Software market in Brazil: US$ 67.8 bn in IT in 2025

The Brazilian information technology market reached US$ 67.8 billion in 2025, grew 18.5% against a world average of 14.1% and kept Brazil in 10th place in the global IT investment ranking, according to the annual ABES study based on IDC data (ABES, 2026). The usage data tells a different story. In Cetic.br’s TIC Empresas 2025 survey, 31% of Brazilian companies with 10 or more employed persons used a CRM application in the previous 12 months, and 36% used ERP (Cetic.br, 2026). Spending grows at double digits while adoption of management software moves a few points a year. For those who lead sales, marketing and customer success, my reading of these numbers is that buying technology has become easier than making it work, and the difference between companies lies in usage, in integration between systems and in people prepared to run what was bought.

At Iasbeck&Co we implement CRM and AI agents in B2B operations, and the question I hear most from executive teams is whether the company is investing too little or too much in commercial technology. This text gathers the primary sources I use to answer it, from ABES and Brasscom to Cetic.br, with Eurostat as a benchmark, and it is written for the executive team, the commercial leaders and HR.

How much does Brazil invest in IT and software?

The 22nd edition of the study “Mercado Brasileiro de Software: Panorama e Tendências” (Brazilian Software Market: Overview and Trends), released in April 2026 with 2025 data, shows a market of US$ 67.8 billion, up from US$ 58.6 billion in 2024. The mix leans toward hardware, with 47.9% of investment, followed by software, with 32.1%, and services, with 20% (ABES, 2026). The person in charge of the study at ABES attributes the weight of hardware to a stage in which infrastructure is still expanding and expects software and services to gain share with cloud, AI and managed services.

The second part of the study, released in June, looked at software and services. The country closed 2025 with 41,613 companies in these segments and a buyer market of US$ 35.4 billion, and 94.3% of those companies are micro or small (ABES, 2026). On the buyer side, the financial sector accounts for 25.4% of the software and services market, Services and Telecommunications for 24.3% and Industry for 19.5%, and the three verticals add up to about 70% of the total. Retail appears with US$ 3.53 billion and agribusiness with US$ 670 million. The Southeast concentrates 62.37% of IT investment, and the South reached 15.86%.

The main indicators in one table

Indicator	Value	Reference year	Source
Total IT investment in Brazil	US$ 67.8 billion	2025	ABES/IDC, 2026
Growth of the Brazilian IT market	18.5% (world average: 14.1%)	2025	ABES/IDC, 2026
Growth forecast	5.3% (world average: 9.7%)	2026	ABES/IDC, 2026
Position in the world IT investment ranking	10th	2025	ABES/IDC, 2026
Share of Latin America	38.4% (was 34.7%)	2025	ABES/IDC, 2026
Investment split	Hardware 47.9%, software 32.1%, services 20%	2025	ABES/IDC, 2026
Software and services buyer market	US$ 35.4 billion	2025	ABES/IDC, 2026
ICT macro-sector market	R$ 919.7 billion, 7.2% of GDP	2025	Brasscom, 2026
Traditional software and SaaS in the domestic market	R$ 56.9 billion (+15.6%) and R$ 44.7 billion (+30.9%)	2025	Brasscom, 2026

What Brasscom adds

Brasscom’s 2025 Sector Report measures the ICT macro-sector in Brazilian reais and with a wider scope, which includes telecom and technology produced inside companies from other sectors. The macro-sector reached R$ 919.7 billion in 2025, with 14.7% growth and a 7.2% share of GDP, and it employs 2.1 million people on formal payroll. For those who buy commercial software, the most useful cut is the domestic market: traditional software totaled R$ 56.9 billion, up 15.6%, and cloud totaled R$ 85.0 billion, up 35.5%, of which R$ 44.7 billion was SaaS, which grew 30.9%. Based on IDC data, the report also states that almost 30% of ERP implementations already take place in the SaaS model.

In its forecast, Brasscom estimates R$ 2.0 trillion in technology investment between 2026 and 2029, with R$ 765.6 billion in cloud, R$ 736.6 billion in artificial intelligence and R$ 181.6 billion in Big Data and Analytics. With the money going to subscriptions, purchasing stops being a large project every five years and becomes a series of monthly subscriptions that each team signs up for, the problem I described in sales stack and tool integration.

How does Brazil compare with the world and Latin America?

Brazil widened its regional lead, going from 34.7% to 38.4% of Latin America’s IT investment in 2025. The previous edition of the study, with 2024 data, showed the country with 1.58% of the world IT market and, looking only at software and services, in 11th place in the global ranking, with 1.5% of a world market of US$ 2,029 billion (ABES, 2025). When the cut excludes hardware, Brazil drops one position in the ranking.

The figure that catches my attention most is the 2026 forecast. After two years growing above the global average, Brazil is expected to grow 5.3% in IT this year, against 9.7% forecast for the world. ABES describes the phase as one of “greater maturity”, with more selective investment geared to productivity, cost reduction and concrete returns. For sales leadership, a year of tighter IT budgets favors those who can show the effect of each license on results and works against those who ask for a new tool without measuring the use of the previous one.

How many Brazilian companies use ERP and CRM?

TIC Empresas is the Cetic.br survey, linked to NIC.br, on technology use in Brazilian companies. The 2025 edition interviewed 4,174 companies with 10 or more employed persons by phone, between February 2025 and January 2026, and its software module, developed with Softex, asks about ERP and CRM use (Cetic.br, 2026). The report notes that the indicator was stable for a long time and that, in 2025, CRM use rose from 25% to 31%, driven by small companies, which went from 23% to 29%, and by the Southeast region, from 24% to 32%. ERP went from 34% to 36%.

Eurostat runs the equivalent survey in the European Union, with the same cut of companies with 10 or more persons and the same size bands. In 2025, 46.45% of European enterprises used ERP and 28.51% used CRM (Eurostat, 2026). The table puts the two surveys side by side by size.

Size (persons employed)	ERP Brazil 2025	CRM Brazil 2024	CRM Brazil 2025	ERP European Union 2025	CRM European Union 2025
Total (10 or more)	36%	25%	31%	46.45%	28.51%
Small (10 to 49)	32%	23%	29%	41.08%	24.69%
Medium (50 to 249)	58%	38%	41%	69.93%	43.77%
Large (250 or more)	76%	50%	56%	88.71%	65.43%

Sources: Cetic.br, tables G2 and G3; Eurostat, isoc_eb_iip.

What the comparison shows

In CRM, Brazil came close to the European average in 2025, and small Brazilian companies appear ahead of European ones, with 29% against 24.69%. In ERP, the gap is about ten points overall and twelve points among medium companies, which in Brazil show 58% use against 69.93% in Europe. Large Brazilian companies use less CRM than European ones, with 56% against 65.43%. The most curious coincidence appears in the information and communication sector, where CRM use is 63% in Brazil and 63.14% in the European Union.

The sector numbers in Brazil explain part of the commercial conversation. CRM use is 31% in trade, 29% in manufacturing, 22% in transport and storage and 37% in professional, scientific and administrative activities. In a medium-sized manufacturer that sells to other businesses, chances are the customer history still lives in spreadsheets, email and the sales rep’s memory. I cover the platform market and what changes in tool selection in CRM market.

Where the investment gets stuck: integration and people

With 36% of companies using ERP and 31% using CRM, a large part of the market has only one of the two systems, or neither. The published tables do not show how many companies have both, let alone how many integrate them, and that is the point that weighs most on the commercial operation. Without a link between ERP and CRM, the salesperson cannot see the customer who is behind on payments and customer success does not know what was sold.

TIC Empresas also shows who takes care of technology. Only 36% of companies have an IT area or department, a share that goes from 32% in small companies to 63% in medium and 86% in large ones (Cetic.br, 2026). In 59% of companies, ICT functions were performed by external suppliers in the previous 12 months (Cetic.br, 2026). Among companies that hired or tried to hire IT specialists, 35% cited a lack of candidates and 29% a lack of specific qualification, and among large companies these shares rise to 50% and 47% (Cetic.br, 2026). In small and medium companies, CRM integration tends to fall to a supplier or to someone on the commercial team.

AI arrives on top of this base. According to the data ABES analyzed in the second part of the study, 40% of companies already invest in AI agents and another 33% plan to start in the next 12 months, and the association itself lists data quality, legacy systems, governance and a shortage of specialized professionals among the obstacles to using AI at scale (ABES, 2026). The release does not detail the sample or method behind this measurement, so I read the number as investment intent declared by executives. An agent that reads a CRM with no history, or an ERP that does not talk to the CRM, repeats the problem faster. AI adoption figures for Brazilian companies are in AI in Brazilian companies.

Which surveys back these numbers?

Source	Publication year	Sample and method	Main finding
ABES with IDC data, Brazilian Software Market 2026 (part 1)	2026, 2025 data	IDC modeling with interviews with suppliers and users and official data	US$ 67.8 billion in IT, 10th in the world, 18.5% growth against 14.1% globally
ABES with IDC data, Brazilian Software Market 2026 (part 2)	2026, 2025 data	Same base, by vertical and region	US$ 35.4 billion in software and services; finance at 25.4%
ABES with IDC data, 2025 edition	2025, 2024 data	Same methodology	Brazil with 1.58% of the world IT market and 11th in software and services
Brasscom, 2025 Sector Report	2026, 2025 data	Compilation of IDC, Central Bank, IBGE, RAIS and Caged data	Macro-sector of R$ 919.7 billion; SaaS up 30.9%
Cetic.br, TIC Empresas 2025	2026, fieldwork 2025 and 2026	4,174 companies with 10 or more persons, phone interviews, national sample	CRM in 31% of companies and ERP in 36%
Eurostat, E-business integration	2026, 2025 data	Survey of EU enterprises with 10 or more persons	ERP in 46.45% and CRM in 28.51% of enterprises

What these data do not say

The ABES study measures spending, in dollars, from the seller’s side. IDC estimates the market from supplier interviews and modeling, and conversion to dollars makes the number move with the exchange rate, regardless of the volume purchased. The series itself is revised between editions: the 2025 edition showed a 35.0% Brazilian share of Latin America in 2024, and the 2026 edition uses 34.7% for the same year. None of these numbers says how much of the software purchased is in use, and none measures the effect on productivity or revenue. High investment and high results can go together, and the sources do not allow anyone to claim that one causes the other.

ABES and Brasscom also measure different things. Brasscom works in reais and includes telecom, BPO and technology built inside companies from other sectors, so its R$ 919.7 billion does not compare with ABES’s US$ 67.8 billion, and the two should not be added. Use each source for the question it answers: ABES for international position and spending mix, Brasscom for size in reais and the speed of cloud and SaaS.

TIC Empresas measures declared presence. The question is whether the company used a CRM application in the last 12 months, and a company with two idle licenses answers yes, just as an operation with a hundred salespeople logging everything does. About 5% of respondents said they did not know, and the survey leaves out companies with fewer than 10 employed persons. The comparison with Eurostat uses the same population and the same size bands, but the two questionnaires do not word the questions identically, and small wording differences change answers. Read the ten-point ERP gap as an order of magnitude.

Software vendor surveys tend to show CRM adoption rates well above 31%, and many of them interview companies already in the contact base of those who sell technology. They help to understand practices within that group, and TIC Empresas helps to size the country.

What leadership does with these numbers

With the 2026 budget tighter than 2025’s, sales leadership gains ground when it comes to the meeting with usage measured and integration solved. The roadmap I propose:

1. Build an inventory of commercial software with cost, number of licenses and active users in the last 30 days, and take the cost per active user to the executive team, next to the cost per license.
2. Answer in writing whether the CRM and the ERP talk to each other, which fields pass from one to the other and how often. If the answer depends on a spreadsheet exported every week, that is the first project.
3. Compare your company with your size band in the Cetic.br table. A medium company without an integrated ERP is in the group where Brazil lags Europe the most, and its priority differs from that of a large company that already has both systems.
4. Before approving an AI agent, confirm that it will read data with an owner, history and filling criteria. The guide on CRM data quality shows how to measure this.
5. Define who administers the CRM inside the company, even when a partner runs the implementation. With 64% of companies lacking an IT area, this person usually sits in the commercial operation or in RevOps, and the design of that role is in RevOps team.
6. Tie each license renewal to a usage indicator within the process, reviewed every quarter, and cut what stays below the agreed level for two quarters in a row.

What HR and L&D need to know

TIC Empresas hiring data show a shortage of qualified technology people even in large companies, and that data point refers to IT specialists. In the commercial operation, the shortage shows up differently: the CRM exists and the team barely uses it, the manager cannot build the report he asks for, and the integration breaks without anyone noticing. HR recognizes the need for training when the active user rate stays low, when each team presents a different number for the same indicator and when the company depends on the supplier for any field change.

The training that sustains the investment involves different audiences. Leaders learn to read usage and hold people to the process, frontline teams learn to record what the next person in line will need, and whoever administers the CRM learns to maintain fields, integrations and permissions. The method for measuring adoption is in CRM adoption, and the effect of training shows in active users within the process, before and after, on the same team.

Brazil will keep buying software, and the advantage goes to companies that can connect their systems, define who answers for each piece of data and prepare the people who operate them. That is the work of the in-company Revenue Operations training, which I run with the marketing, sales and customer success leaders, finance and whoever administers the systems, on the company’s own data. The group leaves with the SLA between marketing, sales and CS, which defines what each team delivers to the next, and with the RevOps metrics matrix, which shows which system each number comes from and which indicator justifies each license.

Frequently asked questions

How big is the software market in Brazil?

According to ABES with IDC data, the software and services buyer market totaled US$ 35.4 billion in 2025, within a total IT market of US$ 67.8 billion. Software represented 32.1% of IT investment, services 20% and hardware 47.9%. In reais and with a broader scope, Brasscom estimates traditional software at R$ 56.9 billion and SaaS at R$ 44.7 billion in 2025.

Where does Brazil rank in the world IT market?

Brazil ranked 10th in world IT investment in 2025 and accounted for 38.4% of Latin America’s investment. Looking only at software and services, the previous edition of the study, with 2024 data, placed the country 11th, with 1.5% of the world market.

How many Brazilian companies use CRM?

In TIC Empresas 2025, 31% of companies with 10 or more employed persons used a CRM application in the previous 12 months, up from 25% in 2024. Use ranges from 29% in small companies to 41% in medium and 56% in large ones. The survey measures declared presence and does not say how much the team uses the tool day to day.

Will IT investment keep growing in 2026?

The ABES and IDC forecast is 5.3% growth in 2026, below the 18.5% of 2025 and the forecast world average of 9.7%. The association describes a phase of more selective investment, with pressure for returns, which favors projects that show measured usage and results.

How do you prepare the team to use the software the company already bought?

Start with usage: measure how many people use the CRM in the agreed process and where logging fails. Then train each audience in its part, with leaders holding people to the process, frontline teams recording what the next team needs and an internal administrator looking after fields and integrations. Repeat the usage measurement four weeks after the training, on the same team.

ERP or CRM: which should a company have first?

The two tools answer different questions, and the order depends on where the operation loses the most money today. TIC Empresas shows ERP more widespread than CRM in every size band, and in B2B operations results appear when the two exchange data, with billing and overdue payments visible to those who sell and those who serve.