What is “LTDA”?
LTDA stands for Sociedade Limitada (Portuguese), a private limited liability company used primarily in Angola, Argentina, Brazil. The suffix signals that the business has limited liability and is privately held.
Full meaning & translation
The full form is Sociedade Limitada, a Portuguese-language term. It translates literally as “Limited company.” You may also encounter it abbreviated or written as lda, limitada, limitado, limitda.
Where it's used
LTDA appears in company names registered in the following 7 jurisdictions:
What it tells you about the company
Equivalent forms around the world
These are the closest structural equivalents to LTDA in other jurisdictions — same entity category, different national law.
Normalizing “LTDA” in your data
When matching or deduplicating company records, the legal suffix is noise — “Acme LTDA” and “Acme” should resolve to the same entity. One API call strips it and returns a stable canonical form:
curl -X POST https://api.ambect.com/v1/normalize/company \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $AMBECT_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"name": "Acme LTDA", "country": "ao"}'{
"data": {
"canonical": "acme ltda",
"legal_type": null,
"tokens": [
"acme",
"ltda"
]
},
"meta": {
"pipeline": [
"lowercase",
"legal_suffix"
],
"confidence": 0.99
}
}Frequently asked questions
What does LTDA stand for?
LTDA stands for Sociedade Limitada (Portuguese), which translates as "Limited company".
Is a LTDA public or private?
A LTDA is a private entity — its shares are not publicly listed or traded on a stock exchange.
What is the liability in a LTDA?
Owners of a LTDA have limited liability. Their personal assets are protected, and their exposure is capped at the amount they invested.
Which countries use LTDA?
LTDA is used in Angola, Argentina, Brazil, Dominican Republic and 3 other countries.
Is a LTDA the same as a LLC?
Functionally comparable — both are private limited liability company forms — but they operate under different national laws with distinct formation, capital, and governance requirements.
Need to normalize LTDA at scale? The Ambect API handles it across 100+ countries in under 5 ms.
Try the live normalizer free →