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Cities · Costa Rica · capital
San José, 
Costa Rica
2,171,213 people lived in San José in 2025. It is the 235th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the largest in Costa Rica, where it is the capital.
This is the UN's built-up area, drawn from satellite pictures and census maps rather than from the city limits, and the two can be a long way apart. The rule behind it.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How San José grew
For every 10 people in San José in 1975, there were 39 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 2.2 million people in 2050. It passed a million people between 1985 and 1990.
projected (after 2025) · how sure the UN is: high moderate low
How to read this: read it left to right, 1975 to 2050, one column every five years, the height being people. Hatching marks the projected years. Below, a strip of the UN's confidence: strong colour where the census maps are recent and detailed, pale where they are not, blank where the place was not counted as a city.
People · your family's years · 1975 to 2050
San José through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in San José in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Costa Rica · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 6 cities in Costa Rica in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there. The ringed dot in colour is San José; the grey dots are the rest. The outlines around them are neighbouring countries.
Area and built-up land · km²
How much land it covers
In 2025, San José covered 486 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 113 km² of it. That is 52 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 7 by 7 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 3.1 times its size, and its people are 3.9 times as many.
How to read this: pale is the whole of the city's land; the stronger square inside it is what is actually built on. The three are drawn to the same scale, so a larger square really is more land, and hatching means the year is the UN's projection rather than a count.
Of every 100 people in Costa Rica
Its share of Costa Rica
Of every 100 people in Costa Rica in 2025, 42 lived in San José, which is 2.2 million people.
How to read this: shrink Costa Rica to 100 people and this is what you get. The coloured squares are the ones who would live in San José; the grey ones are everybody else, in other cities, in towns and out in the country.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In the world, 2025
- 231 Kaohsiung Taiwan2,187,455
- 232 Las Vegas United States2,183,655
- 233 Belém Brazil2,180,454
- 234 Cixi China2,177,489
- 235 San José2,171,213
- 236 Madurai India2,138,746
- 237 Palembang Indonesia2,132,576
- 238 Harare Zimbabwe2,117,195
- 239 Banha Egypt2,088,520
How to read this: the figure in front of a name is where that city stands among the 12,138 cities the UN counted in 2025, and each bar is its people, on one scale per list. Numbers are missing where a city has fewer than 300,000 people and so has no page of its own.
Apparatus
Sources and method
The figures for San José are the UN's own, at five-year steps: an estimate for each of 1975 to 2025, then projection to 2050. Projected years are drawn hatched, and the UN publishes no range of uncertainty for a city. What a city means here, how the UN measures one, and why that number can differ from the one San José publishes about itself: how the figures here are put together.
Sources: UN WUP 2025 · Natural Earth · flag-icons. Every source, its licence and how to cite it →
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries