San José to Manuel Antonio: Shuttle Times, Bus Fares and Which Departures Reach the Park

Verified on 26 August 2026, on three shuttle operators’ own pages, on TRACOPA’s own fare table, on ARESEP’s official national bus-fare register, and on SINAC’s park page.

Shared shuttles from San José to Manuel Antonio cost USD 59 to USD 65 per person one way. The public bus is CRC 4,450 to Quepos or CRC 5,770 through to Playas de Manuel Antonio — officially regulated fares, in force since 1 July 2026, with ten departures a day.

The bus is a real competitor on this corridor in a way it is not on the La Fortuna one: ten daily departures at a regulated price, against a shuttle costing about six times as much once the two currencies are put on the same footing — see the rate and date we use for that below.

Shuttle departures and fares

All read from each operator’s own page on 26 August 2026, priced per person one way. Those quotes sit beside every other fare we priced for this cohort on our Costa Rica trip cost page.

Easy Ride’s five daily departures are the densest shared-shuttle schedule we found on this corridor: the table above shows Tropical Tours running two and Interbus one. It is also more than the same company offers to La Fortuna, where it runs two, and its first departure of the day is at 04:00.

Manuel Antonio is also one of the few San José routes for which Interbus’s public route table lists a time at all: San José to La Fortuna, Monteverde and Tamarindo all show a dash.

The operator contradicts its own timetable

Tropical Tours states the trip takes “4½ hours”. Its own published departure and arrival times do not:

Both are on the same page. Plan against the timetable rather than the summary line.

Across the three operators there is a full hour of disagreement on the same road: 4.5 hours (Tropical Tours), 4:30 hrs (Interbus) and approximately 3.5 hours (Easy Ride). Two independent operators say four and a half; Easy Ride is the outlier and advertises less. We are not reconciling them — use the figure published by the operator you book.

Which departures can actually reach the park

This is the part a timetable alone will not tell you, because it depends on the park rather than the road.

Manuel Antonio National Park closes at 3:00 p.m., is closed all day on Tuesdays, and sells no tickets at the gate — SINAC’s page states tickets are obtained only through serviciosenlinea.sinac.go.cr, with the purchase code and photo ID shown at the park office, and the English page adds that the ticket “is valid only once.” A missed entry is not recoverable by re-entering later the same day.

Three consequences follow, and all three are arithmetic on the operators’ own published times against SINAC’s own closing time:

• Arriving without a pre-bought ticket means not entering at all. There is nothing to buy on arrival.
• Tropical Tours’ 15:00 departure cannot reach the park the same day. It is timetabled into Manuel Antonio at 20:00, five hours after the park shuts.
• Tropical Tours’ 08:15 departure arrives at 13:00, exactly two hours before the 3:00 p.m. close.

Easy Ride publishes departure times and a duration but no arrival times; on its own approximately-3.5-hour figure, only its 04:00 and 08:00 departures leave a comfortable same-day window. Interbus’s single 14:00 departure, on its own 4:30 duration, does not.

One conflict to be aware of underneath all of this: the live SINAC park page says the park closes at 3:00 p.m., while the printed ICT/SINAC visitor brochure (Version 2023) says 16:00. Both are SINAC-published. Plan around 3 p.m., the maintained source, and know the brochures still print 4.

The public bus, at the regulated fare

ARESEP, Costa Rica’s public-services regulator, publishes the national bus-fare register as open data. We pulled it directly on 26 August 2026, and it matches TRACOPA’s own published fare table to the colón — regulator and operator agreeing independently.

All three take effect 1 July 2026 under resolution RE067IT26/RE050IT26, dated 18 June 2026 and gazetted in La Gaceta 113 on 19 June 2026. We checked the register for a superseding row on either route and there is none; the dataset is live, carrying rows with effective dates as recent as 26 August 2026. The register also records the Quepos–Manuel Antonio route length as 7.02 km.

The local Quepos leg is free for over-65s

ARESEP records the adulto mayor fare on the Quepos–Manuel Antonio route as 0.00. That is the maximum discount in the register, not the absence of one: on this leg an over-65 rides free.

ARESEP states the rule in its own words, and the age with it. Checked on the regulator’s bus-tariff page on 27 August 2026: “En recorridos menores a 25 km las personas mayores de 65 años no pagan el pasaje; en trayectos entre 25 km y menos de 50 km pagan el 50% del pasaje y en rutas con más de 50 km pagan el 75% del pasaje.” Sixty-five is the regulator’s number, not ours — the tariff dataset itself carries only the label tarifa adulto mayor and no age at all.

We also computed the same structure across all 4,785 fare fractions in the register, before finding the policy statement. The two agree exactly, which is why this table is worth more than either source alone — the published rule is not just asserted, it is what the register actually does, row by row. The row counts are the register as it stood on 27 August 2026; it is a live file and the rows move:

The three bands account for every row: 3,310 + 817 + 658 = 4,785. Every one of the 3,310 fractions ARESEP measures at under 25 km carries a senior fare of exactly 0.00, exactly as the published rule says. The Quepos–Manuel Antonio leg is recorded at 7.02 km, which puts it in the free band. The San José legs are far longer, and their senior fares sit at 75% of the regular fare — CRC 3,340 against CRC 4,450, and CRC 4,330 against CRC 5,770 — exactly as that pattern predicts.

Note what this table is and is not. It is the pattern in the regulator’s own dataset, computed by us and checkable by anyone who downloads the same file. It is not a citation of the law that produces it — we did not source the statute, and we are not asserting one. Read it as: this is what ARESEP’s register records, on every row, for every operator.

Getting off at Quepos saves CRC 930

Riding through rather than stopping at Quepos costs CRC 1,320 more on the long-distance fare; the local bus covers the same last leg for CRC 390. Both figures come from the same official register.

TRACOPA’s table also lists two further San José–Quepos fares at CRC 5,380.00 and CRC 7,350.00, both on services it names “San José-Zona Sur Costanera” — one service name, not two. It publishes no journey times against them, so we are not describing them as slower, only as differently routed. “The bus to Quepos” is not one price.

Terminal, timetable and the duration nobody settles

Terminal Transportes Tracopa, Calle 5, Av. 18/20, San José. Phone (506) 2221 4214 and (506) 2777 0263.

Departures Monday to Sunday: 06:00, 08:45, 09:00, 10:30, 12:00, 13:15, 14:30, 16:00, 16:45, 19:30. Returns Monday to Sunday: 04:00, 06:00, 07:30, 09:30, 12:00, 13:00, 14:30, 17:00.

That timetable is published in the park’s own ICT/SINAC visitor brochure — Costa Rica’s park service and tourism board publishing a bus schedule, which is an unusually citable source for one. It gives the journey as 3 hours.

A Costa Rican schedule aggregator gives a different account: Transportes Delio Morales, CRC 4,400, thirteen daily departures from 05:30 to 19:30, and 4 hours. On fare and operator, ARESEP’s concession register settles it — TRACOPA, CRC 4,450. The aggregator’s figure is CRC 50 lower, 1.1% below the regulated fare, and is not the regulated one. On duration nothing settles it: 3 hours and 4 hours both stand, and ARESEP regulates fares, not journey times.

Bus against shuttle, and shared against private

At the Banco Central de Costa Rica reference sell rate of 453.50 colones to the US dollar, dated 26 August 2026, the CRC 4,450 bus fare is about USD 9.81. The shared shuttles at USD 59 to USD 65 are therefore about six to six and a half times the bus fare, for a saving of about one to one and a half hours plus hotel-door pickup and drop-off. The conversion and the multiple are ours and move with the rate; the colón and dollar fares are the regulator’s and the operators’ own and do not. We use that same rate and date everywhere on this site rather than quoting a ratio with no rate behind it.

Tropical Tours publishes both a shared and a private price for this route, so the comparison can be made inside one operator. Its private transfer is USD 200 one way, with the departure time chosen by the customer on 24 hours’ notice and an extra USD 20 for pickups between 9:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m.

Only two figures in that table are Tropical Tours’: USD 65 shared per person and USD 200 private. The shared column is USD 65 multiplied out and the difference column is one subtracted from the other — our arithmetic, on an operator that publishes no passenger-count table of its own.

The crossover falls between three and four passengers, and at three the two are five dollars apart — effectively a tie, decided by whether you want the door-to-door timing rather than by price.

Once you are there, there is no parking at the gate

Relevant to anyone weighing a rental car against a shuttle on this corridor: the ICT/SINAC brochure states “There is no parking for tourists. You will find private parking lots in the premises,” and advises confirming whether a private lot charges by the hour or by the day before leaving the car.

Public transport from Quepos reaches the public beach in the village of Manuel Antonio, which is outside the park boundary. SINAC recommends public transport over driving in peak weeks and warns of wildlife crossing the road.

What the operators don’t publish

These are gaps in the operators’ and authorities’ own published information:

• Interbus’s fare for this route, on the pages a reader lands on. No per-leg fare appears anywhere on interbusonline.com; its route table lists a time and no price. Its itineraries page carries only a starting price for a multi-stop San José–La Fortuna–Manuel Antonio–San José circuit, explicitly “based on shared shuttle availability and current promotions” — not a fare for this leg. Interbus does price this leg on its booking engine, and this page should not be read as saying otherwise: book.interbusonline.com quoted USD 62 shared per adult and USD 276 private per vehicle for travel on 15 October 2026, which is why the table above shows “not published” rather than a figure — a booking-engine quote for one date is not a published fare. That quote and ten others are on our Costa Rica trip cost page.
• Arrival times from Easy Ride or Interbus. Both publish departures and a duration estimate only.
• Whether any quoted shuttle fare includes Costa Rica’s 13% IVA. No operator page states it either way.
• A road distance from San José to Quepos or Manuel Antonio from a Costa Rican road authority. The only official distance in the register is the 7.02 km Quepos–Manuel Antonio leg.
• A static published fare table or timetable for the Sansa San José–Quepos (XQP) flight. The destination page we fetched carried only navigation and contact details. Sansa does price this route on its own booking engine, and this page should not be read as saying otherwise: it quoted USD 89.50 one way in Light and USD 117.00 in Smart for travel on 15 October 2026 — a dated engine quote for one date rather than a published fare, which is why it is not in the table above. That quote and its tax breakdown are on our Costa Rica trip cost page. Aggregators quote a flying time of around half an hour; that was not verified at the airline, so we do not publish it.
• Gray Line Costa Rica’s and Ride CR’s fares. No Gray Line page was successfully fetched; the Ride CR route URL returned 404.

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 the route pages of Tropical Tours Shuttles, Easy Ride and Interbus, and took every fare, departure time, arrival time and stated duration from the operator’s own page. The elapsed-time arithmetic above is ours, computed from Tropical Tours’ own published departure and arrival times, as is the shared-versus-private table.

Bus fares come from a direct pull of ARESEP’s open-data fare register — the regulator’s own file — cross-checked against TRACOPA’s own published fare table, which matches it exactly. The Quepos-versus-through-fare comparison is our arithmetic across three rows of that register, and the senior-fare bands were computed by us across all 4,785 rows of it — then, on 27 August 2026, found stated in the same terms on ARESEP’s own bus-tariff page, which is also where the over-65 qualifying age comes from. The dataset itself carries no age. The terminal address, phone numbers and timetable come from the ICT/SINAC visitor brochure for the park; the competing operator name and duration come from a schedule aggregator, which we cite for that claim and not for the fare.

Park hours, the Tuesday closure, the online-only sale and the single-use ticket come from SINAC’s own Spanish and English park pages. The section on which departures reach the park combines those official closing times with the operators’ own published arrival times, and says so where an arrival time had to be inferred from a duration.

Where operators disagree with each other, or with themselves, we print both figures rather than picking one.

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

• Tropical Tours Shuttles — San José airport to Manuel Antonio — the USD 65 shared fare, the 08:15 and 15:00 departures with 13:00 and 20:00 arrivals, the “4½ hours” claim, the USD 200 private transfer and its surcharges.
• Easy Ride Costa Rica — shared shuttle from San José — the USD 59 fare, the five daily departures and the ~3.5 hour duration.
• Interbus — Our Routes — the 14:00 departure and 4:30 duration, and the absence of a fare.
• Interbus — itineraries — the multi-stop circuit starting price, cited only to show it is not a fare for this leg. The same booking domain quotes per-leg fares route by route; the USD 62 / USD 276 figures for 15 October 2026 were pulled there for this cohort’s trip-budget research.
• ARESEP — Pliego tarifario de autobús, open-data register — CRC 4,450.00, CRC 5,770.00 and CRC 390.00, the senior fares including the 0.00 on route 653, the concessionaires, the resolution and effective date, the 7.02 km route length, and the 4,785 rows behind the senior-fare bands.
• ARESEP — Tarifas de autobús — the regulator’s own statement of the senior-fare rule and the over-65 qualifying age, verbatim: “En recorridos menores a 25 km las personas mayores de 65 años no pagan el pasaje; en trayectos entre 25 km y menos de 50 km pagan el 50% del pasaje y en rutas con más de 50 km pagan el 75% del pasaje.” Read at source on 27 August 2026 — the one figure on this page checked a day later than the rest.
• TRACOPA — Tarifas — the operator’s own fare table matching ARESEP, and the two “San José-Zona Sur Costanera” San José–Quepos rows at CRC 5,380.00 and CRC 7,350.00. Re-read at source on 26 August 2026.
• Banco Central de Costa Rica — reference sell rate — 453.50 colones to the dollar, dated 2026-08-26, the basis for the bus-against-shuttle multiple above.
• SINAC / ICT — Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio visitor brochure, Version 2023 — the Tracopa terminal address, phone numbers, ten daily departures, the 3-hour journey time, the competing 16:00 closing time and the no-parking statement.
• SINAC — Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio (Spanish) — the 3:00 p.m. close, the Tuesday closure and the online-only ticket rule.
• SINAC — Manuel Antonio National Park (English) — the single-use ticket and the ID requirement.
• SINAC — press release, 07.04.2017 — the Quepos-to-village public transport structure, the peak-week recommendation and the wildlife warning.
• BuscoBus — San José to Quepos — the competing Transportes Delio Morales name, CRC 4,400 fare, 13 departures and 4-hour duration, cited here as the claim ARESEP contradicts and as the open half of the duration question.
• Sansa — Quepos destination page — checked for a fare table and timetable; it carries neither. The USD 89.50 / USD 117.00 figures are the airline’s own SJO–XQP flight-results quote for 15 October 2026, pulled for this cohort’s trip-budget research.

Last verified: 26 August 2026 — except ARESEP’s senior-fare rule and the fare-register row counts, re-read on 27 August 2026. Shuttle fares and timetables change without notice; the bus fares above are current from 1 July 2026 until the next ARESEP resolution.

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.