Sabanilla is a district of the Montes de Oca canton, in the San José province of Costa Rica.
comes from the root word , which translates as savanna and the diminutive suffix -illa, therefore the meaning becomes little savanna, a small area without a thick tree canopy.
By the end of the 19th century, finishes the construction of the , it was a work promoted by a visit to the coffee producing town by Monsignor Bernardo Augusto Thiel, second bishop of Costa Rica between 1880 and 1991.
On August 2, 1915, the Montes de Oca canton is founded by law decree 45, under the Alfredo González Flores administration. On April 24, 1977, Franz Hinkelammert established in Sabanilla the Departamento Ecuménico de Investigaciones (DEI), which is visited annually by many liberation theologians and community culture workers from all the Latin American region.
Sabanilla has an area of km<sup>2</sup> and an elevation of metres.
There are many residential projects completed:
For the 2011 census, Sabanilla had a population of inhabitants.
The district is covered by the following road routes: