With the aim of contributing to the teaching of the subject of costs in undergraduate business courses at Brazilian universities, the general objective of this study is to identify the profile of this subject, in order to identify the structure, nomenclature, methodologies, assessment process, syllabus content and bibliography; as well as to compare the similarities and particularities of the results achieved here with those obtained in previous studies. The research is quantitative in nature and is characterised as descriptive and documentary. The research universe was defined on the basis of the 2015 Folha University Ranking and was made up of the 50 best Brazilian universities.