Meaning 5 of 5 · Statistics
Central Product Classification
By Oliver Wakefield-Smith, Digital Signet. Updated July 2026.
To a statistician, CPC is the UN's Central Product Classification: the international standard for classifying products, goods and services in economic data UNSD, classification registry. Another meaning with no connection to advertising.
What it is for
The UN Statistics Division describes the CPC as a coherent, consistent classification structure for products, serving as an international standard for assembling and tabulating data requiring product detail: industrial production, domestic and foreign commodity trade, international trade in services, balance of payments, consumption and price statistics UNSD, classification registry. If two countries report trade in "accounting services", the CPC is what makes those two numbers comparable.
Current version
The current released version is CPC Ver. 2.1, with Ver. 3.0 listed as under development on the UNSD registry UNSD, checked 2026. The registry publishes the full structure in CSV, Excel and PDF formats in multiple languages.
How it relates to HS and ISIC
Three classifications get confused. ISIC classifies economic activities (what a producer does). The Harmonized System classifies traded goods for customs. The CPC classifies products themselves, goods and services alike, and is designed to correspond with both, so a customs record and an industry survey can be joined into one statistical picture.
Different CPC?
The advertising metric is at what is CPC. Also see the patent classification, the medical-coding credential, or the full router.