Tamarindo, Costa Rica

There are 127 tropical destinations in our catalog, and Tamarindo's numbers hold their own: a 95/100 sun score at its December peak, when rain interrupts roughly 25% of days. For a coastal escape in the tropics, the data is a good starting point.

March is the heat peak, averaging 34°C highs; October is the cool end, when nights dip to around 24°C. On the rain ledger, February is the safest bet at a 7% chance of a wet day, while September climbs to 97%. The genuinely warm window — average highs of 24°C or better — covers January–December.

Season by season (on the northern calendar), spring brings 33°C highs with 48% rain-day odds, summer 30°C at 85%, autumn 29°C at 87%, and winter 32°C at 14%. Winter wins on the numbers and autumn loses them; everything in between is a trade-off between warmth and crowds. A practical compromise is December — the edge of the warm window, averaging 31°C with a 95 sun score.

Best months to visit Tamarindo

Our month-by-month scoring puts December first (95/100), with January (88) and February (82) close behind. Anything in January–September and November–December clears our 70-point reliability bar. Skip October if sunshine is the point — it bottoms out at 68/100.

Put against its 126 tropical peers in December, it lands in the sunnier half of the group, ahead of 94% of them.

Month-by-month breakdown for Tamarindo → · More destinations for December →

The live forecast backs this up: of the next 16 days, 3 look mostly clear and 5 carry meaningful rain risk, in a 23–33°C band. Today's cached sun score is 88/100.