FIPE is a research foundation, not a formula
FIPE stands for Fundação Instituto de Pesquisas Econômicas (Institute for Economic Research Foundation). It is a private, non-profit entity founded in 1973 to support the Economics Department of the University of São Paulo's business school (FEA-USP), the same school FIPE still keeps an institutional link with today, according to FEA-USP's own page about the foundation. Besides the vehicle table, FIPE produces other indicators well known in Brazil, such as the IPC-Fipe consumer price index and the FipeZap rent indicator. The vehicle table, officially called the Tabela de Preços Médios de Veículos (Average Vehicle Price Table), is just one of the foundation's products, but by far the most consulted by the general public.
The name itself gives the answer away: it is a table of average prices, not of computed prices. Per the definition published on the foundation's official site, the table expresses the average cash-payment prices charged when reselling vehicles to the final consumer, an individual, across the national market, serving only as a benchmark for negotiations and appraisals, not as a fixed price. The survey behind that number has run since 1988: every month, FIPE's team collects what dealerships and resellers are charging for each brand, model, version and year combination across the country, separately for cars, motorcycles and trucks.
- Foundation
- FIPE is a private non-profit entity, academically tied to FEA-USP, not a government body or a tech company.
- Market survey
- The method behind the table: direct collection of prices actually charged, not a theoretical depreciation calculation.
- Reference table
- Each monthly round of the survey gets a sequential number, that is the "reference table" reports and the API expose.
- Average value
- The final published number for each code: the average of collected prices after discarding the outliers.
- 1973FIPE is founded
A group of USP-linked economists creates the foundation to support economics teaching and research at FEA-USP.
- 1988The monthly vehicle survey begins
FIPE starts collecting monthly average sale prices for new and used cars, motorcycles and trucks across Brazil.
- 2015The first unofficial APIs appear
Independent developers launch free APIs mirroring the published table, opening the programmatic access FIPE itself never officially offered.
- TodayThe table stays monthly, access runs through aggregators
The survey still comes out monthly; tools like the FIPE lookup fetch that data through BrasilAPI, an aggregator of Brazilian public APIs.
How the monthly survey becomes a table
The methodology, described by FIPE itself and echoed by outlets that specialize in the topic, follows a fixed script every month: direct research at dealerships and resellers, statistical treatment of the collected values, and publication of the average. There is no depreciation coefficient applied on top of last year's table price, every round is a fresh field collection, independent of the one before it.
- Collection at dealershipsResearchers record the cash price asked for each vehicle version in resale to the final consumer, nationwide.
- Statistical treatmentValues far above or below the common range are discarded before any calculation.
- AveragingWhat is left after the discard becomes that month's average value for that vehicle code.
- Reference-table numberingEach monthly round gets a sequential number, the "tables" mode the FIPE lookup lists.
- PublicationThe result goes live on the official site, usually in the first days of the month after collection.
A worked, illustrative example helps read the percent change that shows up from one reference table to the next (the numbers below are hypothetical, only to explain the arithmetic, the real table changes every month and cannot be pinned to a fixed number in a text). The math is the same as in the percentage, increase and discount guide: take the difference between the new and the old value, divide by the old value.
Tabela de referência de junho/2026 (hipotética): R$ 40.000,00
Tabela de referência de julho/2026 (hipotética): R$ 39.200,00
Variação = (39.200 - 40.000) / 40.000 x 100
Variação = -800 / 40.000 x 100 = -2%Why FIPE tends to trail the real market
That lag is not an execution flaw, it is structural. Because the survey runs month by month and the result is only published after collection and statistical treatment are closed, any fast supply or demand shock shows up in the table at least one round late. Under normal conditions this barely registers, car prices move little from one month to the next. Under sharp shocks, the lag becomes visible.
The clearest example of the last decade was the global semiconductor shortage of 2021 and 2022. The chip shortage stalled assembly lines worldwide, TSMC, the Taiwanese manufacturer, concentrates roughly 70% of that automotive component production, per Motor Show's reporting, and it made parts lead times nearly double. With too few brand-new cars to sell, people who needed to replace a vehicle shifted heavily into the used market, pushing demand onto exactly the cars the table traditionally already classified as depreciated. Consumers paid up to 20% more to buy a car in 2021 compared with the year before, per CNN Brasil's analysis, and Brazil accounted for roughly 400,000 fewer vehicles within the global production shortfall the crisis caused. A monthly survey does not catch that kind of jump on the day it happens: it records the average of what was already negotiated the month before, so a demand spike tends to show up in the official table only in the following round, behind what dealers were already charging.
The FIPE code and what the lookup tool shows
Visually, a FIPE code is a sequence of six digits, a hyphen, and one more digit, for example 001313-7. It is not a random number: per specialized FIPE-code reference sites, each stretch identifies a specific part of the vehicle. In that example (a Fiat Punto Attractive 1.4 Fire Flex 8V 5p), the first digit (0) marks the vehicle type within the table being queried, the next two digits (01) identify the brand (Fiat), the following three (313) identify the model and version, and the digit after the hyphen (7) acts as a validation digit for the code. It is that code, not the car’s commercial name, that locks the search to one exact combination of brand, model, version and year, avoiding ambiguity between similar configurations of the same car.
| Segment | In the example | What it identifies |
|---|---|---|
| 1st digit | 0 | Vehicle type within the table being queried. |
| 2nd-3rd digits | 01 | Brand (Fiat, in this example). |
| 4th-6th digits | 313 | Specific model and version. |
| Digit after the hyphen | 7 | Validation digit for the code. |
FIPE itself does not publish an official public API to query this data. What exists is the table's official site and a crop of unofficial APIs, built by independent developers, that mirror the published table, the best known of them has been online since 2015. This site's FIPE lookup follows the same path: it runs server-side and fetches data through BrasilAPI, an aggregator of Brazilian public APIs, with four search modes, list the available reference tables (each monthly round has a number), list brands by vehicle type (car, motorcycle or truck), list the models under a chosen brand, and look up the price directly by the full FIPE code. None of those modes computes anything: they just relay what the monthly survey already found, including brand, model, model year, fuel type and the reference month for that value.
Where FIPE shows up in law and in your wallet
The FIPE table stopped being just a market reference and became a piece of legislation and of contracts in at least three situations common to anyone who owns a car in Brazil.
| Use | How it works | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Vehicle tax (IPVA) | The state publishes a market-value table; the tax rate multiplies that value to reach the annual tax. | Each state’s own legislation (varies by state) |
| Insurance, total loss | The insurer typically pays out the vehicle's average market value on the date of the loss, not the value declared in the policy. | Policy clauses; insurance-market practice |
| Financing and leasing | Banks use the market value as a reference for the financed vehicle's collateral. | Credit-market practice |
The easiest example to cite with precision is São Paulo's. State Law 13.296/2008 sets out, in article 7, paragraph 1, that a used vehicle's market value, the IPVA calculation base, comes from a table the state's Executive Branch publishes every year, considering brand, model, type and manufacturing year. The law does not name FIPE, but in practice the foundation itself provides that service: São Paulo's Secretaria da Fazenda e Planejamento commissions the value survey from FIPE every year and publishes the result in the state's official gazette. Article 9, item III, of the same law sets the rate at 4% for passenger cars (motorcycles, buses and trucks have different rates). This does not hold for the whole of Brazil: each state sets its own IPVA legislation, its own rate and, sometimes, its own market-value source, so the exact mechanism changes from state to state.
With those two São Paulo numbers (the market-value table and the 4% rate for passenger cars), the IPVA calculation is direct:
Valor de mercado do veículo (tabela de referência, São Paulo): R$ 45.000,00
Alíquota (carro de passeio, São Paulo, Lei 13.296/2008, art. 9º, III): 4%
IPVA = R$ 45.000,00 x 0,04 = R$ 1.800,00When financing a car, the market value also enters as a reference for the collateral. After simulating installments in the auto loan calculator, it is worth checking the total cost of credit in the effective annual rate calculator, which sums interest, fees and the IOF tax into a single yearly percentage, the effective rate almost always lands above the interest rate advertised on its own.
How total-loss insurance indemnification works
The insurer Allianz describes the principle plainly in its consumer-facing material: the indemnification does not use the maximum value declared in the policy, it uses the average price the table shows on the date of the loss. A car insured in January for R$ 60,000 that suffers a total loss in July, when the table already shows R$ 58,000 for that model, is paid out R$ 58,000, reflecting the depreciation the market already recorded between the two dates.
That is why reading the policy closely matters: contracts with "referenced market value" coverage follow that variable figure, while "fixed value" contracts lock in a set number at signing, regardless of what the table shows later.
FIPE, Molicar and the limit of an average
FIPE is not the only vehicle reference table in Brazil. Molicar is the most cited competitor, especially among insurers, and the difference between the two is not just branding, it is methodology.
FIPE table
- Surveys average prices charged by dealerships and resellers, per brand, model, version and year combination.
- Does not distinguish region, mileage or optional equipment within the same code.
- Free, public access, which makes it the most cited reference in retail and in law.
Molicar table
- Per Banco Inter material, factors in optional equipment and the vehicle’s specific configuration, beyond the market average.
- More used by insurers to calculate more detailed indemnifications for total loss, robbery or theft.
- Paid, subscription-based access, unlike FIPE.
Both were built to solve the same problem, giving a reference number in a market where every used car is, technically, unique, but they get there by different paths. Neither replaces an inspection before closing a deal.
If the next step is financing the car you just looked up, understand the difference between SAC and Price before picking an amortization system, and see how compound interest, contributions and inflation behave over a long loan. To understand why official indices also carry this same logic of a survey collection-and-publication lag, the monetary correction, interest and indices guide is worth a read.
Frequently asked questions
Does the FIPE table use a depreciation formula?
Why is a car's real price different from its FIPE value?
What does a vehicle's FIPE code mean?
Does FIPE have an official API?
Is the FIPE table used to calculate vehicle tax in every state?
Does car insurance always pay the FIPE value in a total loss?
The FIPE table is not a depreciation formula, it is a monthly market survey run since 1988 by FIPE, a foundation tied to the University of São Paulo since 1973, which collects the average price dealerships and resellers ask, discards the extremes, and publishes the average. Because it is a survey with a collection-and-publication lag, it tends to trail sharp supply and demand shocks, as became visible during the 2021-2022 chip shortage. The six-digit-plus-validation-digit code locks the search to an exact combination of vehicle type, brand, model and version, and the FIPE lookup fetches that data through BrasilAPI, since FIPE has no official API of its own. The table is the legal basis for Brazil's vehicle tax (law and rate vary by state) and a reference for insurance and financing, but it remains a reference average, not a guaranteed sale price.
Sources & references
- Fipe, About Fipe (institutional)
- Fipe, Average Vehicle Price Table
- FEA-USP, FIPE
- São Paulo State Legislature, Law No. 13,296 of December 23, 2008 (vehicle tax)
- LegisWeb, Sefaz-SP publishes the vehicle-tax base-value table
- CNN Brasil, Despite an improving chip crisis, analysts don't see cheaper cars in 2022
- Motor Show, Chip crisis: why cars ran short and used prices spiked
- Parallelum, Fipe API (documentation, unofficial API)
- PlacaFipeBrasil, What the FIPE code is
- Banco Inter, The Molicar table: what it is and how it differs from FIPE
- Allianz, What the FIPE table is and how it affects your insurance