed current price, and both the floor and the 131× ratio inherit that weakness. The USD 1,312 ceiling, Nayara Tented Camp, is by contrast a live booking-engine quote for 15 October 2026.

Seasonality is wildly uneven between properties, and it is not a single multiplier. On the same published tables:

• Arco Iris Lodge moves 6% between low and high on a double (USD 166 → 176) — and its single rate does not move at all, USD 122 in both seasons. Only the double and triple change.
• Casa Luna moves 14% into peak (USD 180 → 205).
• La Posada Jungle moves 38% from green to super high (USD 130 → 180).
• Tulemar moves 65% at Christmas and 70% at Easter (USD 345 → 570 and 585); its premium bungalow moves 61%.

Which months those seasons actually track, region by region, is on our dry versus green season page.

Three tax caveats, unresolved:

• Tulemar’s premium bungalow page states “Rates are in USD and do not include 13% VAT or 4.5% Tulemar Fee.” On that room’s USD 380 green-season rate, 13% is USD 49.40 and 4.5% is USD 17.10; applied to the base rate together that is USD 446.50. The resort does not publish whether the fee is charged before or after tax. The separate rates table carrying the standard-room figures has no tax line at all.
• Hotel Belmar’s rate card says both “Excludes VAT.” and “Including taxes” on the same row. We print USD 360 and state no tax treatment in either direction. For scale, 13% of USD 360 is USD 46.80.
• Hotel Costa Verde’s engine states “Rates do not include 13% VAT” while quoting non-round figures (144.64, 203.40, 510.76) that look as though tax is already applied. Quote the figure and the policy together; adding 13% to 144.64 may be double-counting.

One more figure needs its own warning, alongside the Monteverde Backpackers caveat stated at the top of this section. Tamarindo Bay Hotel’s booking engine shows a bare “$” with no currency code anywhere on the page, and enforces a two-night minimum; the currency is left unstated here rather than assumed.

For the wider market, ICT publishes advertised rate bands from a vendor’s scrape of online travel agencies: hotels of three stars and below stayed below USD 150 a night through 2025; four- and five-star hotels sat above USD 300 for a standard double. Those are advertised prices, not a government price survey. And where visitors actually stayed, by ICT’s 2025 airport survey (a multiple-response question, so the shares exceed 100%): 68.5% hotel, cabina, hostel or apart-hotel; 28.2% Airbnb and similar platforms; 13.2% the home of family or friends; 4.12% a rented house, condo or apartment. We priced the live inventory in four of those towns on the same two nights and the same basis — La Fortuna, Manuel Antonio, Monteverde and Tamarindo.

Eating

All menu prices are published in colones and are left in colones here.

A note on currency

Every colón figure on this page is left in colones, unconverted. No exchange rate was captured as part of this page’s sources, and converting with a rate we did not read on the same day would be inventing precision on figures that are otherwise exact. The Central Bank’s own reference rate for 26 August 2026, and what a commercial bank counter offered against it that day, are on our Costa Rica currency and ATMs page.

What the operators and agencies don’t publish

These are gaps in other people’s published information, not conclusions we reached:

• The Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve’s entrance fee, on its own website. We enumerated all 13 pages on the domain through its own content API and scanned every one for currency figures; there are none. The fee itself is not a gap: the preserve’s own booking system sells each of its three circuits at USD 29.00 per adult (USD 16.00 child 6–11, USD 10.00 national adult, USD 2.00 student 6–20 with ID), and that is where the widely quoted figure comes from. It is a website gap, not a missing price.
• EcoTermales Fortuna’s entry price. Nothing on its own site, in either language, across five pages checked including a rendered browser. Its reservation page offers session slots and a contact form only. A genuine editorial gap, not a fetch failure.
• A daily mandatory-insurance price from Hertz, Alamo, Budget, National or Economy. All five state in prose that the cover is compulsory; none publishes the per-day figure on a static page. Vamos and Adobe do, and are quoted above. National’s Costa Rica domain does not resolve at all.
• Sky Adventures Monteverde (Sky Trek / Sky Walk). The company’s Monteverde URL now redirects to its Arenal homepage and its sitemap lists Arenal products only. The USD 93 and USD 46 figures above are therefore labelled Arenal, not Monteverde.
• Arenal hanging bridges (Mistico / Puentes Colgantes). Both domains failed to connect on repeated attempts.
• A soda casado price from a soda’s own menu. Small local eateries overwhelmingly have no website; the two best-known named candidates publish no prices. Nogui’s ₡9,100 is a beachfront tourist-town restaurant and is an upper bound, not a typical soda price.
• A fast-food chain benchmark. McDonald’s Costa Rica returns a Cloudflare block; the other chains checked serve no server-rendered prices.
• An ICT breakdown of spend by category as percentages. ICT publishes the ranking in words and not the split. The satellite tourism account that might carry it covers 2012–2021, too stale to use.
• Whether SINAC charges a booking surcharge on top of the 13% IVA. Its terms document references “El monto de cargo por servicio” without stating an amount, and the checkout that would show a final total sits behind a portal login. This page asserts no surcharge amount.
• A Manuel Antonio hostel dorm rate from a property’s own site. Every candidate’s domain is dead, parked or squatted. The nearest sourced budget anchors are Arenal Backpackers at USD 30 and Pura Vida Hostel at USD 12.50.
• Tabacón’s nightly room rate, as distinct from its day pass. Its room grid never rendered. The day-pass prices did and are quoted.
• A room-attributable rate for The Springs Resort & Spa. Its live feed exposes rates, but every “room” name in it is a rate-plan label rather than a room, so no figure can honestly be tied to a room. Omitted rather than guessed.
• A single “longest canopy” price at Monteverde Extremo. The same page shows both USD 67.80 and USD 72 for it. Its standard canopy page is internally consistent at USD 51 and that is the figure used.

How we researched this

Scope: this page reports source research, not an on-site test. We checked the booking systems, timetables and official sources named below on the date shown; calculations, unresolved disagreements and information we could not verify are labelled explicitly.

Government figures came from the publishing bodies directly on 26 August 2026: ICT’s spend, stay and arrivals documents and its per-market characterisations; SINAC’s individual park pages, its consolidated tariff table and its reservations portal FAQ; ARESEP’s open bus-tariff and fuel-tariff datasets; and RECOPE’s own current-price table. Fuel prices were cross-checked between RECOPE’s page and ARESEP’s open data, which agree to the colón on all three grades.

Commercial prices came from operators’ own sites and booking engines, dated: rental cars quoted at SJO for 12–19 October 2026 and re-quoted for 12–19 January 2027; Interbus shuttle and Sansa flight quotes for 15 October 2026; hotel quotes for one or two nights from 15 October 2026. Hotel rate tables published as static pages are quoted with their own season labels. Restaurant prices came from the restaurants’ own menus and menu PDFs, read the same day, 26 August 2026.

Every lodging figure was confirmed against the raw fetched bytes or a rendered page element rather than a summary, because an automated summariser produced two hotel rates for one property that exist nowhere in that page — they traced to numbers inside responsive-image filenames. Those were discarded.

Where a figure is our own arithmetic it is labelled in the text: the 13% IVA gross-ups, the per-night divisions of ICT’s whole-trip figures, the rental-car totals and ratios, the private-versus-shared break-even table, the colón-per-kilometre column, the Sirena full-board total, and the tour-minus-entrance figures. Where sources conflict we print both and name each source. Where a figure existed only in press repetition or a search snippet, it is not on this page.

Last verified: 26 August 2026. Fuel prices are revised monthly by decree. One hot-spring tariff carries a stated expiry of 10 December 2026, and one hostel rate is a special stated as running through November 2026. Rental-car and shuttle quotes are for the specific dates named above.

Figures on this page labelled our arithmetic are calculated by us from the sourced inputs cited below — comparisons, percentages, multiples, differences, per-night and per-person conversions, running totals and currency conversions. Every other figure is reproduced as its named source published it. Where an operator or authority publishes a per-person or per-night rate directly, that is their figure and it is attributed to them at the point it appears.

Sources

Government and regulator

• ICT — Gasto medio por persona y estadía media, vía aérea, 2006–2025 — the USD 1,848.0 / 10.3 nights headline and the 2024, 2023 and 2019 rows.
• ICT — GMP todas las vías, 2015–2025 — the USD 1,728.2 all-routes and USD 420.5 land-border figures and the two airport figures.
• ICT — Encuesta de No Residentes, Juan Santamaría 2025 — the SJO market rows, the 10,200 sample, and the accommodation shares.
• ICT — Encuesta de No Residentes, Daniel Oduber 2025 — the LIR market rows.
• ICT — Encuesta de No Residentes, Juan Santamaría 2024 — the USD 1,475.1 / 10.4 nights and USD 1,657.3 / 15.2 nights survey figures used in the two-basis comparison.
• ICT — Informe de cierre 2025 — the 2,943,991 and 2,689,278 arrivals and source markets, the airport-gap explanation, the lodging-food-transport ranking, and the advertised rate bands for hotels of three stars and below and for four- and five-star hotels.
• ICT — Informe I Semestre 2026 — the 1,733,596 first-half arrivals and the 7.0% change.
• ICT — Caracterización de Mercado EEUU 2024 and Canadá 2024 — the USD 294.8 and USD 227.50 daily card figures and the card-active-day methodology line.
• BCCR via ICT — Divisas por concepto de turismo 2025 — the USD 5,543.7 million receipts and the 13.4% export share.
• SINAC park pages, all fetched 26 August 2026 — Manuel Antonio (the “$16 + IVA” form, hours, gate-sale rule, resident rate), Arenal Volcano, Poás (fees, booking-only access, parking), Irazú (fees, hours, parking), Tenorio (fee and the 14:00 last entry), Rincón de la Vieja, Santa Rosa (fee and the per-person camping right), Corcovado (fees, camping, October Sirena closure, Sirena lodging and meal rates), Carara (the “$10 + VAT” form), Cahuita (the “$5,65 (IVA included)” form and the voluntary Playa Blanca contribution), Marino Ballena, Braulio Carrillo (the IVA-included tariff block and the Barva camping fee) and Tapantí (fees and the under-2 and over-65 rules).
• SINAC — Tarifas de ingreso a Áreas Silvestres Protegidas (consolidated tariff table) — the Chirripó, Tortuguero, Cabo Blanco, Marino Las Baulas, Caño Negro, Gandoca-Manzanillo and Isla del Coco fees; the US-dollar denomination rule; and the Manuel Antonio hours that contradict the park page.
• SINAC — SICORE online reservations portal FAQ — the 24 August free-admission decree, the third-Wednesday residents-only rule, the admission-only scope, the Manuel Antonio six-ticket cap and the non-transferable, non-refundable ticket terms.
• ARESEP — open bus tariff dataset — every regulated bus fare, route number, operator, distance and senior fare quoted above, all in force from 1 July 2026.
• ARESEP — bus tariffs page — the over-65 fare rule.
• ARESEP — fuel tariffs page — the monthly national revision.
• ARESEP — open fuel tariff dataset — resolutions RE-0039-IE-2026 and the superseded RE-0037-IE-2026.
• RECOPE — Precios Vigentes — the per-litre component columns and the Gaceta 149 / 11 August 2026 effective date.

Operators

• Vamos Rent-A-Car — insurance explained and its reservations engine — the $15.95 and $17.95 SLI rates, the CDW rates, the deposit ladder, and both dated seven-day quote breakdowns.
• Vamos — compare fees and rental quotes exposed — the competitor-fee characterisation and the $11–25 industry range, both labelled as Vamos’s own claims.
• Adobe Rent a Car — checkout, results and insurance coverage — the $13.56 / $19.21 / $23.73 liability lines, the October and January quotes, the deposit and minimum age, and the law statement.
• Hertz Costa Rica — conditions — the mandatory-TPL statement and the $3,000 additional hold.
• Economy Rent a Car — Costa Rica — the liability-waiver requirement, the rejection of card and third-party cover, and the $2,500 deposit.
• Alamo Costa Rica — the obligatory-unless-proof statement.
• Budget Costa Rica — coverage — the personal-accident, additional-driver and young-driver fees.
• Interbus booking engine, quotes dated 15 October 2026 — SJO–La Fortuna, SJO–Monteverde, SJO–Manuel Antonio, SJO–Tamarindo, SJO–Jacó, SJO–Puerto Viejo, La Fortuna–Monteverde, La Fortuna–Manuel Antonio, Monteverde–Manuel Antonio, LIR–La Fortuna and LIR–Tamarindo — every shared and private fare, the 50% child ratio, the $15 luggage charge and the private-only Liberia–Tamarindo row.
• Interbus — itineraries — the $140 and $185 circuit prices and the discount footnote.
• Tropical Tours Shuttles hub-level “from” figures — reproduced above with the caveat that the operator’s own route pages undercut them — San José airport (and the two surcharges), La Fortuna, Monteverde, Liberia airport, Tamarindo.
• Trans Monteverde — current rates and homepage — its own ₡3,885 and ₡2,870 fares and the online “Cobro por Servicio”.
• TRACOPA — tarifas and MEPE — the operator fares set against the regulated ones.
• Sansa flight-results pages, all quoted for 15 October 2026 — SJO–XQP (including the base/tax breakdown, baggage rules and aircraft), SJO–TNO, SJO–LIR, SJO–FON, SJO–NOB, SJO–TTQ, SJO–LIO, SJO–ACO, SJO–DRK, SJO–PJM, SJO–GLF.
• Tabacón day pass booking and with a meal — the USD 115 and USD 184 rates and the exclusions.
• Baldi Hot Springs — day pass — all four rate tables, the towel deposit and locker charge, the child-age rules, the no-booking policy, the opening hours and the 10 December 2026 validity.
• Selvatura — canopy, treetop walkways and tours index — the USD 80, 49, 25 and 40 rates and the “+ 13% tax + Fees” note.
• Sky Adventures Arenal — ziplines and hanging bridges — USD 93 and USD 46 before taxes and fees.
• 100% Aventura, Monteverde — the USD 72 and USD 45 from-prices.
• Monteverde Extremo — standard canopy and longest canopy — the USD 51 rate, the USD 10 transport, and the two contradictory longest-canopy figures.
• Reserva Bosque Nuboso Santa Elena — reservations and guided walks — all admission and guiding rates in colones.
• manuelantoniopark.net — group tour and private tour — the USD 60/40 and USD 80/63 rates and what each includes.
• Wave Expeditions — Río Celeste and Tenorio Adventure Company — the USD 122 and USD 91 tour prices and the four-person minimum.
• La Fortuna Waterfall — ADIFORT FAQ — the USD 20 / USD 10 entry and the taxi figure.
• Lodging: Arenal Backpackers, Casa Luna, Nayara Tented Camp, Monteverde Backpackers, Arco Iris Lodge, Hotel Belmar, La Posada Jungle, Hotel Costa Verde, Tulemar rates and premium bungalow, Pura Vida Hostel, Tamarindo Bay Hotel, Cala Luna.
• Menus: Don Rufino, Orgánico Fortuna, Nogui’s, Restaurante Silvestre.

Written by Estuardo Enriquez. This site is independent, carries no affiliate relationship with any operator named here, and is not connected to any previous owner of this domain.