Getting a SIM Card in Brazil, and the CPF You Are Told You Need

Does a tourist need a CPF for a prepaid SIM?

Not by the rule that governs it. The document is Law 10,703 of 2003 — a federal law, not an agency rule — and its first article puts the duty on the carrier, which must keep an up-to-date register of prepaid users.

Besides full name and full address, that register must contain, for a natural person, the number of the identity document or the number of the registration in the Ministry of Finance registry. The second phrase is the 2003 wording for the CPF. The word between them is or.

Nothing since has narrowed it. Anatel, the telecoms regulator, tells carriers to keep that register "subject to legal requirements", handing its contents back to the law without naming the CPF. Article 58 of Anatel Resolution 477/2007, which carriers still cite, said "identity document or" too — and was repealed in 2023.

Why the answer still feels like "yes"

Because the system on the other side was built around a CPF. Since November 2021 activation runs through an anti-fraud flow the industry calls ID Digital: you put the unused chip in the phone, the carrier sends a notification to start activation, and you enter your CPF, date of birth and residential postcode for it to verify. Anatel's summary is one line — without the registration completed, the line is not activated.

The photo IDs the regulator names are the two Brazilian ones, and the wording matters: valid photo identity documents, such as the CNH and the RG. That opens an example rather than closing a list. "Passport" appears nowhere on that page, and neither does "foreigner".

None of it came from a new resolution: the regime grew out of a sector action plan the carriers presented in 2018, and what was built on it is indexed by CPF. A shared industry portal, live since January 2020, reports which carriers hold prepaid lines against a given CPF. A visitor without one falls off that track, reaching the counter only after the app and the phone menu.

What each carrier publishes it wants from you

TIM adds a detail worth keeping: a foreign national identity card is accepted only from Mercosur nationals. For everyone else it is the passport. What "other personal data" covers, TIM does not say.

RNE stands for Registro Nacional de Estrangeiro, the old foreigner registration number, replaced years ago by the CRNM. Claro is using the retired term; as a visitor you hold neither, so the passport applies.

Vivo is the outlier, and probably where the English version of this question went wrong. Its re-registration notice says an entry must carry the CPF and date of birth — the law's alternative turned into a requirement — citing twice, as its basis, that repealed article 58. The notice is undated and written in the future tense about phases from 2019 and 2020, so it is what Vivo publishes, not what Vivo requires today.

Where the chip is actually sold

Both carriers that publish a channel list publish a long one. TIM, in English, points to a TIM store or retailer and says you can find it at newsstands, pharmacies, supermarkets, retail stores "and more". Claro adds lotéricas — the state lottery agents, which double as a payment counter where Brazilians settle bills and government fees. Neither list names an airport.

Buying is not registering, though. TIM keeps them apart: the chip comes from a store or retailer, the registration is done at a TIM-owned or partner store. So a chip off a pharmacy shelf is plastic until the registration goes through.

It is also why a newsstand asks for a document. Article 2 of the same law obliges the seller to report the buyer's details to the carrier within twenty-four hours, under a fine of up to R$ 500 in nominal 2003 money. The register feeds judicial requests, not tax collection, which is why the CPF was never its point.

What it actually costs

Nobody publishes a price for the plastic. On August 27, 2026 the chip pages of TIM and Claro would not connect for us, so the honest answer is that we could not read one.

What is published is the price of getting connected. Claro sells a package aimed at foreigners, the Claro flex pass:

All three are one-time payments, include the eSIM at no extra cost, carry unlimited calls and SMS to Brazilian numbers, and take a credit card only, with 3-D Secure — so a virtual or prepaid card may be refused. The page says in English that no Brazilian ID is required, and a temporary address plus a passport number is enough. A banner on it says prices are "in USD" while the cards below are labelled BRL.

That is not the ordinary prepaid chip. Same carrier, two products, two sets of rules.

Ordinary prepaid runs on top-ups. On TIM's São Paulo page, R$ 30 buys data for up to 30 days and R$ 17 renews current benefits. The advertised 4 GB bonus is limited to Facebook, Instagram and X and expires in seven days, and the unlimited calls need TIM's carrier code, 41, dialled in front. Offers are set per state.

For paying for any of it, foreign cards and cash without a Brazilian card cover the machinery.

What to have with you at the counter

• Your passport. All three publish that it is accepted in store.
• The address where you are staying. The law asks for a full address and never says it must be Brazilian or permanent. TIM asks for "the address where you are staying"; Claro says a temporary one is enough.
• A way to pay, since prepaid runs on top-ups and the flex pass takes a credit card only.
• An unlocked handset. Claro's visitor page states your GSM handset must be unlocked beforehand. No other source we read mentions it, and a carrier-locked phone will not take a Brazilian SIM.

A counter following a script rather than the rule may still ask for a CPF. If you are staying long enough for that to matter, getting one as a foreigner is its own errand, and it unlocks PIX above all — which for two weeks tourists rarely need.

Sources

• Presidency of the Republic — Law 10,703/2003, arts. 1 and 2. planalto.gov.br (accessed August 27, 2026)
• Anatel — prepaid registration project, published September 12, 2024. gov.br (accessed August 27, 2026)
• Anatel — Resolutions 777/2025, art. 119 of the annex, and 477/2007, art. 58 with its repeal note (accessed August 27, 2026)
• Claro — the activation page, International Visitors and flex pass in English, whose prices were read from the rendered page (accessed August 27, 2026)
• TIM — the help pages for foreigners, the English visitors page and the São Paulo prepaid page (accessed August 27, 2026)
• Vivo — the prepaid re-registration notice, undated (accessed August 27, 2026)

Method on how we research; author Jeff Bruno, in Curitiba. Neighbours: phones and internet, money and payments, all guides.

What we could not verify

• What actually happens at the counter. The carriers publish that a passport is accepted in store; the regulator publishes that in-person activation is the fallback. None of those documents says how long it takes, whether an owned store and a reseller behave alike, or what a clerk does when the system wants a CPF and there is none. Closing that gap would mean walking into a shop, and this site does not claim experience it has not had.
• What the physical chip costs. On August 27, 2026 the chip pages of TIM and Claro would not connect, and the Claro plans page timed out on repeated tries. A failed connection, not a finding that no price is published.
• What Vivo asks of a foreigner activating a new line. The notice we quote covers re-registration in 2019 and 2020. Vivo's page on activating a chip returns zero hits for "foreigner" and "passport" in text and raw HTML — but it carries around seventy images, and we did not read what is inside them.
• Whether airports sell SIM cards. The GRU Airport site is a JavaScript application with no sitemap, and its shop directory would not open by URL. The positive version is narrower: two carriers publish a channel list and neither includes an airport.
• How many mobile carriers Brazil has. Since Oi sold its mobile operation, primary sources do not settle it: Anatel's subscriber panel renders only in JavaScript and its open-data API needs a key. We never call these three the only three.