The objective of this investigation was to evaluate to what degree technical requirements restrict Brazilian exports, based on a survey applied to 77 firms. The variables represented six types of technical measures that are usually imposed upon exported products. To facilitate the interpretation of the results, factorial analysis was used to reduce the number of variables involved. This allowed the construction of two indicators of the degree of restrictiveness of the technical barriers focused by the study. These were an indicator of requirements of technical specification (ITS) and an indicator for information and label requirements (IIL). Descriptive statistics and paired t test showed that the firms surveyed considered the ITS more restrictive to their exports, that is, these have been subject to greater restrictions affecting the production process, including quality, the production process pattern and conformity assessment.