Costa Rica proxies
Our catalogue lists seven provinces, 50 cities and 36 networks for Costa Rica. Seven provinces is every Costa Rican province without exception. But the main thing here is different: three large carriers split the country almost equally, Liberty in 22 cities, Tigo Star in 19, the state owned Grupo ICE in 18. None of them reaches half the country, and after Paraguay with 83 percent for Tigo that is a rarity.
What we have in Costa Rica
The price is the same as in every other country we cover.
What Costa Rican addresses get used for
Classifieds
Encuentra24, CRAutos
Retail
Automercado, Más x Menos, Monge, PriceSmart
Tourism
Accommodation prices in Guanacaste and along the coast
Ad verification
How campaigns render for a Costa Rican audience
Local search results
What a Costa Rican user sees
What looks different from outside Costa Rica
We met no bot checks here at all: only two sites closed, and both for technical reasons.
What a residential address gives you here
Cities people ask for here
A city is set with the _city_ suffix. The number beside it is how many networks our pool holds there.
The setups people take here most often
- 01Residential plus San JoséTwenty four networks: nearly the whole choice of the country in one place
- 02Residential with Liberty, Tigo or ICE pinnedThree comparable options, a rarity in our catalogue
- 03Residential plus a Guanacaste cityFor tourism prices, with a caveat about pool depth
Connection strings for Costa Rica
The country is pinned with a suffix in the login. Host, port and password stay the same as for any other country.
A city goes in as a second suffix. In Costa Rica it makes sense to pin both a city and a carrier: here, unlike in most countries of this batch, the second really does give you a choice.
Costa Rican exits, four ways
# rotating, a new address per request
curl -x login_c_CR:password@proxy.sotaproxy.com:10000 https://api.ipify.org
# sticky, the same address for the session
curl -x login_c_CR_s_600:password@proxy.sotaproxy.com:10000 https://api.ipify.org
# pinned to the capital, where twenty four networks are
curl -x login_c_CR_city_sanjose:password@proxy.sotaproxy.com:10000 https://api.ipify.org
# SOCKS5 instead of HTTP
curl -x socks5://login_c_CR:password@proxy.sotaproxy.com:10001 https://api.ipify.orgThe most even market in our catalogue
Liberty Costa Rica sits in 22 cities out of 50, Tigo Star in 19, the state owned Grupo ICE in 18. The gap between first and third is smaller than anywhere else we hold.
Compare that with what we covered in the same batch: in Algeria one network covers a hundred percent of cities, in Egypt ninety one, in Paraguay eighty three. Here the widest carrier reaches forty four percent, and the closest analogue is Slovakia at forty two.
The practical conclusion is a pleasant one. Pinning a carrier in Costa Rica genuinely changes the autonomous system rather than only the name on the invoice. Three comparable options is something most countries in our catalogue do not offer, and for targets that count networks Costa Rica is easier to work than its neighbours.
An honest caveat: all three are present together in only four cities, while at least one of them covers 43 cities out of 50. So the choice exists, though not at every point.
Here the internet is delivered by electricity cooperatives
We have not met this anywhere else. Five networks in the Costa Rican pool belong to rural electrification cooperatives and municipal power utilities: Coopeguanacaste in Nicoya and Santa Cruz, Coopelesca in Quesada and San José, Coopesantos, Coopealfaroruiz in Zarcero, and the JASEC municipal utility in Cartago.
The logic is clear: organisations that ran electricity into rural districts later ran fibre along the same poles. For us that means part of the Costa Rican countryside is connected by a local cooperative rather than by a commercial provider.
For a job this is a plus rather than a minus. Such networks look like an ordinary home connection because that is what they are, and they give an autonomous system different from the three large ones. But they arrive only together with a specific city.
Thirty six networks is a count of names
As usual, one company appears under several entries. Telecable sits under four names and gives three cities by union, Ufinet under three and also three, Claro under two and four. We count the union everywhere.
One entry in the tail is worth knowing in advance: the network of the National University in Heredia. An address on it does not look like a home connection. There is also one Starlink entry.
In 32 cities out of 50 exactly one network is available, so the real choice is concentrated in San José with its twenty four networks, followed by Cartago and Heredia with seven.
Guanacaste: the tourism is there, the pool depth is not
Costa Rica lives on tourism and demand for accommodation prices here is predictable, so let us say honestly what we have and what we do not.
Guanacaste province, the main tourist destination of the country, is represented in the pool by nine cities. But their depth is small: Santa Cruz holds three networks, Nicoya and Liberia two each, while Tamarindo, Belén, Sardinal, Juntas, Cañas and Tilarán hold one each.
Further south along the Pacific coast there is Jacó with three networks. In sum: you can slice geography across the resort districts, but not rotate across networks inside them. If a job needs both at once, plan it around San José and use the resort cities selectively.
Eighteen sites out of twenty open
We checked twenty well known Costa Rican domains from Europe with a full browser header set. Eighteen opened: Encuentra24, CRAutos, the Automercado and Más x Menos supermarkets, the Monge and PriceSmart retailers, the La Nación, CRHoy and Teletica outlets, the Nacional and BCR banks, the tax authority, Grupo ICE, the SUTEL regulator, the Liberty, Tigo and Kölbi carriers, and the national tourism portal.
Two closed, and neither is bot protection. The Gollo retail site answers 405, that is, it rejects the shape of the request itself. The BAC Credomatic bank times out after a redirect.
We did not meet a cf-mitigated header once. Together with Croatia and Bosnia, Costa Rica joins the short list of countries where there is practically no barrier against datacentre addresses, which means an address here is taken for tourism prices, advertising and accounts rather than for access.
What else to account for
The currency is the colón and the nominal figures are large: a dollar buys hundreds. A basket in dollars gives away a foreigner, though in tourist districts the dollar is accepted alongside the local currency and some shop fronts are dual priced.
The language is Spanish. English is widespread in the tourism sector and some sites are bilingual.
There is one time zone and the clocks do not change.
How stable the exits are here
In San José, Cartago and Heredia connections hold well. Across the rest of the country 32 cities out of 50 hold one network, and there is nothing to swap to inside the city.
On size, plainly: 36 networks by name, three of them large, and this is the rare case where three are genuinely comparable. Plan your load against them, and treat the cooperative networks as a local supplement.
Choosing the setup for a Costa Rican target
The short fork.
- You need rotation across autonomous systems: residential plus San José, twenty four networks.
- You need a specific network: pin Liberty, Tigo Star or ICE, here that is a meaningful choice.
- You need tourism prices: take Guanacaste cities, but do not count on rotation inside them.
- You want the look of a countryside resident: look at the cities with cooperative networks, Nicoya, Quesada, Zarcero.
- You want the look of a home subscriber: do not take Heredia blind, the pool there holds a university network.
What a month of Costa Rican work costs
It is counted in traffic. A dollar per gigabyte.
- Price checks across a few hundred listings a day: single gigabytes a month.
- A daily sweep of Encuentra24 or CRAutos listings: tens of gigabytes.
- Account work through a browser: a few hundred megabytes per account per day.
The legal part, stated plainly
Collecting publicly posted prices and processing personal data are different things, and the second is regulated separately.
Communications are regulated by SUTEL. We met no restrictions on foreign access to public sites in our measurement.
A proxy changes none of what you are allowed to do with data. It changes only which country the request appears to come from.
Verifying a Costa Rican exit
Confirm the exit is Costa Rican, that the carrier is the one you asked for, and that the session holds.
Three checks
# 1. is the exit Costa Rican, and on which carrier
curl -s -x login_c_CR:password@proxy.sotaproxy.com:10000 https://ipinfo.io/json
# 2. does a sticky session hold the same address
for i in 1 2 3; do curl -s -x login_c_CR_s_600:password@proxy.sotaproxy.com:10000 https://api.ipify.org; echo; done
# 3. three carriers, three exits: compare what the target sees
curl -s -x login_c_CR:password@proxy.sotaproxy.com:10000 -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code} %{time_total}s
" -L https://www.encuentra24.com/costa-rica-esWhat to read next
Where the numbers come from
The numbers on provinces, cities and networks come from our residential pool catalogue as of 9 September 2026. Service entries with no city name are not counted. We ran the check on twenty Costa Rican domains ourselves from Europe on the same day, with a full browser header set.
- SUTEL, the Costa Rican telecoms regulatorOfficial operator data, if you want to check the shape of the market against our pool.
- Grupo ICEThe state carrier, third by reach in our pool: 18 cities out of 50.
- Liberty Costa RicaThe widest network in our Costa Rican pool: 22 cities out of 50.
- Encuentra24 Costa RicaThe main classifieds platform in the country, open from outside without an address.
Questions people ask before buying Costa Rican addresses
Is there really a genuine choice of carrier here?
Yes, and it is a rarity for our catalogue. Liberty sits in 22 cities out of 50, Tigo Star in 19, the state owned ICE in 18. The widest carrier reaches only 44 percent of the country, whereas in Paraguay Tigo covers 83 and in Algeria the single network covers a hundred.
What are these electricity cooperatives in the network list?
Five networks in our pool belong to rural electrification cooperatives and municipal power utilities: Coopeguanacaste, Coopelesca, Coopesantos, Coopealfaroruiz and JASEC in Cartago. They ran electricity into rural districts and later ran fibre along the same poles. Such addresses look like an ordinary home connection and give an autonomous system different from the three large ones.
Does Costa Rica work for resort prices?
With a caveat. Guanacaste is represented by nine cities, but their depth is small: Santa Cruz holds three networks, Nicoya and Liberia two each, and Tamarindo plus five more cities one each. You can slice the geography; you cannot rotate inside a resort city.
Do Costa Rican sites block foreigners?
No. Of the twenty domains we checked, eighteen opened, including banks, the tax authority and the media. The two that closed are not bot protection: Gollo rejects the shape of the request with a 405, and BAC Credomatic times out. We did not meet a cf-mitigated header once.