What is a CNPJ? Brazil's company tax ID, explained in English.

The CNPJ (Cadastro Nacional da Pessoa Jurídica, National Register of Legal Entities) is the identifier the Receita Federal, Brazil's federal tax authority, gives to every legal entity: limited companies (Ltda.), corporations (S.A.), co-operatives, associations, foundations, building condominiums, public bodies and individual entrepreneurs. It is the key that every invoice (NF-e), bank account, public contract and regulator list in Brazil refers to, which is why company data in Brazil is joined on the CNPJ.

How to read a CNPJ

A CNPJ has 14 characters, written 12.345.678/0001-95:

• Root (CNPJ básico, first 8 characters, 12.345.678): identifies the company. All its establishments share it.
• Order (ordem, next 4, 0001): numbers the establishment. 0001 is usually the head office (matriz); branches (filiais) get 0002, 0003 and so on. The open data also carries an explicit head-office flag, which is the field to trust.
• Check digits (dígitos verificadores, last 2, 95): computed with a weighted modulus-11 over the first 12 characters, so a typo is caught before any lookup.

In the 2026-10-10 release, our Brazil build (active, individual entrepreneurs removed) has 10,933,117 establishments: 9,844,825 head offices and 1,088,292 branches, under 9,844,981 distinct roots.

The alphanumeric CNPJ (from July 2026)

Instrução Normativa RFB 2.229/2024, published in October 2024, lets the Receita issue CNPJs with letters: from July 2026 the first 12 positions may hold 0-9 or A-Z, while the 2 check digits stay numeric. The modulus-11 rule is unchanged; each character is replaced by its ASCII code minus 48, so a digit keeps its value and A counts as 17. Existing CNPJs are not renumbered, and both formats are valid side by side.

What it means in practice: a CNPJ is now text, not a number. Systems that store it as an integer, strip leading zeros or validate it with ^\d{14}$ will reject new companies. The October 2026 open-data release still carried only 1 alphanumeric CNPJ (1 active), so most pipelines have not met one yet. Ours validates [0-9A-Z]{12}[0-9]{2} and the check digits on every build.

Registration status (situação cadastral)

The register never deletes anyone: closed companies stay in it with their status. Of the 73,809,379 establishment rows in the 2026-10-10 release, only 38.5% are active. Filter on status 02 before counting anything.

All establishment rows of the Receita release 2026-10-10, by registration status.

Who has a CNPJ (and why a raw count misleads)

Of the 28,380,653 active establishments, 16,717,023 are individual entrepreneurs (legal nature 2135, which includes the MEI micro-entrepreneur regime). They are people, not companies: their legal name is usually the owner's own name, often with the personal taxpayer number (CPF) appended. Any company list built for sales or analysis should drop them, both for relevance and because under Brazil's LGPD their record is personal data.

Natural-person legal natures removed from the LatSouth Brazil build (active establishments in the release).

What remains is still broader than most buyers expect. The most common main activities among the 9,844,825 active companies (head offices) are building condominiums (8112-5/00, 334,977); combined office administrative services (8211-3/00, 283,565); social rights advocacy associations (9430-8/00, 252,579); holding companies of non-financial institutions (6462-0/00, 240,120). Building condominiums, associations and holding companies all hold a CNPJ, so filter on the CNAE code and legal nature that match your buyer.

Activity codes: CNAE

Each establishment declares one main activity and any number of secondary ones, coded in CNAE 2.3, the Brazilian version of the UN's ISIC Rev.4. A subclass code such as 6201-5/01 reads: division 62 (computer programming), class 6201-5 (with its check digit) and subclass 01 (custom software development). The 21 CNAE sections (A to U) are the same as ISIC's, so a CNAE code maps to an international industry. All 1,359 CNAE subclasses in English, with their ISIC class and how many companies use each →

Company size (porte)

The register carries a size code self-declared for tax purposes, not a headcount: 01 micro-enterprise (ME), 03 small enterprise (EPP) and 05 other (all larger companies), with 00 for not informed. Use it as a lower bound of scale, together with share capital (capital social) and the number of branches.

Looking up one CNPJ vs. working with all of them

For a single company, the Receita's own Comprovante de Inscrição page returns the current registration card. For lists, counts or enrichment, the monthly open data is the source: 7.8 GB compressed, without headers and in Latin-1, which is why loading it is a project of its own.