Costa Rica

Costa Rica sorts every nationality into one of four entry groups, and the group decides both whether a visa is needed and how long the border officer may grant. The first group - most of western Europe, the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, and a long list besides - enters without a visa for up to 180 calendar days. The part that gets left out of most guides is that this stay is not extendable. An extension exists only for someone who was given less than ninety days at the border, and it can only take them up to ninety. The second group enters visa-free for thirty days, extendable to ninety. The third and fourth groups need a consular or a restricted visa obtained before travelling, and get thirty days, extendable to ninety.

Costa Rica's income route is the rentista subcategory of temporary residency. The migration law sets the figure itself, in dollars: US$2500 a month, from abroad or from a bank in the Costa Rican national banking system. The regulation turns that into an evidential test, and in February 2023 that test was tightened substantially - proof now has to come from a bank, in Costa Rica or in the country where the income arises, or failing that from a Costa Rican certified public accountant. The directorate's own published requirement list has not caught up: it still shows the 2012 wording, which accepted a document from any competent authority. The income must be guaranteed for at least two years, and it covers the applicant, the spouse and children under twenty-five.

The pensionado subcategory is the oldest and cheapest way into Costa Rican residency, and the threshold is a quarter of the rentista's: US$1000 a month. The statute and the regulation describe the pension differently, and the difference matters in both directions. Article 81 of the migration law requires a monthly, permanent and stable pension coming from abroad. Article 100 of the Reglamento de Extranjería requires a pension held for life and says nothing about where it comes from. So the regulation adds a condition the statute does not impose - a life annuity rather than any permanent pension - while dropping one the statute does impose. The migration directorate publishes the regulation's wording.

There is no general work visa. A foreigner works in Costa Rica either as a temporary resident in one of the employment subcategories - company executive, manager, representative or technical staff; scientist, professional, intern or specialised technician; athlete; press correspondent - or under one of the special categories the law reserves for specific labour, such as the specific-occupation worker. In every case a temporary resident may only do the paid activity the directorate authorises, and the directorate decides on the advice of the labour ministry. That advice takes the form of a published list of occupations in which the ministry recommends refusing authorisation outright because local unemployment in them is above frictional. Executives and technical staff of established companies carry a salary floor fixed by statute: the legal minimum wage for the position plus twenty-five per cent.

Costa Rica's investor route asks for US$150,000 in Costa Rican real estate, registrable movable property, shares, securities, productive projects, projects of national interest, venture capital funds or sustainable tourism infrastructure. That figure replaced the US$200,000 the Reglamento de Extranjería had set since 2012. The replacement was done by Ley 9996 and its regulation, which repealed the regulation's investor articles outright and put the new requirements in their place. Ley 9996 also attached tax exemptions to the category, and article 12 of that law let them be claimed only during its first five years - a window that closed on 14 July 2026. The migration threshold sits in the regulation rather than in the repealed articles, and the directorate was still publishing US$150,000 in October 2026; the tax package that used to come with it is no longer open to new applicants.

Foreign students are not residents. They fall into the law's special categories, which article 95 says generate no right to permanent residency at all, so years spent studying do not count towards settling. The statute allows a stay of up to two years at a time, renewable while the course continues and capped by the length of the course; the regulation that implements it grants one year renewable. Paid work is prohibited outright unless the directorate authorises it in a justified case, and the only money test is a certified public accountant's statement of where the student's means come from - or, for a scholarship holder, the awarding institution's certificate of the amount, the term and what it covers.

Costa Rica has no ancestry visa. Nothing in the migration law's list of temporary-residency subcategories, and nothing in its special categories, is opened by having a Costa Rican grandparent or great-grandparent. What exists is narrower and wider at once. Narrower: permanent residency for a foreigner with a first-degree blood tie to a Costa Rican, which the law defines as parents, minor children or adult children with a disability, and minor siblings or siblings with a disability - no grandchildren, and no adult child without a disability. Wider: the Constitution treats a child born abroad to a Costa Rican mother or father by birth as Costa Rican by birth, provided they are registered, which is a claim on nationality rather than on residence.

Marriage to a Costa Rican leads to temporary residency, not to permanent residency, and the grant is expressly conditional. Article 73 of the migration law gives one year, and renewal each year requires proof that the couple are actually living together. After three consecutive years of that, the status becomes permanent. The law also requires something unusual at the front end: both spouses must demonstrate that they know each other, obligatoriamente y fehacientemente, before entry or stay is granted at all. A marriage celebrated abroad has to be registered with the Costa Rican Civil Registry, and a de facto union needs a judge's recognition rather than a declaration.

Costa Rica is a member of the Central American Integration System but not of the CA-4 free-movement agreement that links Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua. There is no regional residency route: nothing in the migration law's list of temporary-residency subcategories or special categories is opened by being Central American, and the migration directorate's visa directive treats Costa Rica's neighbours less generously than it treats most of Europe. Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Belize sit in the second entry group with thirty days; Nicaragua sits in the third and needs a consular visa. The only regional preference in Costa Rican law is in the Constitution, and it is about nationality: five years of official residence instead of seven for Central Americans, Spaniards and Ibero-Americans by birth.

Costa Rican naturalisation is decided by the electoral tribunal rather than by the migration directorate, and it is free. The Constitution asks for seven years of official residence, or five for Central Americans, Spaniards and Ibero-Americans who hold that nationality by birth, and two for the spouse of a Costa Rican who has also lived in the country for those two years. On top of the period, article 15 requires good conduct, a known trade or means of living, the ability to speak, write and read Spanish, a comprehensive examination on the country's history and values, a promise of regular residence and an oath to respect the constitutional order. The detail that catches people out is in the tribunal's own regulation: the clock starts on the day the migration status was granted, not on arrival, and it is interrupted by any absence of more than three months.

Costa Rica taxes income from Costa Rican sources. Residence therefore decides less than it does in a worldwide system, but it still decides who files, who is withheld from at resident rates and who can claim a treaty. The test for an individual is more than 183 days in the fiscal period, continuous or not, counting the days of entry and exit. Short trips abroad are counted into the 183 unless the taxpayer produces a tax residence certificate from another country, and the regulation draws the line at thirty continuous days: a trip longer than that is not counted at all. The evidence is not self-declared - the regulation says the reference is the migration movement record held by the migration directorate. Two statutes carve people out expressly: remote workers under Ley 10008 are never habitual residents for tax, and investors, rentistas and pensioners under Ley 9996 are not automatically resident.

Costa Rica runs a single public health system through the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social, and for residents joining it is not a choice. The migration law makes affiliation a condition of renewing the residency card, for permanent and temporary residents alike, and it requires the cover to have run without interruption from the moment residency was granted - so a gap in contributions is a gap in the migration file. The directorate asks for proof of affiliation at every renewal appointment, naming the voluntary scheme and the employer's payroll slip as the usual forms. Non-residents are in a different position entirely: remote workers must carry private medical cover of at least US$50000 for the whole of the authorised stay, and nothing in the visitor rules requires any health cover at all.

Costa Rican law says almost nothing about whether a foreigner may open a bank account. There is no provision in the migration law, and none in the residency regulations, that entitles a resident to one or tells a bank what to accept. The single statutory statement we found is in Ley 10008, the remote-worker law: its beneficiaries may open savings accounts in banks of the national banking system, subject to the anti-money-laundering statute and to whatever rules the banking superintendency issues. Everyone else is left to each bank's own customer-identification policy, which is a fact about that bank rather than about Costa Rican law - and which is why the identity document the migration directorate issues, the DIMEX, matters as much as the residency itself.

Costa Rica rewrote this rule in December 2024. A foreign licence is now valid for driving in Costa Rica for a period identical to the stay you have been authorised, whatever that stay is - so a first-group visitor stamped in for 180 days may drive for 180 days, and a remote worker on a one-year stay may drive for the year. The old three-month waiting period before a resident could convert a foreign licence is gone: anyone with an approved migration status, or who has merely filed an application for one, may convert as soon as they like. The conversion skips the basic road-safety course and the practical driving test. And a licence shown on a phone must be accepted where the issuing country issues it that way.

For five years Costa Rica offered new investors, rentistas and pensioners a substantial customs package: one duty-free shipment of household goods, up to two vehicles free of import duty, tariff and value added tax, duty-free professional and scientific instruments, and twenty per cent off the property transfer tax. The package came from Ley 9996, and article 12 of that law allowed it to be taken only during the law's first five years. The law was published on 14 July 2021 and took effect on publication, so the window closed on 14 July 2026. Those who claimed inside it keep the benefits for ten years and must hold the goods for that long. Remote workers have a separate and much narrower exemption, limited to the computing and telecommunications equipment they need for their work, and it lasts only as long as the status.