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Look up a CPF with PHP

Look up a CPF (Brazil's individual taxpayer ID) with PHP using native cURL. No external dependencies.

Using Cursor, Lovable, v0 or another AI? Copy the Simple Lookup prompt and paste it into your assistant.

Open in Cursor

Before you start

  1. Create a free account at app.cpfhub.io: the Free plan includes 50 credits and does not ask for a card.
  2. Copy your API key from app.cpfhub.io/api-keys.
  3. Store the key in an environment variable, never in your code:
bash
export CPFHUB_API_KEY="your_api_key"

Example

PHP
<?php
$cpf = '12345678909';

$ch = curl_init("https://api.cpfhub.io/cpf/{$cpf}");
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_TIMEOUT        => 10,
    CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER     => ['x-api-key: ' . getenv('CPFHUB_API_KEY')],
]);
$raw = curl_exec($ch);
if ($raw === false) {
    throw new RuntimeException('Network failure: ' . curl_error($ch));
}
$status = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
$body = json_decode($raw, true);

if ($status === 200) {
    echo $body['data']['name'] . ' ' . $body['data']['birthDate'] . PHP_EOL;
} elseif ($status === 404) {
    echo 'CPF not found (does not use a credit)' . PHP_EOL;
} else {
    // error comes as text ("...") or as an object (["message" => "..."])
    $error = $body['error'] ?? null;
    $message = is_array($error) ? $error['message'] : $error;
    throw new RuntimeException("Error {$status}: {$message}");
}

Run it with php cpf-lookup.php. On a 429, the message already says how many seconds to wait before trying again (the same value as the Retry-After header).

Response

Found CPF (200, uses 1 credit):

JSON
{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "cpf": "12345678909",
    "name": "Fulano de Tal",
    "nameUpper": "FULANO DE TAL",
    "gender": "M",
    "birthDate": "15/06/1990",
    "day": 15,
    "month": 6,
    "year": 1990
  }
}

CPF not found (404, does not use a credit):

JSON
{
  "success": false,
  "data": null,
  "error": { "message": "CPF não encontrado na base de dados" }
}

The CPF 12345678909 is fictional, used only in the examples. gender can be null. The error.message text comes from the API in Portuguese ("CPF not found in the database").

Errors

StatusWhat it meansWhat to do
404CPF is not in the databaseTreat it as "not found". Does not use a credit.
400 / 422CPF does not have 11 digits or has an invalid check digitFix the input. Does not use a credit.
401Missing or invalid API keyCheck the CPFHUB_API_KEY variable.
403Credits used up or inactive accountCheck your balance with GET /quota or top up in the dashboard.
429Per-minute request limitWait the number of seconds in the Retry-After header and try again.
5xxTemporary failureTry again after a few seconds.

The error field can be text ("error": "...") or an object ("error": { "message": "..." }), depending on the status. The examples above handle both formats. Full list in Error Codes.

Next steps