Abstract Reliability is a popular concept that has been used in the manufacturing industry. In this paper, we consider a parallel system containing n non-identical and independent components in which each component is repairable except when all components are failed. As a special case, estimating the reliability of the system with identical components is considered. In real life, the data obtained for repair rate and failure rate could be subject to uncertainty. Here, to address this situation, failure and repair rates are considered as fuzzy numbers to estimate the reliability of the system. Fuzzy system reliability is estimated using fuzzy failure and repair rates, which are obtained by using confidence intervals and point estimators of failure rate and repair rate.