Map of Costa Rica

Costa Rica is located in North America. Its territory lies in the northern and western hemispheres, centred near 10.0° N, 84.0° W. It shares land borders with 2 countries — Nicaragua and Panama — and also has its own coastline. Within North America, a continent of 23 countries bordered by the Arctic Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, Costa Rica is mapped here in full with its borders, capital and key facts.

Costa Rica shares land frontiers with the following 2 countries. Select any neighbour to open its own map.

Costa Rica covers about 51,100 km² (19,730 sq mi). That makes it the 126th-largest country in the world by area and the 9th-largest in North America, larger by area than 14 of the continent’s 23 countries.

It is home to a population of roughly 5,309,625, the 124th-largest in the world and the 11th-largest in North America, accounting for about 0.9% of the continent’s people. With that land area, Costa Rica has an average population density of about 104 people per km². Among the 23 countries of North America it stands 11th by population and 9th by area.

The seat of government is San José, and the official currency is the Costa Rican colón (CRC, ₡), and the main official language is Spanish. Traffic drives on the right, and the country observes the time zone UTC-06:00.

Costa Rica carries the ISO country codes CR and CRI, dials on the international calling code +506 and uses the .cr internet domain.

Costa Rica shares its land borders with 2 countries, each of which is mapped in full on this site. Listed from the most to the least populous, here is how they compare.

Its neighbours are Nicaragua (capital Managua, about 6,803,886 people) and Panama (capital Panama City, about 4,064,780 people).

By area, Costa Rica is larger than 0 of these neighbours and smaller than 2 of them, which places its size in context along its own frontiers. Open any neighbour above to see its capital, borders and full set of facts on its own map.

The interactive map above is centred on 10.0° N, 84.0° W and opens at zoom level 7, framing Costa Rica within North America. A marker pin sits at the country’s approximate geographic centre; drag the map or use scroll and pinch to move from a regional overview down to the streets of San José. The map is drawn from OpenStreetMap data, the same open dataset used across this site, so place names, roads and coastlines stay consistent from one country to the next.

Costa Rica lies about 1,110 km from the equator, in the northern and western hemispheres of the globe. Zoom out to see how its coastline and land borders meet the wider region.

Costa Rica keeps a single standard time zone, UTC-06:00. That figure is the country’s offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the modern reference that for everyday purposes matches Greenwich Mean Time, so local clocks sit -06:00 relative to UTC before any seasonal daylight saving change.

The official currency is the Costa Rican colón (CRC, ₡).

The official language is Spanish, which is what appears on signs, documents and many of the place labels you will see on the map.

For practical reference, vehicles drive on the right-hand side of the road, the international dialling code is +506 and websites commonly use the .cr internet domain.

In short, Costa Rica is a coastal country in North America, sharing land borders with 2 countries. Its capital is San José. Costa Rica has a population of about 5,309,625 and covers around 51,100 km² (19,730 sq mi), ranking it 124th in the world by population and 126th by area. The interactive map, facts table and questions on this page bring those details together in one place for Costa Rica.

The flag of Costa Rica is composed of five horizontal bands of blue, white, red, white and blue. The central red band is twice the height of the other four bands. The national coat of arms is placed in a white elliptical disk toward the hoist side of the red band.

The flag of Costa Rica is shown above as an emoji, rendered by your device’s own font; see it alongside every other nation on the flags of the world page.