Brazil's inflation rate (IPCA) was 4.72% in the year to May 2026. Four decades earlier it peaked at 6,821.31% in April 1990. Then the 1994 Plano Real ended one of history's longest bouts of hyperinflation, and Brazil has run single-digit inflation ever since.
In the 12 months to May 2026, Brazil's consumer prices rose 4.72%, as measured by the IPCA (the official consumer-price index the Central Bank targets when it sets the Selic interest rate). This "12-month accumulated" figure is the headline inflation rate you see quoted for Brazil.
For context, US consumer-price inflation ran 4.25% over the same period. The two economies were worlds apart during Brazil's hyperinflation years. Now they sit within a few points of each other.
The full monthly IPCA series, from December 1980 to today, with a US inflation benchmark on the same axis. The shape tells the story: twelve-month inflation above 6,821.31% at its April 1990 peak, a last spike to 4,922.60% just before the Plano Real, then a collapse to single digits that has held for a generation. Toggle between the full history, the hyperinflation era, and the modern era.
Brazil: IBGE, IPCA — variação acumulada em 12 meses (SIDRA table 1737). US: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI-U (series CUUR0000SA0); the 12-month change is a Latinometrics calculation from the published BLS index.
Brazil changed its currency five times between 1986 and 1994 as one stabilization plan after another froze prices, failed, and gave way to the next. Every freeze bought a few months and then broke. The Plano Real broke the pattern with a different idea entirely. Here is the sequence.
Numbers like 6,821.31% are hard to picture, so consider the daily routine they produced. Prices were rewritten constantly, sometimes every day. Supermarkets kept staff walking the aisles with pricing guns, marking everything up before it sold, and shoppers learned to move faster than the person raising the tags. Money you held onto lost value by the hour.
So Brazilians stopped holding it. Payday meant a sprint to the store to convert wages into groceries before the currency shrank, and pantries filled with cooking oil, rice, beans, canned goods, and anything that would keep. Savings made little sense when a salary could lose a fifth of its worth in a month, so families spent first and asked questions later. An entire economy organized itself around getting rid of cash as quickly as it arrived.
Hyperinflation fell hardest on the poor. Economists call it an inflation tax, and it is regressive: wealthier Brazilians could shift money into dollar accounts, indexed deposits, and real assets that held their value, while low-income families held what little they had in cash that melted by the day. The wages of poorer workers also lagged as prices ran ahead of the indexation that was supposed to protect them.
That is why ending inflation did more for the poor than almost any single program. In the two years around the Plano Real, Brazil's poverty rate fell from about 41.6% in 1993 to 33.8% in 1995, and extreme poverty from 19.5% to 14.5%. Roughly 10 million people rose above the poverty line and about 6 million above extreme poverty, driven less by faster growth than by the simple fact that money finally held its value from one week to the next.
The Sarney government froze prices and wages and replaced the cruzeiro with the cruzado, lopping three zeros off the currency. Inflation collapsed for months before the freeze broke and prices surged back.
A fresh freeze and another new currency, the cruzado novo, again cut three zeros. Like its predecessors it bought only a brief pause; by 1989 twelve-month inflation was already back above 1,000 percent.
President Collor froze roughly 80 percent of the money supply — including private savings accounts — and launched a new cruzeiro. The shock briefly slowed prices but deepened the recession, and inflation soon returned.
Twelve-month IPCA inflation hit 6,821 percent — the highest reading in the series. Prices were roughly doubling every few weeks, and menus, price tags and wages were rewritten constantly.
The fifth currency change in seven years introduced the cruzeiro real, again cutting three zeros. It was a stopgap while the team behind the coming Plano Real prepared a very different approach.
On the eve of the Plano Real, twelve-month inflation stood at 4,923 percent — the final peak before stabilization. This is the figure often quoted as "Brazil’s hyperinflation," though the true series high came in April 1990.
The plan that finally worked. Rather than a price freeze, it first introduced the URV, a stable unit of account indexed to the dollar, let prices adjust to it, then converted everything to a brand-new currency — the real. Backed by a fiscal anchor and tight monetary policy, inflation fell from thousands of percent to single digits within a year.
After the 1999 currency float, the Central Bank adopted a formal inflation-targeting regime: an announced target, an interest rate (the Selic) as the main tool, and public accountability when inflation strays. It remains the framework governing Brazilian inflation today.
Market fears around the 2002 election of President Lula drove the real down and pushed twelve-month inflation to about 17 percent in 2003. Aggressive Selic hikes brought it back to target, a first real test of the targeting regime.
A deep recession, a fiscal crisis and administered-price adjustments pushed inflation to about 11 percent in early 2016 — the highest of the modern era until then.
Global supply shocks, energy and food prices and pandemic stimulus lifted twelve-month IPCA to about 12 percent in 2022. Brazil’s Central Bank was among the first in the world to start raising rates, and inflation eased over the following year.
The Plano Real's insight was to break the inertia of indexation before swapping the currency. The URV let prices, wages, and contracts re-anchor to a single stable unit first; only then was the real introduced at par. Combined with a fiscal anchor and, from 1999, a formal inflation-targeting regime run by the Central Bank, it turned a country synonymous with hyperinflation into one with ordinary, single-digit inflation. That regime is still in place today.
Full-year inflation for every complete year since 1981, measured as the 12-month IPCA through December, with US CPI inflation for the same month alongside. The in-progress year (2026) is excluded here. Its current rate is in the latest-numbers section above.
| Year | Brazil IPCA (%) | US CPI (%) |
|---|---|---|
| 1981 | 95.62 | 8.92 |
| 1982 | 104.79 | 3.83 |
| 1983 | 164.01 | 3.79 |
| 1984 | 215.26 | 3.95 |
| 1985 | 242.23 | 3.80 |
| 1986 | 79.66 | 1.10 |
| 1987 | 363.41 | 4.43 |
| 1988 | 980.21 | 4.42 |
| 1989 | 1,972.91 | 4.65 |
| 1990 | 1,620.97 | 6.11 |
| 1991 | 472.70 | 3.06 |
| 1992 | 1,119.10 | 2.90 |
| 1993 | 2,477.15 | 2.75 |
| 1994 | 916.46 | 2.67 |
| 1995 | 22.41 | 2.54 |
| 1996 | 9.56 | 3.32 |
| 1997 | 5.22 | 1.70 |
| 1998 | 1.65 | 1.61 |
| 1999 | 8.94 | 2.68 |
| 2000 | 5.97 | 3.39 |
| 2001 | 7.67 | 1.55 |
| 2002 | 12.53 | 2.38 |
| 2003 | 9.30 | 1.88 |
| 2004 | 7.60 | 3.26 |
| 2005 | 5.69 | 3.42 |
| 2006 | 3.14 | 2.54 |
| 2007 | 4.46 | 4.08 |
| 2008 | 5.90 | 0.09 |
| 2009 | 4.31 | 2.72 |
| 2010 | 5.91 | 1.50 |
| 2011 | 6.50 | 2.96 |
| 2012 | 5.84 | 1.74 |
| 2013 | 5.91 | 1.50 |
| 2014 | 6.41 | 0.76 |
| 2015 | 10.67 | 0.73 |
| 2016 | 6.29 | 2.07 |
| 2017 | 2.95 | 2.11 |
| 2018 | 3.75 | 1.91 |
| 2019 | 4.31 | 2.29 |
| 2020 | 4.52 | 1.36 |
| 2021 | 10.06 | 7.04 |
| 2022 | 5.79 | 6.45 |
| 2023 | 4.62 | 3.35 |
| 2024 | 4.83 | 2.89 |
| 2025 | 4.26 | 2.68 |
| Year | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1980 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 99.25 |
| 1981 | 99.67 | 103.07 | 101.03 | 103.27 | 103.00 | 103.41 | 104.78 | 105.85 | 107.88 | 99.52 | 96.89 | 95.62 |
| 1982 | 95.86 | 96.29 | 97.68 | 96.61 | 98.65 | 101.64 | 101.84 | 102.75 | 102.41 | 101.19 | 101.22 | 104.79 |
| 1983 | 108.00 | 110.38 | 113.63 | 115.03 | 114.67 | 120.24 | 127.94 | 134.69 | 146.35 | 156.78 | 161.90 | 164.01 |
| 1984 | 166.51 | 170.57 | 174.59 | 182.22 | 189.03 | 189.55 | 188.62 | 189.25 | 193.05 | 197.27 | 205.97 | 215.26 |
| 1985 | 221.27 | 225.28 | 228.93 | 224.88 | 219.36 | 214.76 | 216.44 | 224.26 | 222.43 | 222.95 | 233.02 | 242.23 |
| 1986 | 250.23 | 256.08 | 238.65 | 215.44 | 198.38 | 178.52 | 156.80 | 137.33 | 117.25 | 100.13 | 85.17 | 79.66 |
| 1987 | 77.84 | 77.71 | 97.39 | 133.27 | 179.40 | 230.27 | 254.63 | 259.14 | 280.55 | 315.35 | 353.27 | 363.41 |
| 1988 | 386.67 | 399.90 | 405.18 | 405.99 | 389.19 | 398.54 | 456.52 | 545.24 | 662.99 | 761.78 | 858.09 | 980.21 |
| 1989 | 1,149.22 | 1,160.88 | 1,045.29 | 940.07 | 944.50 | 1,001.44 | 1,054.11 | 1,169.15 | 1,269.82 | 1,424.12 | 1,660.95 | 1,972.91 |
| 1990 | 2,426.12 | 3,701.29 | 6,390.53 | 6,821.31 | 6,214.99 | 5,385.43 | 4,749.03 | 3,993.62 | 3,304.71 | 2,685.74 | 2,101.34 | 1,620.97 |
| 1991 | 1,140.27 | 752.02 | 422.84 | 375.18 | 374.48 | 372.10 | 369.96 | 381.41 | 386.55 | 411.52 | 448.31 | 472.70 |
| 1992 | 497.32 | 515.13 | 567.21 | 662.16 | 785.81 | 857.68 | 937.94 | 996.37 | 1,081.70 | 1,130.94 | 1,104.20 | 1,119.10 |
| 1993 | 1,161.79 | 1,168.49 | 1,229.71 | 1,316.42 | 1,348.52 | 1,467.33 | 1,581.70 | 1,730.67 | 1,893.13 | 2,031.27 | 2,258.68 | 2,477.15 |
| 1994 | 2,693.84 | 3,035.71 | 3,417.39 | 3,828.49 | 4,331.19 | 4,922.60 | 4,005.08 | 3,044.89 | 2,253.15 | 1,703.17 | 1,267.54 | 916.46 |
| 1995 | 631.54 | 426.83 | 274.78 | 169.05 | 91.79 | 33.03 | 27.45 | 26.36 | 25.69 | 24.21 | 22.59 | 22.41 |
| 1996 | 21.97 | 21.99 | 20.55 | 19.17 | 17.49 | 16.26 | 14.84 | 14.21 | 13.26 | 12.02 | 10.75 | 9.56 |
| 1997 | 9.39 | 8.82 | 8.99 | 8.58 | 7.71 | 7.02 | 6.08 | 5.59 | 5.50 | 5.42 | 5.27 | 5.22 |
| 1998 | 4.73 | 4.69 | 4.52 | 3.85 | 3.95 | 3.41 | 3.06 | 2.55 | 2.27 | 2.05 | 1.76 | 1.65 |
| 1999 | 1.65 | 2.24 | 3.02 | 3.35 | 3.14 | 3.32 | 4.57 | 5.69 | 6.25 | 7.50 | 8.65 | 8.94 |
| 2000 | 8.85 | 7.86 | 6.92 | 6.77 | 6.47 | 6.51 | 7.06 | 7.86 | 7.77 | 6.65 | 5.99 | 5.97 |
| 2001 | 5.92 | 6.27 | 6.44 | 6.61 | 7.04 | 7.35 | 7.05 | 6.41 | 6.46 | 7.19 | 7.61 | 7.67 |
| 2002 | 7.62 | 7.51 | 7.75 | 7.98 | 7.77 | 7.66 | 7.51 | 7.46 | 7.93 | 8.45 | 10.93 | 12.53 |
| 2003 | 14.47 | 15.85 | 16.57 | 16.77 | 17.24 | 16.57 | 15.43 | 15.07 | 15.14 | 13.98 | 11.02 | 9.30 |
| 2004 | 7.71 | 6.69 | 5.89 | 5.26 | 5.15 | 6.06 | 6.81 | 7.18 | 6.70 | 6.86 | 7.24 | 7.60 |
| 2005 | 7.41 | 7.39 | 7.54 | 8.07 | 8.05 | 7.27 | 6.57 | 6.02 | 6.04 | 6.36 | 6.22 | 5.69 |
| 2006 | 5.70 | 5.51 | 5.32 | 4.63 | 4.23 | 4.03 | 3.97 | 3.84 | 3.70 | 3.26 | 3.02 | 3.14 |
| 2007 | 2.99 | 3.02 | 2.96 | 3.00 | 3.18 | 3.69 | 3.74 | 4.18 | 4.15 | 4.12 | 4.19 | 4.46 |
| 2008 | 4.56 | 4.61 | 4.73 | 5.04 | 5.58 | 6.06 | 6.37 | 6.17 | 6.25 | 6.41 | 6.39 | 5.90 |
| 2009 | 5.84 | 5.90 | 5.61 | 5.53 | 5.20 | 4.80 | 4.50 | 4.36 | 4.34 | 4.17 | 4.22 | 4.31 |
| 2010 | 4.59 | 4.83 | 5.17 | 5.26 | 5.22 | 4.84 | 4.60 | 4.49 | 4.70 | 5.20 | 5.63 | 5.91 |
| 2011 | 5.99 | 6.01 | 6.30 | 6.51 | 6.55 | 6.71 | 6.87 | 7.23 | 7.31 | 6.97 | 6.64 | 6.50 |
| 2012 | 6.22 | 5.84 | 5.24 | 5.10 | 4.99 | 4.92 | 5.20 | 5.24 | 5.28 | 5.45 | 5.53 | 5.84 |
| 2013 | 6.15 | 6.31 | 6.59 | 6.49 | 6.50 | 6.70 | 6.27 | 6.09 | 5.86 | 5.84 | 5.77 | 5.91 |
| 2014 | 5.59 | 5.68 | 6.15 | 6.28 | 6.37 | 6.52 | 6.50 | 6.51 | 6.75 | 6.59 | 6.56 | 6.41 |
| 2015 | 7.14 | 7.70 | 8.13 | 8.17 | 8.47 | 8.89 | 9.56 | 9.53 | 9.49 | 9.93 | 10.48 | 10.67 |
| 2016 | 10.71 | 10.36 | 9.39 | 9.28 | 9.32 | 8.84 | 8.74 | 8.97 | 8.48 | 7.87 | 6.99 | 6.29 |
| 2017 | 5.35 | 4.76 | 4.57 | 4.08 | 3.60 | 3.00 | 2.71 | 2.46 | 2.54 | 2.70 | 2.80 | 2.95 |
| 2018 | 2.86 | 2.84 | 2.68 | 2.76 | 2.86 | 4.39 | 4.48 | 4.19 | 4.53 | 4.56 | 4.05 | 3.75 |
| 2019 | 3.78 | 3.89 | 4.58 | 4.94 | 4.66 | 3.37 | 3.22 | 3.43 | 2.89 | 2.54 | 3.27 | 4.31 |
| 2020 | 4.19 | 4.01 | 3.30 | 2.40 | 1.88 | 2.13 | 2.31 | 2.44 | 3.14 | 3.92 | 4.31 | 4.52 |
| 2021 | 4.56 | 5.20 | 6.10 | 6.76 | 8.06 | 8.35 | 8.99 | 9.68 | 10.25 | 10.67 | 10.74 | 10.06 |
| 2022 | 10.38 | 10.54 | 11.30 | 12.13 | 11.73 | 11.89 | 10.07 | 8.73 | 7.17 | 6.47 | 5.90 | 5.79 |
| 2023 | 5.77 | 5.60 | 4.65 | 4.18 | 3.94 | 3.16 | 3.99 | 4.61 | 5.19 | 4.82 | 4.68 | 4.62 |
| 2024 | 4.51 | 4.50 | 3.93 | 3.69 | 3.93 | 4.23 | 4.50 | 4.24 | 4.42 | 4.76 | 4.87 | 4.83 |
| 2025 | 4.56 | 5.06 | 5.48 | 5.53 | 5.32 | 5.35 | 5.23 | 5.13 | 5.17 | 4.68 | 4.46 | 4.26 |
| 2026 | 4.44 | 3.81 | 4.14 | 4.39 | 4.72 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
Source: IBGE, IPCA (SIDRA table 1737, variable 2265), 12-month accumulated change; US column from BLS CPI-U (12-month change, a Latinometrics calculation). Values shown exactly as published, to two decimals. A dash (—) means the figure is not yet available.
What the number is. The Brazil series is the IPCA (Índice Nacional de Preços ao Consumidor Amplo), IBGE's official consumer-price index, shown as the 12-month accumulated change (the same "year-over-year" measure used for the headline inflation rate and the Central Bank's target). Values are IBGE's published figures to two decimals.
The pre-Real currency changes. Brazil replaced its currency five times between 1986 and 1994. Because the IPCA is a chain-linked price-level index, the inflation percentage series is continuous across those changes even though the currency is not; the index linking can introduce minor retroactive variations. The price freezes of the 1980s also add measurement noise. Controlled prices understate inflation while the freeze holds and overstate it when it breaks.
The US benchmark. The US series is the Bureau of Labor Statistics' CPI-U (All items, U.S. city average, not seasonally adjusted; series CUUR0000SA0). The public BLS API returns the index only, so the 12-month change is computed by Latinometrics from the published index. This is the one figure on the page that is a Latinometrics calculation rather than a directly published statistic; both underlying sources are official (IBGE and BLS).
Data as of. Brazil data runs through May 2026; the US benchmark runs through May 2026. When the US lags Brazil's latest month, that month's US value is shown as a dash and its line simply ends.
Brazil's inflation rate, measured by the IPCA (the official consumer-price index the Central Bank targets), was 4.72% in the 12 months to May 2026. For comparison, US consumer-price inflation was 4.25% over the same period.
The IPCA (Índice Nacional de Preços ao Consumidor Amplo) is Brazil's official consumer-price index, produced by the statistics agency IBGE. The "12-month accumulated" IPCA (the change over the prior twelve months) is the headline inflation figure and the number Brazil's Central Bank targets when it sets the Selic interest rate.
Brazil suffered chronic hyperinflation through the 1980s and into 1994. Twelve-month IPCA inflation ran in the thousands of percent for years, reaching its all-time peak of 6,821.31% in April 1990. The last hyperinflation spike came in June 1994, at 4,922.60%, immediately before the Plano Real stabilized prices in July 1994.
The Plano Real, launched in July 1994, ended it. Unlike the failed price freezes of the 1980s, it first introduced the URV (a stable unit of account indexed to the dollar), let prices adjust to it, then converted the economy to a brand-new currency, the real. Backed by a fiscal anchor and tight monetary policy, inflation fell from thousands of percent to single digits within a year. Since 1999 Brazil has run a formal inflation-targeting regime.
Today the two are far closer than history suggests. Brazil's IPCA was 4.72% in the year to May 2026, against 4.25% US CPI inflation. During Brazil's hyperinflation years the gap was enormous, with Brazilian inflation in the thousands of percent while US inflation stayed in the low single digits. The overlay on the chart above shows both series on the same axis.
Five times between 1986 and 1994, as successive stabilization plans tried and failed to break inflation: the cruzado (1986), the cruzado novo (1989), a new cruzeiro (1990), the cruzeiro real (1993), and finally the real (1994), which stuck. Because the IPCA is a chain-linked price index, the inflation percentage series is continuous across all of these currency changes even though the currency itself is not.
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