Skip to content
MyVisaPort

🇨🇷 Costa Rica

Costa Rica sorts passports into four groups: visa-free for 180 or 30 days, consular visa, or restricted visa. Below: visa rules for every passport.

Check your visa route for Costa Rica

Pick your passport and where you live — Costa Rica is already filled in.

Visas or permits I hold (optional)

Visa rules for your passport ↓

Explore Costa Rica: things to do, shopping, food and getting around

A short guide based on UNESCO's World Heritage listings.

Places to visit

Summarised in our own words from the linked pages, official tourism boards and transport authorities first; items marked "Not official" come from other guides. Prices and opening times change, so check the source before you go. Last checked 24 Oct 2026.

Common tourist traps and how to avoid them

Scams and risky spots named in official travel advice for Costa Rica, in our own words.

  1. Fake breakdowns and staged collisions

    How it works: Strangers flag down hire cars asking for help, and criminals sometimes cause deliberate collisions to rob drivers.

    How to avoid it: Don't stop for strangers. If a collision looks deliberate, drive on to a safe place such as a police station or garage.

Official advice: FCDO: no areas advised against.

Emergency numbers in Costa Rica

Paraphrased from official travel advice: FCDO travel advice – Safety and security · FCDO travel advice – Warnings and insurance · FCDO travel advice – Getting help (emergency numbers) · FCDO page updated 19 May 2026 · Last checked 24 Oct 2026. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Cash you can bring in and take out

Customs rules for banknotes and other cash when you enter or leave Costa Rica.

Not yet confirmed — check the official customs page of Costa Rica.

Costa Rica visa rules by passport

The general rule for each passport, from official sources. Open a passport to see conditions and options that depend on where you live.

Visa-free95 passports
Embassy visa103 passports

Verified rules for Costa Rica: 198 of 198 passports; awaiting verification: 0; not yet covered: 0. A rule that is awaiting verification or not yet covered is not a negative visa decision: it only means we haven't confirmed it on an official source yet.

Nearby destinations

Official travel advice

Suggest something for our Costa Rica guide

A place, a tip or a correction. We check every suggestion against a reliable source before anything is published.

Don't include personal details. We store the suggestion, the optional name and the page, not your email or IP address. No cookies are set. Privacy

Optional travel offers

Some links are affiliate links. Booking through them costs you nothing extra, and a small commission helps pay MyVisaPort’s ongoing hosting and maintenance costs and keeps the site free of banner ads. We only list services we think are useful, and they never affect the visa information we publish. These offers are not part of the visa guidance above and are never used to rank routes. How partner links work

Plan your trip to Costa Rica

Verify with the embassy before you book. Visa rules change without notice. We link every rule to its official source and last checked it on 24 Oct 2026, but the embassy, official e-visa portal and your airline have the final say. MyVisaPort is not a visa agent and is not affiliated with any government.