Costa Rica Digital Nomad Visa: Rules, Income and How to Apply for Expats

Guides · Costa Rica

Two years, no tax on foreign earnings and demand that has fallen away — but the small print on residency and on your spouse is where most people get it wrong.

The Costa Rica digital nomad visa is open, and used by far fewer people than you have probably read. It gives you a year in the country, extendable once, with no Costa Rican income tax on foreign earnings. It is not residency and it will not lead to a passport. This guide sets out the rules, the money and the paperwork as they stand in September 2026.

What the permit actually is

The formal name is Estancia para Trabajador o Prestador Remoto de Servicios. It was created by Ley 10008, approved on 11 August 2021 and published on 1 September 2021.

A second law, Ley 10208 of 22 April 2022, settled the reading of one article and added another. The rulebook is Decreto Ejecutivo 43619, published on 8 July 2022.

Estancia means stay, not residence, and that one word decides most of what follows. You get up to one year, and you may extend once for one more year.

To renew you must show that you have spent at least 180 days inside the country. The decree traces that number to article 15 of the law.

It is not a residency track. The months do not count towards permanent residence or citizenship, and moving to a residency category later starts that clock from zero.

The income test and the proof behind it

You need US$3,000 a month if you apply alone, and US$4,000 a month if you bring dependants. Amounts are converted at the central bank official selling rate.

Watch one error that is repeated everywhere. The Instituto Costarricense de Turismo, the national tourism board, tells remote workers on one page that families need US$5,000.

Its own requirements page gives US$4,000, and so does the decree. Use US$4,000.

Proof means bank statements covering the last year plus a sworn declaration. A certification from a public accountant or notary works instead, and only that certification needs an apostille.

The pay must come from a person or company outside Costa Rica. The work itself may be employed or freelance, as long as it is done by digital means.

Fees, filing and how long it takes

The application is US$100 a head, paid to the Government, and every dependant pays the same. Applicants who send the money through Banco de Costa Rica should allow about US$15 in commission.

The DIMEX card, the identity document issued to foreigners here, costs a further US$90. Budget about US$205 a person.

Two more charges carry no fixed figure in the decree. One is levied under article 251 of the migration law and named in your approval resolution.

The other is a one-off guarantee deposit, set by a separate decree. Ask immigration for both figures in writing before you budget.

You file online through the immigration department’s Trámite Ya platform. The other route is in person, at the Gestión de Extranjería service counter in San José or at a regional office.

The decree gives immigration 15 calendar days. Within five days it may send one single written list of missing items, and you then have eight working days to answer.

Immigration lawyers quoted by the business daily El Financiero put the real wait nearer four months. Once approved, you have three months to collect your DIMEX card.

The benefits, and the one everybody gets wrong

The headline benefit is full exemption from the tax on profits, the Costa Rican income tax. You are in no case treated as a habitual tax resident.

Money received from abroad does not count as Costa Rican-source income. The decree goes further and frees you from filing duties before the tax office altogether.

Here is the part almost every guide misses. That exemption does not extend to your family group, so a spouse who wants it must qualify as a principal applicant.

Three smaller benefits are real and useful. Your home driving licence stays valid for the whole stay, and you may open savings accounts in the national banking system.

You may also carry in a computer, phone, tablet, camera and one sound device as luggage. There is no import tax and no procedure to complete first.

The limits are firm. You may not do work or provide services other than the ones you were authorised for.

Doing so cancels the status and every benefit. The import taxes you were spared then fall due, with interest and penalties.

A false document is treated separately. It costs immediate payment of the exonerated taxes plus a fine of 25 percent.

Who actually uses it, and what the numbers show

Take-up is small. Immigration data analysed by the tourism school at the Universidad Hispanoamericana records 683 applications from 2022 to 2024.

Of those, 589 were approved, an approval rate of 86 percent. Approvals peaked at 317 in 2023, then halved in 2024 to about 158.

Applications fell harder in the same year, by 60 percent. The study points to newer rivals such as El Salvador, and to security, housing and the cost of living.

That matters because you will read the opposite. One English-language site wrote in December 2025 that the scheme had already brought thousands of remote workers.

Fewer than 600 principal permits were approved in its first three years. Treat any bigger number you meet online with care.

Family means your spouse or partner, children under 25, children of any age with a disability, and older adults who live with you.

Each family member needs their own medical policy of at least US$50,000, valid for the whole authorised stay.

More: Costa Rica news in English, every day from The Rio Times.

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