We read all 72.8 million records of Brazil's federal business registry and turned them into a 23-page market report and an Excel workbook: 8.25 million active companies by sector, city and growth, and the 10,000 largest operating companies with phone, website and corporate email.
How many companies exist in your sector, in which states and cities, and how fast the base is growing.
The 10,000 largest operating companies and the 1,000 largest networks, with phone, website, corporate email and corporate shareholders.
Openings, closures, 10-year survival and foreign capital, from the registry itself.
Every figure traced to Receita Federal and IBGE, with the methodology written out.
A report to understand the market, a workbook to slice it your way, and a list to act on it.
Seven of the 23 pages, with the details blurred. Four full pages come in the free sample.
1,192,264 companies opened in 2025, against 598,808 in 2019. Tap or hover the bars for each year.
Legal and accounting firms last longest. Restaurants have the lowest 10-year survival among large sectors. The report breaks survival down for every sector and every year since 1995.
207,700 of 425,107 companies.Company openings, 2025 vs 2019.
Share of active company establishments by state.
Companies with at least one shareholder from:
Straight answers from the November 2026 edition. Last updated 5 November 2026.
In 2026, Brazil has 8.25 million active companies (legal entities), operating 9,189,905 establishments. Adding 13.7 million MEI micro-entrepreneurs, 3.0 million other sole proprietors, non-profits and public bodies, the federal registry holds 28.1 million active business registrations.
1,192,264 companies opened in 2025, 2.0 times the 598,808 of 2019, against 428,941 formal closures.
By share capital declared to the registry, the largest operating companies are Petroleo Brasileiro S.A. Petrobras, Banco do Brasil S.A., Caixa Economica Federal, Banco Bradesco S.A., Vale S.A. and Itau Unibanco S.A..
São Paulo, with 2,759,771 active company establishments, 30% of the national total. Santa Catarina has the highest density, 73 companies per 1,000 inhabitants.
33,818 active companies have at least one shareholder domiciled abroad, led by the United States (8,660 companies), Portugal and Italy.
Ranked, cleaned and in English. Holdings and single-project companies ranked apart, placeholder phones and accountants' emails removed, emails that identify a person removed, every remaining email tagged by type. Below, six of Brazil's own large companies as they appear in the file, contacts partly hidden.
| Company | Headquarters | Phone | Website | Share capital | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Petroleo Brasileiro S.A. PetrobrasOil and natural gas extraction | Rio de Janeiro, RJ | +55 21 2166-•••• | c•••@petrobras.com.brFinance, tax or legal | petrobras.com.br | R$ 205.4 bn |
| Localiza Rent A Car S.A.Rental and leasing | Belo Horizonte, MG | +55 31 2323-•••• | t•••@localiza.comFinance, tax or legal | localiza.com | R$ 20.0 bn |
| Banco do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul S.A.Financial services and holdings | Porto Alegre, RS | +55 51 3215-•••• | s•••@banrisul.com.brGeneral | banrisul.com.br | R$ 8.7 bn |
| Construcoes e Comercio Camargo Correa S.A.Civil engineering and infrastructure | São Paulo, SP | +55 11 2787-•••• | g•••@camargocorrea.comGeneral | camargocorrea.com | R$ 3.2 bn |
| Alpargatas S.A.Textiles | São Paulo, SP | +55 11 3847-•••• | a•••@alpargatas.com.brCompany mailbox | alpargatas.com.br | R$ 3.1 bn |
| Marcopolo S.A.Motor vehicles and parts | Caxias do Sul, RS | +55 54 2101-•••• | m•••@marcopolo.com.brCompany mailbox | marcopolo.com.br | R$ 3.0 bn |
The federal registry is an administrative file built for tax control, not for market research. Turning it into data you can trust took weeks of engineering and a working knowledge of how Brazilian companies are registered.
Receita Federal's CNPJ registry, which every Brazilian business must join, and IBGE for population and city names. No scraping, no estimates.
Every definition, filter and limitation is described in the report, from what "active" means to how the rankings were cleaned.
No individuals: no partner names, no personal ID numbers, no email that identifies a person. Sole proprietors appear only in aggregate, in line with Brazil's data protection law.
Business lists for Brazil are usually sold by quote, from around €400 per 1,000 companies, with no analysis. This edition gives you 10,000 companies, the full market report and every sector in every city, for less than a single day of consulting.
Piafter is a data and digital studio based in Macaé, Rio de Janeiro. We read Brazil's official registries in the original, clean them with the care of people who know how they are built, and publish them in English for teams sizing, entering or selling into the Brazilian market.
Our starting point is Brazil's official federal business registry (CNPJ), kept by Receita Federal, where every business from a corner shop to Petrobras must register. We processed all 72,789,631 records of the registry: classified every company by sector, size and type, separated sole proprietors, removed personal contacts, filtered implausible figures, ranked the companies and wrote the analysis, with population from IBGE. The figures, rankings and classifications in this edition are our own work.
The November 2026 edition is built on the latest registry release we processed. Openings and closures are complete through 2025, and monthly openings run to July 2026. The exact release date is stated in the methodology, so you always know what you have.
A single 22 MB download with a 23-page PDF report, an Excel workbook with 15 sheets, two CSV files (the 10,000-company list and the sector-by-city table) and the license. The workbook opens in Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers or LibreOffice; the CSVs load straight into Python, R or any BI tool.
Yes. The free sample has 25 complete rows of the company list, with every column, and four full pages of the report. No email or sign-up needed.
By share capital declared to the registry, the only size measure it carries for every company. Because the registry contains typing errors, we only rank companies classified as medium or large, outside the small-business tax regime, and with more signs of real operation the higher the capital. Holding companies and single-project companies (SPEs) are ranked separately, in a list of the 2,000 largest, so the main list shows operating businesses. A third list ranks the 1,000 companies with the most establishments.
The phone and email each company registered with the tax authority, and its website. Phones are usually the switchboard (95% of the list has one). Emails are corporate mailboxes, tagged by type: general, company mailbox, or finance, tax or legal. They are not named decision-makers: emails that identify a person are removed on purpose. For most companies the website (70%) is the fastest route to the right person.
The lists contain companies only. Sole proprietors and micro-entrepreneurs (MEI) are counted in the statistics but never listed, because in Brazil their registry record is the owner's personal data. There are no partner names, no personal ID numbers and no email addresses that identify a person. Corporate shareholders are shown; individual shareholders never are.
Yes. The license covers internal use by the purchasing organization: your whole team can use it for analysis, planning, market sizing and outreach. Reselling or republishing the dataset is not allowed.
Checkout is handled by Stripe, in US dollars, with card, Apple Pay or Google Pay. Right after payment you land on your order page with the download button; the link works for 3 days and 3 downloads. Stripe emails your receipt with the order number, and you can add your company name, address and tax ID at checkout. Lost the page? Write to us and we send a new link, free.
Every edition is covered by our quality guarantee: if the files are corrupted, incomplete or differ from what this page describes, write to us within 7 days and we fix them, or refund you if we cannot. Want to see the format first? The free sample has 25 complete rows and four full pages of the report.
Sector editions for oil and gas, technology and construction are in preparation, each with the full list of companies in the sector. The national report already includes a two-page spotlight on each.
8.25 million companies, measured and ranked. One download, ready today.
