Look up a CPF with Ruby
Look up a CPF (Brazil's individual taxpayer ID) with Ruby using Net::HTTP from the standard library. No extra gems.
Using Cursor, Lovable, v0 or another AI? Copy the Simple Lookup prompt and paste it into your assistant.
Before you start
- Create a free account at app.cpfhub.io: the Free plan includes 50 credits and does not ask for a card.
- Copy your API key from app.cpfhub.io/api-keys.
- Store the key in an environment variable, never in your code:
export CPFHUB_API_KEY="sua_api_key"Example
require 'net/http'
require 'json'
cpf = '12345678909'
uri = URI("https://api.cpfhub.io/cpf/#{cpf}")
req = Net::HTTP::Get.new(uri)
req['x-api-key'] = ENV.fetch('CPFHUB_API_KEY')
res = Net::HTTP.start(uri.hostname, uri.port, use_ssl: true, open_timeout: 5, read_timeout: 10) do |http|
http.request(req)
end
body = JSON.parse(res.body)
case res.code.to_i
when 200
puts "#{body['data']['name']} #{body['data']['birthDate']}"
when 404
puts 'CPF not found (does not use a credit)'
when 429
puts "Per-minute limit reached. Try again in #{res['Retry-After']} s"
else
# error is a string ("...") or an object ({ "message" => "..." })
error = body['error']
message = error.is_a?(Hash) ? error['message'] : error
raise "Error #{res.code}: #{message}"
endRun it with ruby cpf_lookup.rb.
Response
Found CPF (200, uses 1 credit):
{
"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):
{
"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
| Status | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
404 | CPF is not in the database | Treat it as "not found". Does not use a credit. |
400 / 422 | CPF does not have 11 digits or has an invalid check digit | Fix the input. Does not use a credit. |
401 | Missing or invalid API key | Check the CPFHUB_API_KEY variable. |
403 | Credits used up or inactive account | Check your balance with GET /quota or top up in the dashboard. |
429 | Per-minute request limit | Wait the number of seconds in the Retry-After header and try again. |
5xx | Temporary failure | Try 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.