This paper focused on public funding to private providers of compulsory education in the context of globalisations. It analyses the differences and the common points between Brazil and Portugal (from 2014 to 2017) regarding the type of private providers in education, the mechanics and the reasons linked to the public funding to compulsory education private providers. Data collection was based on content analysis of a corpus of documents and interviews. The article shows that in the case of Brazil, the philanthropists are the main promoters of public funding to private providers of compulsory education while, in Portugal the main promoters are the large educational private providers. It also identifies that the public funding to private providers of compulsory basic education is increasing in Brazil and decreasing in Portugal due to governments political and ideological options.