North-eastern Brazil, from Piauí and Ceará south through Bahia and Minas Gerais to northern Sío Paulo; also, apparently disjunctly, in south-western Mato Grosso do Sul and Bolivia (Beni).
 
Population
Estimated population is unknown (2010).
Grey-eyed Greenlet (Hylophilus amaurocephalus) [XC742262]
by Jacob Wijpkema from Exu, Pernambuco, Brazil (song)
Grey-eyed Greenlet (Hylophilus amaurocephalus) [XC330507]
by Roney Souza from Ant\u00f4nio Dias, Minas Gerais, Brazil (song)
Subspecies
No subspecies.
Formerly treated as conspecific with Rufous-crowned Greenlet (Hylophilus poicilotis), with which partly sympatric, but appears to be clearly differentiated by plumage, eye colour, vocalizations and habitat preference. Previously reported hybridization between the two explained as being due to presence of a "residual cline" that reflects geographical variation of the ancestor.