Código de Endereçamento Postal

A street name indicating a Brazilian Postal Code (13010-111) at its bottom, in Campinas.

Postal codes in Brazil follow a nationwide scheme known as CEP (Código de Endereçamento Postal) (Postal Addressing Code) introduced in 1972 as a sequence of five digits. To keep mail services up with economic growth, a three-digit suffix was added in 1992.

Most cities with population around 100,000 and above have a CEP assigned to every public place and to some high-occupancy private spaces, like major commercial buildings and large residential condos. Small towns are assigned a general code, usually with attributed town code followed by the suffix -000.

Postal areas

The digits have the same function since 1970: to locate a region, state, county, district, neighborhood or street. Brazil was divided into ten postal areas, ranging from 0 to 9, counting from the state of São Paulo, in the opposite direction clockwise.

• 0xxxx: Gran São Paulo
• 1xxxx: São Paulo
• 2xxxx: Rio de Janeiro and Espírito Santo
• 3xxxx: Minas Gerais
• 4xxxx: Bahia and Sergipe
• 5xxxx: Pernambuco, Alagoas, Paraíba and Rio Grande do Norte
• 6xxxx: Ceará, Piauí, Maranhão, Pará, Amapá, Amazonas, Roraima and Acre
• 7xxxx: Distrito Federal, Goiás, Tocantins, Rondônia, Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul
• 8xxxx: Paraná and Santa Catarina
• 9xxxx: Rio Grande do Sul

Address structure

Correios, Brazil's mail service, requests (but not requires) that the code be placed in the last line of the address and although totally unrequired (and even unwanted by automatic sorting machines) the acronym CEP is usually placed before the code, e.g. CEP 29145-586.

Valid examples for mailing in Brazil are:

Rua Governador Roberto Silveira, 108
Centro
Macaé - RJ
27910-050

or

Rua Remanso, 35
Tingui
Rio de Janeiro - RJ
23080-060

Any CEP code can be obtained from Correio's website, if you have a Flash plugin (in Portuguese).

The lowest postal code is 01001-000 and the highest one is 99990-970.

See also

• List of postal codes in Brazil