Portugal · Instituto da Segurança Social, I.P.
How to get your Portuguese contribution record
- Time
- About 10 minutes if you can already log in; a few weeks if you have to sort out credentials from abroad first
- Cost
- Free
- You need
- Your NISS — the 11-digit Número de Identificação da Segurança Social · Your Segurança Social Direta password, or a Chave Móvel Digital, or a Cartão de Cidadão and a card reader · For the consulate route: your Cartão de Cidadão or passport, and an appointment
Before you start: your NISS, and whether you can still log in
Two things decide whether this takes ten minutes or three weeks, and both are worth checking before you open the portal: do you know your NISS, and can you still get past the login screen.
The NISS is your 11-digit Social Security number. It is printed on any Portuguese payslip, appears on the Cartão de Cidadão, and is on any letter the Segurança Social has ever sent you. Without it there is no login at all — not with a password, not with Chave Móvel Digital — so if you can't find it, start there rather than at the portal.
The credential is the harder half. Segurança Social Direta accounts are old: most were opened with a password that arrived by post, at a Portuguese address. If you left the country, that route is closed and the 'forgot password' flow may try to use it again. Chave Móvel Digital is the way around this — it is the Portuguese government's mobile authentication, it works with a foreign mobile number, and it replaces the password on every state portal at once.
Do not skip ahead assuming your old login still works. Segurança Social Direta expires passwords, and finding that out on the login screen after you have already blocked out the afternoon is the common version of this going wrong.
- Segurança Social DiretaOfficial
- Chave Móvel Digital — autenticacao.govOfficial
If it doesn't look like this
I can't find my NISS anywhere#
Check an old Portuguese payslip first — it is printed on every one, usually beside the employer's own contribution number. It also appears on the Cartão de Cidadão, and on the declaração de remunerações your employer filed. Failing all of that, the Segurança Social will confirm it to you by email or at a consulate on production of ID; it is not a secret, just an identifier.
How will you log in?
Three routes into the same account. Pick the one that matches what you actually hold today, not what you had when you lived in Portugal — the routes rejoin at the same page.
Sign in with your NISS and password
Go to app.seg-social.pt, enter your NISS in the top field and your password below it. This is the original route and it needs nothing else — no app, no card reader.
If the password is rejected, do not immediately assume you have mistyped it: Segurança Social Direta expires credentials that have gone unused, and an expired password produces the same generic error as a wrong one.
- Segurança Social DiretaOfficial
If it doesn't look like this
The password reset sends a letter to an address in Portugal I left years ago#
This is the single most common wall on this whole guide. If the email address on the account is still yours, the online 'Recuperar palavra-passe' route sends the reset there and you are fine. If it isn't — an old employer's address, a university account, anything you can no longer open — stop fighting the reset and get a Chave Móvel Digital instead. It bypasses the password entirely, and unlike the password it can be activated from outside Portugal.
I get an error but no explanation of what's wrong#
Portuguese state portals are terse about failed logins on purpose. In practice the causes are, in order of frequency: an expired password, a NISS typed with spaces or the wrong number entirely (people reach for the NIF, which is 9 digits, not the NISS, which is 11), and a genuinely locked account after repeated attempts. If two careful attempts fail, treat it as an expired credential rather than a typo.
Sign in with your Chave Móvel Digital
On the login screen choose the Chave Móvel Digital option, enter your phone number and PIN, and confirm with the code that arrives by SMS or through the Autenticação.gov app.
The Chave Móvel Digital is worth having even if you only ever use it once: it is the same credential for the Segurança Social, the tax portal, the health service and the citizen's portal, it works with a non-Portuguese mobile number, and it never expires in a drawer the way a posted password does.
- Chave Móvel Digital — autenticacao.govOfficial
- Segurança Social DiretaOfficial
If it doesn't look like this
My Chave Móvel Digital is tied to a phone number I no longer use#
You can change the associated number through Autenticação.gov if you can still authenticate once with the old one. If you can't, the number has to be changed in person — at a Loja de Cidadão in Portugal or at a consulate abroad. Doing this at the consulate at the same time as anything else you need is the efficient version; making a special trip for it is not.
Get a Chave Móvel Digital through a consulate
If you are outside Portugal with no working password, the realistic route in is a Chave Móvel Digital activated at a Portuguese consulate. Book an appointment, bring your Cartão de Cidadão or passport, and you leave with a credential that opens every Portuguese state portal.
Consulates activate the Chave Móvel Digital as a routine counter service — it is not a special request and it does not require you to be resident in the consular district for any length of time.
Allow for the appointment queue rather than the appointment itself. In the larger consulates this is the slow part, and it is the reason this route is measured in weeks while the other two are measured in minutes.
While you are there it is worth confirming the email address the Segurança Social holds for you. Once that is an address you can actually open, the ordinary password reset works from anywhere and you have a second way in.
- Chave Móvel Digital — autenticacao.govOfficial
- Portuguese consular network — portaldascomunidadesOfficial
If it doesn't look like this
Is there any way to get my record without logging in at all?#
Yes, but it is slower and it is worth understanding as a fallback rather than a plan. The Segurança Social answers written requests for a contribution record by post and email, and a Centro Distrital will produce one over the counter. Both need proof of identity and both take weeks. If you have any prospect of a Chave Móvel Digital, that is the faster road even counting the consulate appointment.
Open Emprego → Remunerações e contribuições → Carreira contributiva
Inside Segurança Social Direta, the record you want is under the employment menu, not under pensions. The destination is the page headed 'Carreira contributiva': a year-by-year list of what each employer declared for you.
The menu labels have been renamed more than once over the years, and older guides send you down paths that no longer exist. Navigate by the destination — the words 'Carreira contributiva' — rather than by the exact sequence of clicks, and you will find it whatever the current menu calls itself.
The on-screen view is a summary. It is genuinely useful for a quick sanity check of which years are there, but it is not the document: the year-by-year detail this app reads lives in the PDF you pull in the next step.
- Segurança Social DiretaOfficial
If it doesn't look like this
Press 'Obter extrato da carreira' and download the PDF
This produces the extrato da carreira contributiva: one PDF, listing each period with the wage your employer declared and the days of coverage behind it. It is free and it downloads immediately.
One document is all Portugal needs, and it is worth saying plainly because the neighbouring country works differently: Spain splits the same information across a vida laboral (coverage) and a bases de cotización (earnings), so anyone who has done the Spanish version goes looking for a second Portuguese file. There isn't one. The Portuguese extrato carries both — the days that count toward the 15-year prazo de garantia, and the euros the pension is a percentage of.
Take the whole PDF rather than a screenshot of the summary. The pension formula is built on the year-by-year wages, so a document without them prices nothing.
If it doesn't look like this
Some early years are missing or show fewer days than I worked#
Records from before roughly 2000 were migrated from paper and gaps are common — sometimes an employer never filed, sometimes the migration lost it. Either way it is contestable at a Centro Distrital, with payslips or a contract as evidence. Until it is corrected, use the statement as it stands: a career you have added years to by hand is not a record, it is a hope.
The wages look far too low for the years I remember#
The extrato prints what was DECLARED, not what you were paid, and it prints one row per month rather than one per year — so a single row is a month's wage, not a year's. A year showing only a few months of declared work is a genuinely thin year in the Portuguese formula, which averages your total career pay across the calendar years it spans. If a year is thin because an employer under-declared, that is the contestable case above.
What the numbers on it mean
You now hold both halves of the Portuguese figure. It is worth two minutes to understand what they do, because the Portuguese formula rewards a mobile career differently from most of its neighbours.
The days decide whether you get anything at all. Portugal's prazo de garantia is 15 calendar years with a registered wage — years with at least 120 days of contributions each. Below that, Portugal pays nothing on its own record; above it, you qualify outright. If you are short, EU coordination is the rescue: under Regulation 883/2004 the insurance periods you built in any other EU/EEA member (and, through the parallel post-Brexit protocol, the UK) pool together to clear that 15-year gate, and Portugal then pays pro-rata on its own years. Portugal also holds a bilateral totalization agreement with the United States, in force since 1 August 1989, which does the same job across the Atlantic.
The wages decide how much. Portugal averages your whole declared career — total pay divided by 14 times the number of years — into a monthly reference wage, then applies an accrual rate for each year worked. Two features of that rate are unusual and both matter to a mobile professional. First, it is degressive in the WAGE rather than capped: the slice of your reference wage up to 1.1 × the IAS accrues at 2.3% a year and the slices above it at 2.25%, 2.2%, 2.1% and 2%, so a higher salary earns more pension but at a gently falling rate. Second, there is no contribution ceiling at all — Portugal levies social security on the whole gross wage, where Spain, France and Germany all stop counting above a cap. A high earner's Portuguese years are worth proportionally more than the same years in most of the EU.
Two smaller things to know. The pension is paid 14 times a year, not 12 — the two extra payments land in July and December, and any monthly figure you see should be multiplied by 14, not 12, to compare it with another country's annual pension. And the career counts up to 40 years: beyond that, the best 40 count and additional years no longer raise the figure.
If it doesn't look like this
I worked in Portugal for less than 15 years — is it worth anything?#
Very possibly, but only through coordination. Portugal alone pays nothing below the 15-year prazo de garantia. What clears it is the pooled record: every insured year in any EU/EEA country (plus the UK under the post-Brexit protocol, and US credits under the 1989 bilateral agreement) counts toward that 15, and once the gate opens Portugal pays a pro-rata pension on its own years only. So four Portuguese years plus twelve Dutch ones is a real, if modest, Portuguese pension — and four Portuguese years alone is not.
Does it matter that I'll be living somewhere else when I retire?#
Not for entitlement. A Portuguese state pension is payable wherever you live, and the same is true in reverse for every EU/EEA country. Where residence does matter is tax: the pension is generally taxed where you live at retirement rather than where you earned it, subject to the relevant double-tax treaty — which is a different question from whether the pension exists.
Worked somewhere else too?
Each country holds its own record, and none of them talk to each other until you claim. These walk the other portals the same way.
Questions people actually ask
How do I get my Portuguese contribution record?#
Log in to Segurança Social Direta at app.seg-social.pt with your NISS and password, or with a Chave Móvel Digital, then go to Emprego → Remunerações e contribuições → Carreira contributiva and press 'Obter extrato da carreira'. The PDF is free and downloads immediately.
Can I get my carreira contributiva from outside Portugal?#
Yes — the portal is open from anywhere and nothing about the document is residence-dependent. The obstacle is the credential, not the border: if your password has expired and the reset runs through a Portuguese address you no longer have, get a Chave Móvel Digital instead. A Portuguese consulate activates one on production of ID, and it works with a foreign mobile number.
What is a NISS and how is it different from a NIF?#
The NISS is your 11-digit Social Security number and it is what Segurança Social Direta logs you in with. The NIF is your 9-digit tax number, used on the Finanças portal. They are different numbers on different portals for different systems, and reaching for the NIF at the Segurança Social login is one of the most common reasons a login silently fails.
Do I need a second document like Spain's bases de cotización?#
No. The Portuguese extrato da carreira contributiva carries both the coverage and the declared wages in one file, so a single download completes your Portuguese record. Spain is the exception among its neighbours in splitting the two across a vida laboral and a bases de cotización.
How many years do I need for a Portuguese state pension?#
15 calendar years with a registered wage — the prazo de garantia — with at least 120 days of contributions in each of those years. Below that Portugal pays nothing on its own record, but EU Regulation 883/2004 lets insurance periods from other EU/EEA countries (and the UK, and US credits under the 1989 bilateral agreement) pool together to clear the 15, after which Portugal pays pro-rata on its Portuguese years.
Is there a cap on Portuguese pension contributions?#
No, and it makes Portugal genuinely different from its neighbours. Employees pay the TSU on the whole gross wage — there is no contribution ceiling of the kind Spain (base máxima), France (PASS) and Germany (Beitragsbemessungsgrenze) all apply. The redistribution happens in the accrual rate instead: the slice of your reference wage above 1.1 × the IAS accrues a little more slowly, tapering from 2.3% to 2% a year.
Why is a Portuguese pension paid 14 times a year?#
Portuguese pensions, like Portuguese salaries, carry two extra payments — they arrive in July and December. It is not a display quirk: the 14 is inside the statutory formula, which divides your total career pay by 14 times the number of years to get the monthly reference remuneration. When comparing a Portuguese monthly figure with another country's, multiply by 14, not 12.
Does the record show what my pension will actually be?#
No — the extrato is the raw input, not the answer. The Segurança Social runs its own pension simulator on the same portal, which applies the current rules to your record. That simulator is Portugal-only, though: it cannot see the years you built anywhere else, which is exactly the gap a cross-border picture fills.
Official sources
- Segurança Social Direta
- Pensão de velhice — Segurança Social
- Cálculo da pensão — Segurança Social
- Guias práticos — Segurança Social
- Montantes mínimos de pensões — Segurança Social
- Chave Móvel Digital — autenticacao.gov
- Portaria n.º 480-A/2025/1 — IAS 2026
- Portaria n.º 358/2024/1 — normal pension age 2026
- Totalization Agreement with Portugal — SSA
Last checked against the live portal on . Government portals get redesigned without notice - if a screen here no longer matches what you see, trust the portal, not us. This guide is independent and is not affiliated with the Instituto da Segurança Social, I.P..