Manuel Antonio National Park: Tickets, Fees and Hours
Verified on 26 August 2026, on SINAC’s own Manuel Antonio park page and on SICORE, the government online system that sells the tickets.
There are no gate sales at Manuel Antonio. SINAC’s park page states that tickets for this park are obtained only through its website. The non-resident adult fee is USD 16 plus IVA — USD 18.08 with Costa Rica’s 13% sales tax. The park is open 07:00 to 15:00 and is closed on Tuesdays, open Wednesday through Monday.
The purchase rules are where this park departs from the rest of the system: SINAC caps individual buyers at Manuel Antonio to six tickets and a single transaction per user per day, tighter than every other protected area it sells online except Chirripó.
Entry fees
SINAC publishes the non-resident figures on this page before tax. The tax-inclusive column is those published figures multiplied by 1.13.
| Visitor | SINAC’s published figure | With 13% IVA |
|---|---|---|
| Non-resident adult, over 12 | USD 16 + IVA | USD 18.08 |
| Non-resident child, 2 to 12 | USD 5 + IVA | USD 5.65 |
| Non-resident child under 2 | free | free |
| National / resident adult, over 12 | CRC 1,600 | as published |
| National / resident child, 6 to 12 | CRC 500 | as published |
| National / resident child under 6 | free | free |
| Adults 65 and over, with ID | free | free |
Residents pay in colones — CRC 1,600, which at the reference rates quoted on our currency page works out at roughly a fifth of the non-resident fare. The child bands differ by residency: the non-resident child rate runs from age 2, the resident child rate from age 6 — set out beside the tour operators’ own minimum ages on our Costa Rica with kids page.
Costa Rican park fees carry 13% IVA on top of the headline number, so a figure quoted without tax is not what you pay.
Hours, and the Tuesday closure
| Open | 07:00 to 15:00 |
| Closed | Tuesdays |
| Open days | Wednesday to Monday |
The Tuesday closure is a change from the park’s earlier seven-day schedule, though the announcement of it is undated. The Costa Rican Tourism Institute (ICT) announced that the park would begin opening on Mondays and closing Tuesdays from 1 April, with ticket sales for the new pattern opening on 12 March, and stated the Tuesday closure is for maintenance by the protected-area authorities. The ICT article does not give a year. We can confirm the current pattern — SINAC’s park page showed the Tuesday closure when we checked it on 26 August 2026 — but we cannot date the changeover, so treat 1 April as the changeover date and not as a current-year event.
How the reservation system works
Tickets are sold through SICORE, SINAC’s online purchase and reservation system, at serviciosenlinea.sinac.go.cr. Manuel Antonio is on both of the lists SINAC publishes for this system, which are not the same size: the SICORE portal’s own FAQ names 11 areas sold through it, while SINAC’s separate Compra y Reserva en Línea page names 12 areas requiring an advance online reservation — the same eleven plus Los Quetzales. Both pages leave the difference unexplained, and we are not picking a total. Río Celeste (Tenorio) is on both lists too, and SINAC prices that park tax-inclusive where it prices this one before tax. Lookalike commercial sites exist; the government portal is the one SINAC’s own park page links to.
The rules SINAC publishes in its SICORE FAQ, and how Manuel Antonio differs from the rest of the system:
| Rule | Manuel Antonio | Elsewhere in the SINAC online system |
|---|---|---|
| Tickets per transaction, individual buyer | 6 | 10, except Chirripó at 4 |
| Transactions per user per day, individual buyer | 1 | — |
| Tickets per transaction, travel agency | 10 | 20 |
| Transactions per day, travel agency | 5 | — |
SINAC gives the reason for the single-transaction limit as “por motivos de seguridad y control.”
Three further rules decide whether the ticket you hold is usable:
- Tickets are personal and non-transferable. SINAC’s answer on changing the name and identification number on a reservation is “Por ahora no es factible, la entrada es personal.” You must present ID at the entrance, and the ticket is valid once only.
- No refunds if you cannot attend. The only relief SINAC offers is a date change when the park closes for an emergency, requested at
[email protected]. Bad weather is explicitly not grounds for a refund. - Entry is by time slot, and visitors are expected to arrive at the time they selected. SINAC says the slots exist to spread visitor flow and avoid concentrations.
The daily visitor cap is unresolved — we are not publishing one
SINAC’s pages and the SICORE portal carry no current daily cap (aforo), checked 26 August 2026. The portal has a “National Parks Availability” section, but it exposes no capacity figure without logging in.
What can be established is that the figure has been repeatedly revised and litigated:
| Figure | Status |
|---|---|
| 1,120 per day | the permitted capacity the Constitutional Court (Sala IV) enforced in 2023, when it ruled the State had allowed daily visits to exceed installed capacity by 267.9% |
| 1,568 per day | announced by MINAE on 18 July 2023 after the court-ordered improvements |
| 1,800 per day | the next revision, in force until May 2024 |
| 2,501 per day | announced 29 May 2024 by MINAE minister Franz Tattenbach, up from 1,800 |
The 2,501 figure is the most recent officially announced one we found, and it is a government announcement reported by a news outlet rather than a SINAC primary page. Treat every figure in that table as historical rather than as the live cap. We are not averaging them and we are not picking one.
What the fee covers
Admission only. SINAC states that guiding, equipment rental, food and transfers are not included and must be arranged separately. The in-park guide association contact published on SINAC’s page is (506) 8671 1813 / [email protected] — a guide contact, not a ticket-booking line.
SINAC’s own rules list prohibits outside food and drink (with exceptions), feeding animals, pets, weapons, fishing and hunting, umbrellas, tents and hammocks, smoking, alcohol and drugs. The bag check at the entry booth, the absence of visitor parking and the warning about guides hired outside the gate are on our Manuel Antonio and Quepos page. The SICORE FAQ adds that prepared food is generally allowed but gas stoves, grills and campfires are not, and that all rubbish must be carried out.
Free-admission days
24 August — National Parks Day — is free for all visitors, under decree No. 16847-MAG-MEP (1986). The third Wednesday of each month is free for residents and nationals only, under fee decree 38295-MINAE. Both apply system-wide across SINAC protected areas.
What SINAC doesn’t publish
These are gaps in the official published information, not ours:
- The current daily visitor cap. Not on the park page, not on the portal. See above.
- How far in advance tickets sell out. No primary source states it. It circulates widely in secondary travel writing; we are not repeating an unsourced figure.
- A reservations phone number or email specific to Manuel Antonio. A number and a
[email protected]address circulate on third-party sites but appear on no SINAC page we checked. The general SICORE contact is[email protected]. - The year of the closure-day change. The ICT announcement gives 1 April with no year.
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 read SINAC’s own English park page for Manuel Antonio — the source for the fees, hours, closure day, online-only ticketing, guide contact and in-park rules — and SINAC’s SICORE portal and its published FAQ, the source for the ticket and transaction limits, the non-transferability rule, the refund policy, the time slots, the free-admission days and the composition of the 11-park online system. The closure-day change comes from the ICT’s own announcement. The cap history comes from a Delfino.cr report of the government’s May 2024 announcement, which also carries the earlier court-ordered and pre-challenge figures.
Where the official sources are silent — the current cap above all — we say so rather than reaching for a number that is easy to find and impossible to verify.
Last verified: 26 August 2026. Park fees, hours and reservation rules change by decree and without notice.
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
- SINAC — Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio — entry fees for every category, opening hours, Tuesday closure, online-only ticketing, ID requirement, guide association contact, in-park prohibitions.
- SINAC — Compra y Reserva en Línea — the competing list of 12 reservation-required areas, which adds Los Quetzales to the portal’s 11.
- SINAC — Sistema de Compra y Reservaciones en Línea (SICORE) — the official ticket portal; FAQ item 1 for the 11 areas sold through it; FAQ items 6, 8, 9, 13, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23 and 28 for time slots, refunds, free days, what the fee covers, non-transferability, food rules, and the ticket and transaction limits for individuals and agencies.
- Instituto Costarricense de Turismo — Manuel Antonio to open Mondays beginning April 1 — the closure-day change, the 12 March ticket-sales date and the maintenance reason. No year stated.
- Delfino.cr — Gobierno aumenta a 2.500 personas el aforo diario del Parque Manuel Antonio — the 29 May 2024 announcement of 2,501 per day (the headline rounds it to 2.500; the article body states 2,501), and the 1,120, 1,568 and 1,800 figures that preceded it.
Written by Estuardo Enriquez. This site is independent, has no affiliate relationship with any operator or agency named here, and is not connected to any previous owner of this domain.