Costa Rica with Kids: the Car-Seat Law, Tour Minimum Ages and What Children Pay

Verified on 26 August 2026 — against the text of Costa Rica’s child-restraint decree (retrieved and read article by article; two weight cells in its table did not survive extraction and are marked below), four tour operators’ own booking pages, the national park authority’s rate table, and two hotels’ own reservation systems.

Costa Rican law requires a child restraint for every passenger who is both under 12 years old and under 1.45 m tall, in any motor vehicle on a public road, and never in the front seat — the decree’s own bajo ninguna circunstancia, subject to the single pick-up exception set out below. The fine falls on the driver, not the parent: CRC 245,195.06 in 2026. Taxis and scheduled buses are exempt; a rental car or a private transfer is not. Beyond that one national rule, almost nothing about travelling in Costa Rica with children is standardised — two Monteverde operators set minimum ages of 4 and 6 for the same zip-line, and one La Fortuna resort’s booking engine counts anyone over 5 as an adult.

That gap is the shape of this whole page. One thing is written into national law and specified down to the centimetre; everything else — who counts as a child, what a child pays, what a child is allowed to do — is set operator by operator and property by property, and the cut-offs do not line up even within a single town. The same operator-by-operator pattern runs through the rest of a family budget — the park fees, shuttle fares and hotel rates behind it are collected on our Costa Rica trip cost page — and the country’s official crime and advisory record is set out in is Costa Rica safe.

The car-seat rule, by group

From Decreto Ejecutivo 38239-MOPT, published in La Gaceta No. 80, 28 April 2014, which implements Article 94 of Ley de Tránsito 9078. Both conditions apply together: under 12 years old AND under 1.45 m.

† The decree’s own table cells for the Group II and III weight bands did not survive text extraction from the file we read. Those weight figures, and the Group 0 band, come from Adobe Rent a Car’s restatement, which cites Ley 9078 and Reglamento 38239-MOPT by number. The 110 cm lower bound frequently quoted for Group III is Adobe’s too — the decree gives Group III no lower height bound, only “until standing height reaches 145 cm”, which is why this table’s Group III size cell carries no floor. Every other cell above is the decree’s own.

The age bands overlap at 4 and at 6, and the size bands are what separate them: 110 cm divides Group I from Group II — that boundary is the decree’s own, from its Group I row.

The Group III lower bound is not the decree’s. † The decree describes Group III only as a backless booster used until standing height reaches 145 cm; it sets no lower height bound for that group. The “110–145 cm” band commonly quoted for Group III — and the claim that Groups II and III share one height band separated only by weight — comes from Adobe Rent a Car’s restatement, not from the decree text we read. On a child-safety page that distinction has to be exact, so we print it as the rental company’s figure and not as the rule.

For Group 0 the decree specifies the fit as well as the device: at least about 7 cm must remain between the top edge of the carrier and the child’s head, the harness slots must sit at or up to 1 cm below shoulder level, and the chest clip at armpit level.

Never in the front seat

Article 3 of the decree, section B, is unqualified — “bajo ninguna circunstancia.” Child restraints must go in a rear seat, and are barred from the front seat and from folding or tip-up seats. There is one exception: light-cargo or pick-up vehicles, single or double cab, with no passenger airbag or with a working airbag disconnect.

When a child may finally use the adult belt

Article 2, section 4 sets a three-part test, and all three must be true:

1. Standing height above 145 cm;
2. Seated with hips flexed at 90 degrees, or the back flat against the seat back;
3. Feet resting fully flat on the vehicle floor.

Height alone is not sufficient under the decree’s wording.

Which vehicles are exempt

Article 1 exempts public transport taxis, the stable special taxi service, buses and minibuses on regular routes, UTV-type vehicles, bicimoto and motorcycles (unless fitted with a sidecar), and special-service buses — with student transport carved back in, where the rule still applies to under-12s below 1.45 m.

The practical effect for a visiting family: an airport taxi or a scheduled bus is legally exempt. A rental car or a private transfer is not.

The fine, and who pays it

Article 4 makes it a Multa Categoría B under Article 144(a) of Ley 9078, imposed on the driver who allows an under-12 below 1.45 m to travel without the device. The colón amount is reset annually. For 2026 it is CRC 245,195.06, in force from 1 January 2026 — down CRC 540.62 from CRC 245,735.68 in 2025, a reduction driven by negative CPI.

That amount comes from GlobalEx CR reporting Circular 220-2025, cross-checked against La Nación and El Financiero reporting the same Poder Judicial approval at CRC 245,195. We did not read Circular 220-2025 itself.

Article 5 describes enforcement: traffic officers check compliance by external visual observation of the vehicle. The device has to be visibly present and in use.

A conflict on the upper age, printed both ways

• The decree: “personas menores de doce años” — under 12 years of age, and under 1.45 m.
• Adobe Rent a Car: “until they are 13 years old (end of their 12th year).”

These may not be contradictory — Adobe may be restating “through the end of the 12th year.” But the decree’s own words are what an officer enforces, and that is the wording we use above. We are not reconciling the two for you.

Renting the seat

Adobe Rent a Car publishes: infant car seat, for under-12s below 110 cm, US$3.39 per day; booster, for under-12s below 145 cm, US$1.13 per day. Advance booking is required to guarantee availability. That is one company’s published price — no other agency’s seat pricing was sourceable — and the order of magnitude is the point: the seats are cheap, and availability is the constraint the company itself flags.

Minimum ages: the operators do not agree

There is no nationally applicable minimum age for zip-lining or rafting in anything we found. Each operator sets its own, and in Monteverde two of them set different ones for the same activity.

All checked 26 August 2026. Desafío’s prices are before VAT; Selvatura’s are plus 13% tax and fees. Selvatura’s canopy tour runs at 08:30, 11:00, 13:00 and 14:30 and takes 2 to 2.5 hours.

‡ A recommendation is not a minimum, and this table keeps them apart. Desafío states a minimum age to participate of 8 years for the Safari Float in so many words. For the Balsa River Class II–III it publishes only a recommended range of 8–65 and a booking form whose youngest band is “Kids 8–12” — so no younger booking appears to be sellable, but the operator does not publish a hard minimum for that river and we will not print one in a Minimum column on a safety table. For the Sarapiquí Class III–IV the recommended range is 13–75 while the booking page sells adults only, 15–65.

On transport, from the same operator’s Monteverde tour pages read the same day — read for our where to stay in Monteverde page rather than for this one: 100% Aventura’s zip-line and hanging-bridge pages both state “Bus: Not included”, so neither tour carries a transfer.

Two specifics from that table:

• Selvatura’s Superman is not a children’s cable. A four-year-old can ride the main circuit and still be barred from the marquee line, which needs 55 kg and 155 cm. Selvatura’s own page prints that height as “1.55 cm”; the parenthetical 61 in is what resolves it to 155 cm.
• Desafío’s calm-water family trip still will not take a seven-year-old — 8 is a stated minimum on that river — and its Class III–IV river does not take children at all. Across that one operator’s own booking pages, the youngest sellable band on either of its gentler rivers is 8–12, and the Class III–IV river sells adults only.

What children actually pay

Manuel Antonio National Park, from SINAC, the park authority:

Visitors must present the identity document matching the ticket, which is valid once. The US$18.08 figure that circulates for the same ticket is not a different published rate: it is US$16 × 1.13 IVA, the same price quoted with tax.

On tours, the child discount is real but modest: Selvatura charges US$56.00 for ages 4–11 against US$80.00 regular, with a student band of US$72.00 for 12–18 and the same US$72.00 for locals of any age; its Superman add-on is US$9.45 for 4–11 and US$12.15 for 12–18. Desafío charges US$65.00 for ages 8–12 on the float (adults US$72.00) and US$72.00 on the Class II–III (adults US$85.00).

Tabacón’s day pass admits guests under 6 free, and states that children under 16 must be accompanied by an adult at all times. Its full adult price, and what the other four La Fortuna springs do and do not publish, are on our La Fortuna and Arenal page. Water shoes are recommended, day-pass availability is limited with advance reservation recommended, and maximum group size is 15.

Where “child” stops meaning child

Tabacón’s own booking engine states: “Children over 5 years old are considered as adults”, and its child selector is literally labelled “0 - 5 years old”. Its room rates also do not include 13% sales tax. A family of four — two adults, an eight-year-old and a second child of five or under — is priced as three adults at that property.

That is a property-level definition, not a national one — which is exactly why a hotel’s child policy is worth reading before its room rate.

Family rooms do exist as a sold category at ordinary prices. Hotel Verde Mar in Manuel Antonio sells “Family Room With Separate Bedroom”, “Quadruple Room”, “Loft Room” and “Suite Room” as distinct bookable categories. Queried for 10–12 November 2026, 2 adults, its own engine returned the Family Room with Separate Bedroom at US$91 per night (30% off a US$130 rate) and the Quadruple Room at US$95 (30% off US$135).

The engine’s own arithmetic rounds, and we print it as it stands. 30% off US$135 is US$94.50 by our arithmetic, not the US$95 the engine displays. The discounted figure is the one the engine quotes, so that is the one above; the rack-rate arithmetic behind it does not reconcile to the cent, and we have not adjusted either number in either direction.

What the operators don’t publish

• Whether shuttle operators carry or will fit child restraints. Neither Tropical Tours Shuttles nor Interbus publishes a child-restraint policy on its own site — which matters, because a private transfer is not among the decree’s exempt vehicles. Interbus’s own booking engine does quote a child fare: exactly half the adult fare on all ten shared routes we priced for this cohort on 26 August 2026 — an observation across those ten quotes, not a rule Interbus states anywhere.
• Minimum ages for Sky Adventures (Sky Trek) in Monteverde. Its tour detail pages returned 404 or omitted restrictions entirely.
• Any nationally applicable minimum age for zip-lining or rafting. None was found — and the two Monteverde operators disagreeing, 4 against 6, is itself the finding.
• How the car-seat rule is enforced against tourists. COSEVI’s own child-restraint study PDF returned HTTP 403 to every fetch attempt, so no national compliance statistic is quoted here.
• The primary text of Circular 220-2025, which sets the 2026 fine amounts.
• Car-seat rental prices from any agency other than Adobe.
• A hard minimum age for Desafío’s Balsa River Class II–III. The operator publishes a recommended 8–65 range and a Kids 8–12 booking band, but no stated minimum, so this page prints none.
• A lower height bound for the decree’s Group III. The decree text we read gives none — only “until standing height reaches 145 cm”. The 110 cm floor quoted for that group is Adobe Rent a Car’s restatement and is marked as such.

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.

On 26 August 2026 we retrieved Decreto Ejecutivo 38239-MOPT (La Gaceta No. 80, 28 April 2014) and read it article by article. The group definitions, fitting specifications, front-seat prohibition, three-part belt test, exemption list, fine category and enforcement method above are all taken from the decree itself. The decree’s text was not fully machine-readable: cells in its age/weight/height table did not survive extraction from the .doc file. The Group II and III weight bands and the Group 0 band therefore come from Adobe Rent a Car’s restatement, as does the 110 cm lower bound often quoted for Group III — all marked with † in the table, and none of them presented as the decree’s own words. Tour minimum ages and the “Bus: Not included” transport note were read on the operators’ own pages the same day; the transport note was recorded for our Monteverde accommodation page rather than for this one. The 2026 fine amount comes from Costa Rican outlets reporting the Poder Judicial’s approval of Circular 220-2025, not from the circular.

Tour minimum ages, weight and height limits, departure times and child prices come from each operator’s own tour and booking pages. Park entry rates come from SINAC, the park authority, not from a guide. The hotel child policy and the family-room rates were read directly from the properties’ own reservation systems for stated dates.

We did not research paediatric healthcare, hospitals, or stroller and terrain accessibility, and this page says nothing about them.

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

• Decreto Ejecutivo 38239-MOPT, full text (La Gaceta No. 80, 28 April 2014) — the under-12/under-1.45 m rule, all four group definitions and fitting specifications, the front-seat prohibition and its pick-up exception, the three-part adult-belt test, the exempt-vehicle list, the Categoría B fine and its assignment to the driver, and the visual-observation enforcement method.
• Adobe Rent a Car — infant car seats — the Group II and III weight bands and the Group 0 band, the US$3.39/day seat and US$1.13/day booster, the advance-booking requirement, and the “end of their 12th year” wording that conflicts with the decree.
• GlobalEx CR — 2026 traffic fine table (Circular 220-2025) — the CRC 245,195.06 figure and the CRC 540.62 reduction, with La Nación and El Financiero as the cross-check at CRC 245,195.
• Selvatura Park — Canopy Tour — the age-4 minimum, all four price bands, the Superman weight and height minimums and its add-on prices, the Tarzan Swing and harness limits, and the departure times.
• 100% Aventura — the “6 years & Up” zip-line minimum and its from-price, the “4 Years & Up” hanging-bridge tour, and the “Bus: Not included” note.
• Desafío — Safari Float, Peñas Blancas, Balsa River Class II–III and Sarapiquí Class III–IV — the minimum and recommended ages, the adult and child price bands, the 220 lb weight limit, and the adults-only booking on the Class III–IV river.
• SINAC — Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio — the full non-resident and resident rate table including the US$5 + IVA child rate, and the ID-matching requirement.
• Tabacón Thermal Resort — day pass — under-6 complimentary access, the under-16 supervision rule, the reservation and group-size notes.
• Tabacón Thermal Resort — booking engine — the “children over 5 years old are considered as adults” definition, the “0 - 5 years old” selector, and the 13% sales tax exclusion.
• Hotel Verde Mar — booking engine — the family and quadruple room categories and their 10–12 November 2026 rates.
• Interbus and its booking engine — the child fare at exactly half the adult fare on all ten shared routes quoted for this cohort on 26 August 2026, and the absence of any child-restraint policy on either.
• Tropical Tours Shuttles — routes — read for a child-restraint policy on 26 August 2026; none is published.
• Sky Adventures — tickets — read for Monteverde minimum ages on 26 August 2026; its Monteverde tour detail pages returned 404 or carried no age restriction.
• COSEVI (Consejo de Seguridad Vial) — Estudio sobre uso de SRI, 2024 (PDF) — returned HTTP 403 to every fetch attempt on 26 August 2026, which is why no national compliance statistic appears above.

Last verified: 26 August 2026. The fine amount is reset annually. Tour prices, minimum ages and hotel child policies are set by each operator and change without notice.

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