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Flights · SFO → SJO

San Francisco to San José

Best fare, round trip

$935

Too little price history on this route to compare — the fare is shown as found.

Found
Depart
Sun 3 Jan
Return
Thu 7 Jan
Stay
4 nights
Flight
2 stops · 7.5h
Airline
Alaska Airlines
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Cached fare — the booking search re-prices live before you pay.

Costa RicaSan JoséNobody comes for the capital — they come for two coasts, volcanoes and cloud forest, all within four hours.Best windowDec–AprAirportsJuan Santamaría (SJO)Every route into San José

Your own dates

Search San Francisco to San José for the days you want.

Trip options: Round-trip · Economy · 1 adult
Travellers: 1 adult

Fare seasonality

When this route gets cheap.

The cheapest itinerary we are tracking makes 2 stops and takes about 7.5 hours outbound, on a 4-night trip — ticketed under Alaska Airlines, which on a connecting fare need not operate every leg. At $935 for 4,920 km each way, that works out to about $95 per 1,000 km flown. That is above the $43 per 1,000 km typical of medium-haul fares here. Across the 5 departure cities we track at a similar distance from San José, this fare ranks 5th — 2.3× the $398 we hold from Boston. For context, the middle fare among the 12 routes of similar length we watch out of San Francisco is $495. We have 1 month of cached prices for this route so far — not enough to call a fare cheap or expensive, so we publish the price without a percentage. Fare history here is still too short to name a cheap season. The best time to be in San José: Dec–Apr.

The 3 days we hold a cached fare for

Press a date to compare its fares

The median cached fare across this calendar is 12% lower than when tracking began on 8 Aug — $785 then versus $691 now, across 8 recorded snapshots. This is a calendar-level trend, so an individual deal above can be lower. The lowest single day we have seen here is $635, on 25 Jan '27.

These are the only days we have a cached price for on this route so far — not the only days it flies. The search above covers any date.

Cached fares · checked 13 Oct 2026

We are still collecting this route's months — 1 month of cached prices so far, too few to chart.

Route facts

Airports
SFO · Oakland (OAK) · San José (SJC) ↔ Juan Santamaría (SJO)
Flight time
≈7.5 hours outbound
Distance
≈4,920 km each way
Airlines on the board
Alaska Airlines
Itineraries
Connections on current fares
Best months to visit
Dec–Apr

Good to know

SF → SJO, answered.

How far in advance should I book SF → San José?

We do not publish a number for this, because we cannot measure it yet. Answering it honestly means watching the same departure date on this route over many weeks as it approaches, and that archive is still filling up — so any "book N days ahead" figure here would be borrowed from somewhere else rather than measured. Our guide Why flight prices change covers the levers we can measure.

Are there nonstop flights from San Francisco to San José?

The current cheapest fares involve a connection, ticketed under Alaska Airlines. We hold no nonstop fare on this route right now, which does not mean none flies — search your exact dates to see what does.

Are these prices guaranteed?

No — these are cached fares found on real searches (this one on 17 October). Airlines reprice constantly, so the booking search re-checks the live price before you pay. Fresher finds are far more likely to still be available.

Next step

Sleeping in San José?

Lock the flight first — then compare stays for 3–7 Jan '27 · 4 nights.

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