OBJECTIVES: The number of hip and knee arthroplasty has been growing steadily over the last decade because they are effective procedures that improve quality of life and functional capacity and decrease pain. They have been proven to be cost-effective procedures in different countries. The objective of this study is to quantify the number and expenditure with these procedures in Brazil. METHODS: We used for the public health care system data from the hospital information system (SIH/SUS) database and for the private health care data from the BI2iM database that has 5 million lives. We used the codes for each of these two procedures as search base. All values are in 2010 Brazilian reais (US$1.00 = R$ 2.00). RESULTS: A total of 20,116 hip and 6,320 knee arthroplasties were performed in the public system and 20,212 hip and 16,206 knee arthroplasties were performed in the private health system. The total expenditure to the Brazilian health system generated by these procedures was R$ 584,6 millions. For hip procedures the expenses for the public and private systems were respectively R$ 60,8 millions and R$ 280 millions. For knee procedures the expenses for the public and private systems were R$ 15,3 millions and R$ 228,5 millions. CONCLUSIONS: Hip and knee arthroplasties represents an important amount of investment for both public and private health care systems in Brazil. These are initial data to be used in future studies to determine the cost-effectiveness and budgetary impact of different therapies linked to this procedure in Brazil.