Start with the question everybody asks first — how many Americans and Canadians actually live in Costa Rica — and you run straight into something uncomfortable.
Nobody knows. Not approximately. Not within a reasonable margin. The official figures that exist disagree with each other by a factor of six, and the census that would have settled it did not work.
That is not a reason to stop asking. It is a reason to understand what the numbers are and are not, because almost every article you will read on this subject quotes one of them as though it were settled fact.
The gap between two official numbers
Costa Rica’s last complete national census was in 2011. It counted just under 386,000 foreign-born residents in the whole country, and of those, roughly 16,000 were from the United States.
The United States government’s own country profile, meanwhile, has for years put the number of private American citizens living in Costa Rica at around 100,000.
Sixteen thousand against a hundred thousand. Both official. Both from bodies with no reason to be careless.
The explanation is that they are not counting the same thing. A census counts people who are resident at a fixed address on a fixed night and who answer the door. An embassy estimate tries to capture everyone present — including the large population that Costa Rica is genuinely unusual for having:
- People living here most of the year on tourist entries rather than residency.
- Snowbirds who spend the northern winter here and are simply not present on census night.
- Property owners who are here for months at a time without ever being counted as residents.
- People who hold residency, are here permanently, and did not fill in a census form.
The real figure is somewhere in that gap, and the honest position is that the gap itself is the finding.
The 2022 census, which would have told us
Costa Rica ran a census in 2022. It should have replaced every figure above.
It did not, and the reason is stated plainly in INEC’s own coverage report. Of 1,769,081 dwellings in the country, only 1,074,258 were successfully enumerated — 60.7%. Another 7.7% of households refused to take part, and 19.2% were visited but never completed. INEC’s own description is of rejection and non-response rates never before seen in a Costa Rican census.
Because of that, INEC did not publish census results at all. It published a population estimate: 5,044,197 people, broken down by province, canton, sex and age group.
Not by nationality. Not by country of birth. Those tables do not exist.
So when you read a confident 2024 or 2025 figure for how many Americans live in Costa Rica, it is worth asking where it came from — because it did not come from a census.
And there is no Canadian number at all
The situation for Canadians is simpler and worse. There is no equivalent Canadian government estimate in the public domain, and the 2011 census figure for Canadian-born residents is small enough to be swamped by the same undercount that affects the American one.
Anyone quoting a precise number of Canadians in Costa Rica is quoting somebody’s guess. There is usually a real observation underneath it — Canadians are conspicuous in Guanacaste, in the Central Valley, and on the direct winter flights out of Toronto, Calgary and Montreal — but the observation is not a count.
What Costa Ricans actually think — which is measured
Here is the part that is properly researched, and it is far more useful than any population figure.
In January 2025 the Instituto de Estudios Sociales en Población (IDESPO) at the Universidad Nacional published a national survey specifically about how Costa Ricans perceive residents from the United States, Canada and Europe. It surveyed 801 people by telephone between 26 July and 6 August 2024, with a margin of error of 3.5% at 95% confidence.
It is the closest thing that exists to an answer to “how do Ticos really feel about us”, and it is not the answer either the optimists or the pessimists expect.
Read those findings together and a clear picture emerges. It is not hostility. Eighty-three per cent saying you integrate is a warm number by any international standard.
But the goodwill attaches to people, and the grievance attaches to land and prices. Costa Ricans are not, in the main, unhappy that you are here. A large majority are unhappy about what has happened to the coast, and to what a young Costa Rican family can afford.
Two further findings fill the picture in: 56.0% identify Guanacaste as where this population is most concentrated, and 75.9% assume most of them are American.
What that means if you are the one moving
This is more actionable than it looks.
Spanish is the single biggest lever you control. The most common criticism in the survey is the one you can personally do something about, and it is the fastest way to move from being part of a category to being a neighbour. It does not have to be good Spanish. It has to be attempted Spanish.
Where you buy matters more than what you buy. The resentment in that survey is concentrated on coastal land, and it is strongest in exactly the places where the marketing is loudest. Buying in a town rather than a gated coastal development is not only usually cheaper — it puts you in a very different social position.
Guanacaste is not the whole country. Three-quarters of respondents assume the foreign population is American and more than half assume it is in Guanacaste. Those assumptions travel with you. The Central Valley, the Southern Zone and the Caribbean side are all different experiences.
The retiree assumption cuts both ways. Forty per cent see this population as pensioners; a quarter see it creating jobs. If you are working, hiring, or spending locally, that is quietly appreciated and rarely assumed.
Being here and being resident are not the same thing
The undercount described at the top of this article has a cause worth naming: a very large share of the North Americans living in Costa Rica have never regularised their status. They live here on repeated tourist entries.
That works until it does not. It leaves you outside the health system, outside the banking system in any serious way, unable to hold certain things in your own name, and exposed to an overstay fine of US$100 per month that accrues quietly and is collected at the worst possible moment.
Residency is not out of reach for most people who are actually living here:
- Pensionado — for anyone with a guaranteed lifetime pension of at least US$1,000 per month. That includes a disability pension.
- Rentista — for anyone who can demonstrate US$2,500 per month of qualifying unearned income.
- Investor — if you plan on buying a home for over US$150,000, you can apply under the Investor category.
Most people who have been here for years on tourist entries qualify under one of those and have simply never been told so.
If you are already living here, get counted properly
There is a certain irony in a country that cannot count its foreign residents. Some of that is the census. A good deal of it is that a great many people here are not in any system that would count them.
CRIE — Costa Rica Immigration Experts handles residency applications, renewals, permanent residency and citizenship for people from the United States, Canada and elsewhere, including a great many who have been in Costa Rica for years without status.
See the types of residency in Costa Rica, or get in touch and find out which category you already qualify for.
Population figures are from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos (2011 census and 2022 coverage report) and the United States Department of State country profile. Survey findings are from IDESPO, Universidad Nacional, January 2025. General information only, not legal advice.