About
What SurfSchools.com is - and isn't
A surf school discovery platform, starting with Costa Rica. This page explains how listings work, how we make money, and the things we refuse to do.
The idea
Picking a surf trip involves two decisions most sites blur together: which town fits you, and which schoolto learn with once you're there. SurfSchools.com exists to make both decisions honestly - starting with Costa Rica's 16 surf towns, and expanding to more countries only when we can cover them properly.
We're early and we're small. The directory currently lists a handful of schools per town rather than hundreds - because we'd rather grow a list we can stand behind than scrape one we can't.
How school listings work
A Listedschool is compiled from public information: its own website, established reputation, and traveler resources. The school hasn't confirmed its details with us. For Listed schools we deliberately don'tshow star ratings, review counts, or booking buttons we can't trace to that exact operator - prices shown are typical published prices, not live quotes.
A Verifiedschool has confirmed its details with us directly - lesson types, prices, contact routes, and (where relevant) which online booking listing is actually theirs. Verification is free and always will be for basic listings. As of today, verification outreach is in progress and no school carries the badge yet - we'd rather show you that honestly than fake it.
How we make money
Some links on this site - bookable lessons and "things to do" activities - go to our partner Viator, a TripAdvisor company. If you book through those links we may earn a commission. You pay the same priceas booking on Viator directly; the commission comes out of Viator's side. Affiliate links open in a new tab and are labeled.
Two link types exist and we label them differently on purpose: "Book on Viator" means a specific, bookable product. "Search on Viator" or "Find on Viator"means we're sending you to a live search - useful, but not a specific product, and we won't pretend otherwise.
What we refuse to do
- No fake or unsourced reviews. If you see a rating here, it names its source (e.g. “on Viator”). No source, no stars.
- No routing a named school's booking button to a different operator's product. If we can't confirm a booking link belongs to that exact school, the school doesn't get one.
- No paid rankings. No school or town pays to appear, rank higher, or look better. If sponsored placements ever exist in the future, they will be clearly labeled.
- No pretending search results are bookings. Generic search links are labeled as search, always.
- No thin destination pages for countries we haven't researched. Costa Rica first, done properly.
Run a school we've listed?
If we've listed your school and anything is wrong - or you want to confirm your details and get verified - we want to hear from you. Corrections are made quickly and verification is free.
For surf schools: get listed or verified