Manuel Antonio National Park Tickets: Do You Need Them in Advance?

Yes. Tickets for Manuel Antonio National Park are sold only online, by SINAC, the state agency that manages the park, for a set date and entry time. Each ticket carries the visitor’s passport number, and the gate doesn’t sell them. In the dry season and over the holidays, days sell out, so buy yours as soon as your dates are fixed.

This site is not SINAC and sells no park tickets. It’s an independent guide, and the walks listed here are private operators’ tours sold through GetYourGuide. Some of them include the ticket: the operator buys it for you in SINAC’s system once you send each guest’s passport details.

Mystique Nature Tours’ guided walk is one of those. Its listing says admission is included in the price, and it asks for each guest’s full name, passport number and nationality through GetYourGuide’s chat as soon as you book. It’s from about $25 on the booking platform when we checked, rated 4.8 over 582 reviews.

How SINAC sells them

Tickets are sold only on SINAC’s online services site, serviciosenlinea.sinac.go.cr. You register an account, choose a date and an entry time, and enter each visitor’s name and passport number. SINAC’s ticket rules for Manuel Antonio, as we read them in October 2026:

• One purchase per user per day, with at most six tickets in it.
• No refunds.
• If SINAC closes the park in an emergency, such as dangerous weather, you reschedule by emailing reservaciones.sinac@sinac.go.cr.

Costa Rican nationals and residents pay a lower fee in colones.

Sold-out days and the daily cap

The park admits at most 2,501 visitors a day. The cap was raised to that figure in May 2024, after the Punta Catedral trail was rebuilt, and older numbers still circulating in blogs are out of date. On busy days it is reached. The weeks of Christmas and New Year sell out well in advance, and a Spanish travel blog that arrived in December found no tickets left until the following week. Numbers climb from about 15 December, and Easter week is busy too.

Operators’ advice on how far ahead to buy varies. The sound plan is to buy as soon as your dates are fixed, especially from mid-December to April and around Easter.

Tuesdays, entry times and passports

The park is closed every Tuesday. Some older SINAC pages and blogs still say Monday; they are out of date. It opens at 7 am, the beaches are cleared from 3 pm, and everyone is out by 4 pm.

Your ticket carries an entry time. Arrive within it; the last entries are in the early afternoon. Bring the original passport whose number is on the ticket, because SINAC checks visitors’ identity documents against their tickets at the gate. A ticket is valid only once, so you can’t leave and come back on it. Rangers also check bags for food and single-use plastic, and the trails guide has the rest of the rules.

Which walks include the ticket

No listing says how much of its price is the ticket.

Prices from our October 2026 data check of the booking platform; operators use seasonal pricing, so treat them as the shape of the market, not a quote.

Two other tours sold here aren’t park visits at all. The night walk runs in Sukia, a private reserve, with its own entrance fee included, and the mangrove kayak paddles the Isla Damas estuary north of Quepos.

If you’d rather not deal with SINAC’s site yourself, book a walk that includes the ticket and send the passport details the day you book.

See dates for the walk with the ticket included

Look-alike websites and touts

Several private websites have names that sound like the park’s own. They are businesses, not SINAC, and SINAC’s own site is the only place that sells the ticket itself. This site’s name sounds official too, which is why we say plainly what it is: an independent guide. Local business owners told the newspaper La República that foreign tourists had ended up paying $80 to $100 to get in, against a fee of about $20.

On the road to the gate you may also meet people dressed as rangers. Real rangers wear SINAC uniforms and work only inside the park, and anyone on the road selling tickets in a ranger’s shirt is not one of them.

Not sure you want a guide at all? Do you need a guide? covers walking the park on your own. The best time to visit lists this season’s closed Tuesdays and the busiest weeks, and the homepage compares every walk sold here.

Ticket rules, fees, hours and passport checks from SINAC; the daily cap from Costa Rican press reports of May 2024; walk details from the listings. Checked October 2026.