New park fees in 2024: what SINAC changed and why

The fee increase that wasn’t entirely a surprise

Costa Rica’s national park fees had been increasing gradually for several years before the 2024 revision. The Sistema Nacional de Áreas de Conservación (SINAC), the government body that manages the national park system, had been facing a widening gap between operational costs and fee revenue as visitor numbers recovered post-pandemic and maintenance requirements grew.

When the new fee schedule was announced in late 2023 and took effect in early 2024, it prompted a wave of online commentary from travelers comparing the new numbers to what they had expected. Some of the reaction was calibrated (“this seems reasonable”); some less so (“Costa Rica is getting too expensive”). We think both the increases and the reaction deserve a clear-eyed look.

The new numbers

SINAC administers two tiers of park fees: foreign visitor prices and resident/national prices. The increases primarily affected the foreign visitor category.

Manuel Antonio National Park: the foreign visitor fee moved from $18 to $22 per person per day in 2024. This was in addition to the online reservation requirement (implemented during the pandemic and maintained since) that charges a small booking fee on top of the entrance.

Corcovado National Park: the base entrance fee for foreign visitors rose to $15 per person, but this is a partial picture — the mandatory certified guide requirement adds $25-60 per person depending on guide and group size. The effective all-in cost for a Corcovado day visit from Drake Bay or Puerto Jiménez: $90-130 per person including guide, transport, and fees.

Marino Ballena National Park (Uvita area): fee increased to $8 per person, remaining one of the more affordable major parks.

Rincón de la Vieja National Park: $20 per person for foreign visitors. The day trip from Liberia operators typically include this in a bundled price.

Tortuguero National Park: $20 per person for the park access component (separate from the boat and lodge packages that most visitors use).

Poás Volcano National Park: $22 per person, with the advance reservation system through the SINAC portal required. The reservation-only access had been in place since 2017 but the fee stepped up significantly.

Irazú Volcano National Park: $17 per person.

Cahuita National Park (Kelly Creek entrance): remains donation-based, though the Puerto Vargas entrance charges $3 per person. This is a specific exception — SINAC has maintained the donation model here due to community agreements with the local Afro-Caribbean fishing community.

Why the increases happened

SINAC provided public justifications for the 2024 fee revision that are worth understanding rather than dismissing.

The operational cost argument is real: maintaining trails, ranger stations, biological monitoring programs, and visitor infrastructure across 28 protected areas requires funding. The Sirena ranger station at Corcovado, for example, houses research scientists and conservation staff full-time in one of the most remote and logistically difficult locations in Central America. The cost of keeping that station operational has increased significantly with fuel, food supply logistics, and staff compensation.

The SINAC system received approximately 4.6 million visitors across all areas in 2023 — a record. Higher visitor numbers mean higher maintenance requirements. A mudslide on a heavily trafficked trail at Manuel Antonio, for example, costs significantly more to remediate when the trail is used by 500 people per day than when it was used by 200.

There is also an explicit conservation pricing argument that SINAC has made publicly: pricing that is too low relative to the value of the experience can encourage overuse that the ecosystem cannot support. The fee increase, in this view, is also a demand management tool.

We are sympathetic to this argument, with one caveat: the fee revenues need to demonstrably flow to the parks themselves, not to general government coffers. Costa Rica’s track record on this has been mixed historically, and conservation advocates have repeatedly pushed for ring-fenced funding mechanisms that SINAC only partially delivers.

Drake Bay: Corcovado NP and Sirena Station tour

The practical impact for trip planning in 2024

For a couple doing a standard 10-14 day itinerary with visits to four or five national parks, the fee increases add approximately $40-80 total to the trip budget — meaningful but not, honestly, budget-breaking for the majority of international visitors who have already committed to Costa Rica’s higher-end prices for accommodation and transport.

Where the impact is more significant is at the budget end: backpackers who were counting on national parks as high-value, low-cost activities find the gap between a park day and a tour day narrowing. A day at Manuel Antonio — $22 entrance, $30 guide (recommended), local shuttle $10, lunch $10 — adds up to $72 per person before you have bought a beer. That is approaching day-tour pricing.

The tour bundling effect is also worth noting: many operators who sell national park experiences — day trips from San José, guided Corcovado packages — have absorbed the fee increases into their tour prices without separately advertising the change. If a tour you were comparing at 2023 prices has gone up $15-25 in 2024, part of that is the SINAC fee revision, not pure operator margin.

What we tell people who ask

The parks are worth the fees. We say this without reservation. Manuel Antonio’s white sand beach inside the park, its reliable sloth sightings, its beach monkeys — these are genuinely extraordinary. Corcovado’s biodiversity is, without exaggeration, some of the best wildlife observation available anywhere on earth. The SINAC fees, even at 2024 rates, compare favorably to equivalent national park experiences in North America or Europe.

What we do advocate: use the online reservation systems properly, book ahead, and verify fees on the SINAC website (sinac.go.cr) before travel. The numbers on any blog post — including this one — will be outdated within months; SINAC updates its fee schedule periodically.

Manuel Antonio NP: guided tour with entrance fee included

The reservation systems in 2024

The reservation-only access at several major parks — Poás, Manuel Antonio, in practice Corcovado through guide quotas — has become normalized. For travelers who plan ahead, it is a simple booking step. For spontaneous travelers who show up hoping to walk in, it is an increasing source of frustration.

Our practical advice: if your itinerary includes Poás, Manuel Antonio, or a Corcovado day trip, treat the park reservation exactly as you would treat a restaurant reservation in a popular city. Book three to four weeks ahead for high season (December through April). Book one to two weeks ahead for shoulder season. Green season (May through November) offers more walk-up flexibility, though even then Poás requires advance online booking.

The combination of mandatory advance booking, higher fees, and certified guide requirements at Corcovado particularly has changed the logistics of that specific park visit in ways that reward early planning. Read our Corcovado guide for the current requirements.

For travellers who do not want to navigate the SINAC reservation portal themselves — particularly those landing late and tackling Manuel Antonio early in the trip — booking a guided tour that includes a guaranteed park ticket is the most reliable workaround. The reservation, transport, and naturalist guide are bundled, and your slot is locked in before you arrive in the country.

a Manuel Antonio guided tour with a guaranteed park ticket — one of the few formats where the SINAC reservation is held by the operator on your behalf, eliminating the risk of arriving and finding the daily quota filled.

For a complete view of what Costa Rica travel costs across all categories in the most recent year, see our 2026 pricing update.

The parks are still the best reason to come to Costa Rica, and the fees — even updated — do not change that fundamental reality.