Currency in Portuguese: Reais, Centavos, and How to Pay for Anything

The currency in Portuguese: real, reais, and centavos

One unit is um real. Two or more are dois reais. That plural catches almost every English speaker, because "reals" feels like the obvious guess. Portuguese swaps the final -l for -is: real becomes reais, just like animal becomes animais.

Start with the six words that carry the whole topic.

Real is not the English word "real"

Practise this one out loud. The word has two syllables, the stress lands on the second, and the final L melts into a W. Wikipedia gives the Brazilian pronunciation of real brasileiro as [ʁeˈaw], so you're saying roughly "hay-OW", with that opening r made in the throat like an English h.

The plural reais is [ʁeˈajs], close to "hay-ICE". In Rio the final s comes out as "sh", landing nearer "hay-AISH". Both are correct.

The written details

The symbol R$ goes in front of the number with a space: R$ 20,00. The banking code you'll see in apps is BRL. The real has been Brazil's money since 1 July 1994, issued by the Banco Central do Brasil.

Notes run R$ 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 and 200. Coins come in 5, 10, 25 and 50 centavos plus a R$ 1 coin. Rates move daily, so check the Central Bank's converter rather than a number in a blog post.

Which currency does each Portuguese-speaking country use?

Only Brazil uses the real. Nine countries have Portuguese as an official language, and between them they run eight different currencies.

Four of those deserve a footnote:

• Portugal retired the escudo. Euro notes and coins arrived on 1 January 2002, at 200.482 escudos to the euro.
• Cape Verde writes the currency sign where you'd expect a decimal point: 20$00 means twenty escudos.
• Timor-Leste uses US dollars but mints its own centavo coins.
• Macau isn't a country. It's a Chinese special administrative region where Portuguese remains official, and its pataca divides into 100 avos.

The subunit name shifts too. Brazil, Mozambique and Cape Verde count in centavos; Angola and São Tomé and Príncipe count in cêntimos. Guinea-Bissau and Equatorial Guinea use the two CFA francs, which share a name and a euro peg but not an ISO code.

Money and currency in Portuguese: the core vocabulary

Everything below is Brazilian Portuguese, the variety most travellers meet first. If these are your opening words, the first 100 Portuguese words lesson pairs neatly with this one.

Two traps worth flagging

Caixa changes meaning with its article. A caixa (feminine) is a box. O caixa (masculine) is the till, the checkout, or the person working it. Priberam lists that last sense as two-gender, so a woman at the register can be a caixa too. Trust the context: if there's a queue in front of it, it's the checkout.

Moeda does double duty. It's the coin in your hand and the national currency at once: uma moeda caiu is "a coin dropped", a moeda brasileira is "the Brazilian currency".

Heading to Portugal instead? Brazilians soften di- into "jee", so dinheiro is "jee-NYAY-roo". In Portugal it stays "dee-NYAY-roo".

How do you ask how much something costs in Portuguese?

Quanto custa? ("KWAN-too KOOS-tah") is "how much does it cost?" Quanto é? ("KWAN-too EH") is the shorter, friendlier "how much is it?" and it's what you'll hear most in shops. Both work anywhere in the Portuguese-speaking world.

Three habits make these sound native rather than translated.

Brazilians drop você constantly, so Aceita cartão? is literally "accepts card?" and it's already a complete, polite question. Está collapses to tá in speech, and Tá caro ("tah KAH-roo") is what you'll actually hear. And pointing is fine: Quanto custa este? ("KWAN-too KOOS-tah ES-chee") means "how much is this one?" Add obrigado or obrigada and the exchange is done.

How to say prices out loud in Brazilian Portuguese

Read the tag correctly first. Brazil uses a comma for decimals and a period for thousands, the reverse of the US convention. So R$ 1.250,90 is one thousand two hundred fifty reais and ninety centavos, not one real and change. Portugal writes numbers the same way, so the habit transfers.

The pattern never changes: [number] reais + e + [number] centavos. Only R$ 1,00 takes the singular um real. Everything from two upward takes reais.

In a shop you'll rarely hear the full version. Vendors chop it down, because both units are obvious from context: R$ 15,50 becomes "quinze e cinquenta", R$ 3,99 becomes "três e noventa e nove". When someone fires a bare number at you at a juice bar, that's what happened.

One more convention: shop windows often advertise the monthly installment instead of the total. "10x de R$ 89,90" reads dez vezes de oitenta e nove reais e noventa centavos, ten monthly payments. That habit deserves its own section.

Paying in Brazil: Pix, cards, and the installment question

Pix is now the default

Pix is Brazil's instant payment system, run by the Banco Central do Brasil and live since November 2020. Transfers settle in seconds at any hour, free for individuals. You scan a QR code or send money to a chave Pix ("SHAH-vee peeks"), a Pix key: a phone number, email, or tax ID. It has overtaken both cash and cards as the country's most-used payment method, so "Aceita Pix?" is now as ordinary a question as "Aceita cartão?"

The catch for visitors: a standard Pix key is tied to a Brazilian tax ID (CPF) and bank account, so most short-stay travellers can't set one up. Cards work almost everywhere, but a beach kiosk or market stall may take only Pix or cash, so carry a few notes.

"À vista ou parcelado?"

The question that stops visitors cold at the register. It means "in full or in installments?", and it's genuinely Brazilian: shops routinely split a card purchase across monthly payments, often sem juros ("seng ZHOO-roos"), interest-free.

Answer parcelado and the follow-up is "Em quantas vezes?" ("eng KWAN-tahs VEH-zees"), literally "in how many times", meaning how many months. Reply with a number: em três vezes.

Paying à vista sometimes earns a lower price, which makes Tem desconto à vista? worth asking. Foreign cards usually don't get installment options, so à vista is the honest answer.

Gorjeta and the 10% on your bill

Restaurant bills usually arrive with a 10% taxa de serviço ("TAH-shah jee ser-VEE-soo"), a service charge, already added. Brazil's 2017 tip law, Lei 13.419, treats it as voluntary: the customer decides whether to pay, and most do. Anything on top is a gorjeta, and nobody expects one. Useful when you ask for a conta after dinner.