SMS API for Costa Rica: bulk SMS to +506 numbers

Costa Rica, in Central America, has San José as its capital and is known for its eco-tourism and stable economy. Software systems for tourism, banking, and utilities use SMS to communicate with customers. Messages are sent for booking confirmations, payment receipts, and service alerts. SMS is chosen because it works on all phones, including those in remote areas without internet access.

Costa Rica

Calling code +506

Per SMS segment
$0.00727
Messages for $100
13,755
Local language
Spanish
Encoding
GSM-7 or Unicode

What a bulk SMS send to Costa Rica costs

Every message is priced at $0.00727 per segment to Costa Rica. Texts over 160 GSM-7 or 70 Unicode characters are split into segments, so a two-segment text costs twice as much.
Messages1 segment2 segments
1$0.00727$0.01454
1,000$7.27$14.54
10,000$72.70$145.40
100,000$727.00$1,454.00

Number format in Costa Rica

Mobile numbers in Costa Rica have 8 digits after +506 and no trunk prefix, so the local form 8312 3456 becomes +506 8312 3456 in the to field.

Alphabet and segments

Texts in Spanish fit 160 GSM-7 characters per segment until they use á, í, ó and ú: those letters are outside GSM-7 and turn the message into Unicode at 70 characters per segment (67 per part). For short alerts, write them without those letters to keep one segment; for longer texts, the console names each letter that changed the encoding.

Time zone and timing

Costa Rica keeps UTC-6 all year with no clock change, so 09:00 in Costa Rica is always 15:00 UTC. send_at takes UTC or any ISO 8601 offset, and the console scheduler converts from your own time zone.

Send to Costa Rica with one request

The answer comes back at once with the message id, the country the number was matched to (CR) and the price. A delivered or failed event follows on your webhook, and a failed message is refunded.

For a list, send the same text to up to 10,000 numbers with POST /v1/batches, or a personal text per number in messages.

curl https://bulksmsapi.cc/v1/messages \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $BULKSMSAPI_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"to": "+50683123456", "text": "Your Northwind code is 482913. It expires in 10 minutes."}'

What developers send to Costa Rica

Common integrations that call the SMS API for recipients in Costa Rica.

Payment receipts

Electricity providers in Heredia send SMS receipts to customers after they pay their monthly bills online.

Service alerts

Water utilities in Alajuela notify residents via SMS about scheduled maintenance and service interruptions.

Event reminders

Universities in Cartago send SMS reminders to students about upcoming exams and registration deadlines.

SMS to Costa Rica: questions

More answers on accounts, payments and the API are in the FAQ.

How much does it cost to send bulk SMS to Costa Rica?

Each message segment to Costa Rica costs $0.00727. A plain text of up to 160 characters is one segment, so 1,000 one-segment messages cost $7.27 and 10,000 cost $72.70. Failed messages are refunded to the balance.

How many SMS to Costa Rica does a $100 top-up send?

$100 covers about 13,755 one-segment messages to Costa Rica at $0.00727 each. The first top-up adds a bonus on top, which raises that number. The balance is shared by every country, so the same top-up also pays for messages anywhere else on the list.

How do I write Costa Rica numbers for the API?

Send them in international format with the plus sign: +506 8312 3456 becomes "+50683123456" in the to field. The API also accepts spaces, dashes and a 00 prefix and cleans them, and numbers that cannot be read are listed in set_aside instead of being charged.

What language is best for SMS in Costa Rica?

Spanish is the preferred language for SMS in Costa Rica. Messages should be straightforward to cater to a wide audience.

Are there peak times for SMS traffic in Costa Rica?

SMS traffic peaks during holiday seasons like Christmas and Semana Santa, when tourism and local travel increase.

Start sending to Costa Rica

Create an account, top up from $40 and send to Costa Rica at $0.00727 per segment, from the console or with one API call.

SMS API Costa Rica: Bulk SMS to +506 From $0.00727 | BulkSMSAPI