Apostille in Brazil: Who Issues It and What It Costs

The counter is a private office, and that is the surprise

Most countries route apostilles through a ministry. Brazil routes them through the offices that already carry public faith on the street corner — and said so itself, in English. In its Article 6 declaration to the Hague Conference, the government explained that the Judiciary supervises notarial activity here and that, therefore, "legal, notarial and registration authorities will have competence to issue certificates".

A cartório is not one thing. The 1994 law lists seven kinds of officeholder: a tabelião de notas (a notary) and a registro civil das pessoas naturais (the civil registry of births, marriages and deaths) are separate offices. What they share is a status — private professionals vested with public faith, admitted by public examination and supervised by a judge, as our CPF guide describes. That supervision is what put this Convention in their hands.

Since 2021 the chain reads: the National Council of Justice (CNJ) is the competent authority for apostilles on documents produced in Brazil, and delegates the act to registry officeholders and public bodies; courts apostille only judicial papers and international adoption files. The rulebook then drops the limits you would expect — any registered notary or registrar may apostille, "regardless of the specialty of the service or of territorial jurisdiction". A birth certificate from Rio can be apostilled in São Paulo, by an office that issues no birth certificates.

What it certifies, and what it does not replace

An apostille authenticates the origin of a public document: the signature, the capacity of whoever signed, the seal. It says nothing about the content: it does not confirm that a diploma reflects real study. And it replaces one thing only — the Convention defines legalization narrowly, as the formality by which the destination country's consular agents attest signature, capacity and seal. A recognised signature, a certified copy and a translation stay separate acts with separate prices.

Brazil did not sign this treaty in 1961; it acceded, and the Convention only entered into force here on 14 August 2016. Since then a Brazilian document bound for another contracting party is legalized by apostille alone.

Take the headline number from the depositary, not from Brazil: at its 30 June 2026 update the Hague Conference counted 130 contracting parties. The CNJ's topic page still says 125, and still calls this a treaty Brazil signed.

What it costs, state by state

Here is where expectation breaks: there is no national price. Registry fees are fixed by each state, so an apostille costs what the state schedule says.

Six units of the federation, one schedule at a time. The other twenty-one we did not check, and since this is a state fee, none of these figures describes "Brazil". Minas Gerais shows the anatomy too: R$ 139.17 of emolument plus R$ 43.74 of judicial oversight tax makes the R$ 182.91 at the counter — comparing emolument columns alone misleads.

Where a state publishes no apostille line, a national fallback applies: the fee equals that of a procuração sem valor declarado, a power of attorney with no stated value. That phrase, not the word apostille, is the search key in a state schedule. Nor does every schedule in a state carry the line: in Paraná it appears in four of five, missing from the one for notaries.

Walking in with the document

You do not need to own it: the bearer may ask, with no written application, and the office gives a receipt with a delivery date that may not exceed five days — a legal ceiling, not a promise about the afternoon. The check is formal: signatures, capacity, seal.

Apostilling a certified copy is exceptional, and when it happens the apostille attests the notary's own signature rather than the document's origin. For a birth record that means a fresh certificate from the civil registry, not a photocopy of your old one.

Finding an office is the easy part. In state capitals the service is compulsory for every notary and registry office, subject to a justified exemption the local court may grant; in the interior it is optional. Counting the CNJ's open data on 28 August 2026, the 27 capitals held 746 authorised offices.

Translation turns one apostille into two

This is the cost nobody budgets for. A translation may only be apostilled if a public translator made it, or one appointed ad hoc by the board of trade — and the procedure runs as two distinct apostilles: the original document first, the translation afterwards. Two acts, two charges. A Brazilian document already printed bilingually does not excuse the sworn translation.

Who may hold that job changed in 2021, and most of the internet has not noticed. The 1943 decree nearly every article still cites was repealed, taking two much-repeated rules with it. A public translator no longer has to be Brazilian-born: the law asks for a completed degree in any field, and the person may be Brazilian or a foreign resident in the country. The qualification is national too, valid in any state.

The same tradução juramentada appears where a foreign licence is converted rather than merely used — though a permit, as the driving permit guide explains, is not a translation.

When the document travels the other way

Brazil does not re-apostille foreign paper. Your document is apostilled in the country that issued it, and Brazil accepts that certificate nationwide — including apostilles issued before the Convention was in force here. If your country is not a contracting party, consular legalization remains the route, and consular documents fall outside the Convention altogether.

It does not remove the language requirement either. The Civil Code is one sentence on the point: documents in a foreign language must be translated into Portuguese to have legal effect here. A separate law reserves that translation to the public translator, and adds a detail that saves a wasted trip — the original travels alongside the translation, which never replaces it.

Then comes the step most guides omit. For a foreign document to produce legal effects and stand against third parties, the translation itself has to be registered, at a Deeds and Documents Registry: a third kind of office, with its own fee. The Federal District's rulebook compresses the chain into one line its notaries must check before accepting a foreign power of attorney — apostilled abroad, sworn-translated, registered. That is the demanding end of the scale; a school or a bank may ask less.

Sources

• HCCH — Brazil's Article 6 declaration, naming the competent authorities, Price field blank (page updated 27 February 2023); and the status table: 130 contracting parties, Brazil acceding, signature column empty (accessed 28 August 2026)
• CNJ — Resolution 228/2016, delegation in its 2021 wording and the fallback fee rule; National Code of Rules for extrajudicial services: capitals, territory, the five-day cap, translations, discounts (accessed 28 August 2026)
• Presidência da República — Decree 8,660/2016, promulgating the Convention; Law 14,195/2021, public translators; Law 8,935/1994, the seven offices (accessed 28 August 2026)
• Supremo Tribunal Federal — ADI 7196, decision of 19 August 2026 (accessed 28 August 2026)
• State fee schedules, read one by one: Ceará, Paraná, Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, São Paulo, Minas Gerais (all accessed 28 August 2026)

More on how these pages are checked is on our method page, by Jeff Bruno in Curitiba. Other paperwork guides sit under documents, the tax number that gates daily life is explained here, paying for things is under money, and the rest is in all guides.

What we could not verify

• The price in the other twenty-one units of the federation. Six were read line by line; the rest are separate documents, several of them PDFs whose columns slide under ordinary extraction.
• A current national count of offices authorised to apostille. The CNJ's open data answers city by city, with no aggregate route, so we counted the 27 capitals ourselves: 746 on 28 August 2026. The only national figure published is 2,315 credentialed offices, in a CNJ news item from April 2025.
• São Paulo's civil registry schedule. The state court points to five schedules; we read four. That page builds its year list in JavaScript and served no PDF link on 28 August 2026.
• When the suspended translator route reopens. The Court tied it to a regulation that does not yet exist, and no deadline is published.