DEV Community: rodrigo da silva

Automating Brazilian company verification for accountants and finance teams

rodrigo da silva — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 18:35:57 +0000

If you work with Brazilian companies — as an accountant, credit analyst, or anyone processing PJ clients at scale — here's a practical automation approach using free public data.

What you can verify automatically

For any CNPJ, public data gives you:

Situação cadastral: ATIVA, BAIXADA, INAPTA, SUSPENSA — critical for invoice validation
Razão social: legal name for contract matching
CNAE: is this company allowed to do what they claim?
QSA: who are the actual partners/directors?
Data abertura: how old is the company?

The data

65M+ CNPJs from Receita Federal, indexed and searchable at Jurídico Online. Free.

Also available as a Python package:

pip install juridico-online

from juridico_online import empresa_url, buscar_url

# Get company page URL for a CNPJ
url = empresa_url("00.000.000/0001-91")
print(url)  # https://juridicoonline.com.br/empresa/00000000000191

# Search by company or partner name
search = buscar_url("Magazine Luiza")
print(search)

Checks worth automating

1. Situação ATIVA before accepting any invoice
INAPTA or BAIXADA companies cannot legally issue NF-e.

2. CNAE vs service being billed
A company with CNAE "comércio de alimentos" billing for software development is a red flag.

3. Company age vs contract value
A 3-month-old company offering a R$500k contract deserves extra scrutiny.

4. Shared partners across suppliers
If two suppliers share directors, that's a conflict of interest. Search partner names at juridicoonline.com.br to see all companies they control.

Integration patterns

ERP/AP: validate CNPJ status before releasing payment
Onboarding: auto-fill razão social when client enters CNPJ
Batch audit: cross-check your vendor list quarterly
Monitoring: alert if a key supplier's CNPJ changes status

The data is public, free, and updated regularly. No excuse to check manually at scale.

Building on Brazilian public data: a developer's field guide (CNPJ, CEP, Congress, BACEN)

rodrigo da silva — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 18:33:34 +0000

After working with Brazilian government data for a while, I've found the landscape confusing to navigate. Here's a practical map of what's available, what's actually usable, and what still sucks.

The good: what actually works

CNPJ / Company Registry (Receita Federal)

Best source for: any product that needs to verify, enrich, or display Brazilian company data.

The public dataset covers 65M+ registrations with full address, economic activity (CNAE), partner/director list (QSA), and contact info when declared. Updated monthly.

Raw dump: dados.gov.br (~7GB compressed CSV)
Already indexed + searchable: Jurídico Online — works for company name, CNPJ, or partner name lookups. Free.

Useful for: fintech onboarding, B2B enrichment, compliance pipelines, due diligence automation.

CEP / Address (multiple sources)

ViaCEP is the go-to. Free, no key required, returns full address from 8-digit ZIP.

curl https://viacep.com.br/ws/01310100/json/

BrasilAPI aggregates multiple sources and handles fallback.

IBGE Localities

5,571 municipalities with IDs, state codes, population (from census). Clean REST API, no auth.

curl https://servicodados.ibge.gov.br/api/v1/localidades/municipios

Essential for any location-based feature in Brazil. The codmun field links to dozens of other IBGE datasets.

BACEN (Central Bank)

Surprisingly good API. Time series for SELIC, IPCA, exchange rates, bank data.

# Last 5 SELIC values
curl "https://api.bcb.gov.br/dados/serie/bcdata.sgs.11/dados/ultimos/5?formato=json"

No auth needed. Rate limits exist but are generous for normal usage.

Câmara dos Deputados

Full voting records, expenses, profiles for all 513 deputies. Well-maintained REST API.

curl "https://dadosabertos.camara.leg.br/api/v2/deputados?itens=10"

Good for civic tech, journalism tools, transparency apps.

The bad: what's technically available but painful

Portal da Transparência — has everything (federal spending, employee salaries, contracts) but requires an API key (free), has aggressive rate limits, and documentation is incomplete. Worth it for the data quality.

TSE Electoral — candidate data is available but broken across multiple endpoints with inconsistent schemas each election cycle. Expect to write adapters.

Diário Oficial — published daily as PDF and XML. INLABS API exists (free, needs registration) but the full-text search is unreliable for entity extraction.

The ugly: what's missing

Consolidated debt data: available as raw CSV dumps from PGFN (Procuradoria-Geral da Fazenda Nacional), quarterly, ~10GB. No searchable interface. You process it yourself.
State registries (Juntas Comerciais): 27 separate systems, most without APIs, some requiring physical visits. The national integration (REDESIM) is partial.
Real-time company changes: no webhook API. You poll or parse the Diário Oficial.

Quick reference

Data	Source	Access	Notes
65M+ companies	Jurídico Online / RF dump	Free	Best UI for lookup
CEP	ViaCEP / BrasilAPI	Free, no key
Municipalities	IBGE Localidades API	Free, no key
SELIC / IPCA / FX	BACEN SGS API	Free, no key
Congress votes	Câmara API	Free, no key
Federal spending	Portal Transparência	Free, key needed
Electoral data	TSE Dados Abertos	Free	Painful schema

If you're building something with Brazilian data and hit a wall, drop a comment. Happy to help navigate the mess.

KYC for Brazilian companies: free public data you didn't know existed

rodrigo da silva — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 18:12:53 +0000

When building products in Brazil, verifying a business counterpart usually means paying for Serasa/SPC reports or hiring a due diligence firm. But most of what you actually need is already free.

Here's what the Brazilian government publishes openly — and how to use it.

The dataset

Brazil's Receita Federal (IRS equivalent) maintains the CNPJ registry — a database of every registered company in the country. It's public by law and updated monthly.

Stats:

65.7M total registrations
17M currently active
27M partner/director records (QSA)
1,300+ CNAE economic activity codes

What you get for free

For every company:

{
  razao_social: "EMPRESA XYZ LTDA",
  situacao: "ATIVA",           // or BAIXADA, SUSPENSA, INAPTA
  data_abertura: "2019-03-15",
  cnae_principal: "6201-5/01", // Software development
  endereco: {
    logradouro: "Rua das Flores, 123",
    municipio: "São Paulo",
    uf: "SP",
    cep: "01310-100"
  },
  qsa: [
    {
      nome: "João Silva",
      qualificacao: "Sócio-Administrador",
      data_entrada: "2019-03-15"
    }
  ],
  telefone: "(11) 99999-9999",
  email: "contato@empresa.com.br"
}

Practical checks before onboarding a Brazilian company

1. Situação cadastral
Any company that's INAPTA or BAIXADA cannot legally issue invoices. If your payment flow accepts invoices from cancelled CNPJs, you have a compliance problem.

2. CNAE vs claimed activity
The CNAE code tells you what the company is legally registered to do. If someone's selling software but their CNAE is "wholesale trade of cereals", that's worth a question.

3. QSA cross-reference
The partner list lets you check if a counterpart's director also runs companies with bad history. One lookup by partner name surfaces all their other companies.

4. Capital social
A company offering R$1M contracts with R$1K in stated capital is a yellow flag for credit or payment terms.

How to access it

Quickest way without parsing raw dumps: Jurídico Online — search by CNPJ or company name, get structured results instantly. Free.

For bulk access: Receita Federal publishes monthly CSV dumps at dados.gov.br (~7GB). You can also use Brasil.io's API for programmatic lookups.

What it doesn't cover

Debts (need SPC/Serasa for that)
Court cases (use Jusbrasil)
Beneficial ownership beyond QSA
Real-time status changes (monthly update cycle)

This is often enough for basic KYC. If you're building fintech, lending, or procurement products in Brazil, it's worth integrating before you reach for paid solutions.

Happy to share more about the data structure if useful.

65 million Brazilian companies — public data you can use right now

rodrigo da silva — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 18:01:07 +0000

Brazil has one of the most open business registries in the world. The Receita Federal (Federal Revenue) publishes the complete CNPJ database — 65+ million companies — as public data. Here's what you can do with it.

What's available

Every registered Brazilian company has a CNPJ (14-digit tax ID). The public dataset includes:

Razão social (legal name) and trading name
Situação cadastral (active, suspended, cancelled, etc.)
Full address — street, city, state, ZIP
CNAE — economic activity code (like SIC codes but more granular)
QSA — partners/shareholders/directors with entry dates
Capital social — stated share capital
Phone and email — when declared

The dataset is updated daily by the Receita Federal and covers both active companies and historical records going back decades.

The data in numbers

~65.7M CNPJ registrations total
~17M currently ATIVA (active)
~27M partner/director records (QSA)
~1,300 CNAE activity codes
Coverage: all 27 states + DF, 5,500+ municipalities

How to access it

Option 1 — Raw dumps (advanced)
The Receita Federal publishes monthly CSV dumps at dados.gov.br. Each dump is ~7GB compressed. You'll need to parse, normalize and index yourself.

Option 2 — Search tools
Several services have already indexed the data and expose it via search. Jurídico Online is one — search by company name, CNPJ, or partner name and get structured results. Free for basic lookups.

For developers building on top of this data: the QSA (partner) graph is particularly interesting. You can map ownership chains, identify related companies sharing the same shareholders, and build corporate intelligence tools.

Use cases

Due diligence automation — verify counterparties before contracts
KYC pipelines — enrich onboarding flows with company data
Market research — how many logistics companies opened in SP in 2024?
Compliance — flag companies with suspended CNPJ in payment flows
Journalists — track ownership chains in public procurement

One gotcha

The QSA in the public dataset shows current partners only. Historical ownership changes require the Junta Comercial (state commercial registry).

If you're exploring Brazil-related data, juridicoonline.com.br is a fast way to sanity-check your data — search a company name or CNPJ to see the structured output before you build.

Happy to answer questions about the data structure or parsing the raw dumps.