Prenatal family allowance in Portugal: who qualifies, 2026 amounts and how to claim

What the prenatal allowance is

The abono de família pré-natal (prenatal family allowance) is a monthly Social Security benefit paid to pregnant women from the 13th week of pregnancy, to help with the extra costs of pregnancy¹. It works as an early start of the child benefit: for the purposes of the calculation, the unborn baby is treated as if it were already part of the household.

Unlike the parental leave benefit, which replaces your salary during leave after the birth, the prenatal allowance does not depend on contributions or an employment contract: it depends on the household's income. It is a means-tested benefit, and that is what decides who receives it and how much.

Who qualifies

You qualify if you meet all of these conditions¹:

• you have reached the 13th week of pregnancy;
• you live in Portugal or are treated as a resident;
• the household sits within the first four income brackets (the 5th receives nothing);
• the household does not hold, on the claim date, financial assets (deposits, shares, bonds, savings certificates and funds) above 240 × IAS, i.e. €128,911.20 in 2026¹⁴.

You do not need to be employed or have a contribution record: a student or an unemployed person can receive it, as long as the household passes the means test.

How the bracket is worked out

The bracket comes from the reference income, in four steps¹:

1. add the annual income of everyone in the household;
2. count the children and young people on the child benefit, plus the babies expected, plus 1;
3. divide the income by that number;
4. the result gives the bracket, from 1 to 5.

A detail almost everyone gets wrong: a claim made in 2026 uses the household's 2025 income, compared against limits computed on the 2025 IAS (€522.50), not the 2026 one¹. The limits per bracket are:

Counted income includes employment income (with holiday and Christmas bonuses), business and professional income, capital and property income, pensions (including alimony) and social benefits, except family, disability and dependency benefits¹. Income earned by young people during school holidays does not count, nor does that of working students up to age 27 earning up to 14 × the national minimum wage per year (€12,880 in 2026)¹.

How much you receive in 2026

The monthly amount depends only on the bracket and the number of babies¹²:

These are the same amounts as the child benefit for a child up to 36 months, updated every year by the same portaria².

When a single adult is responsible for the household's children (the pregnant woman lives alone or only with children and young people), a 35% single-parent increase applies, rounded on the final value¹: one baby becomes €257.82 (1st bracket), €218.23 (2nd), €178.29 (3rd) or €119.38 (4th) per month. Careful: on the child benefit the single-parent increase is 50%; on the prenatal allowance it is 35%, and many websites mix the two up.

The prenatal allowance calculator does these sums to the cent: it shows the bracket, the monthly amount with twins and the increase, and the total over the typical 6 months.

When it starts and how long it lasts

You start receiving in the month after the one in which you reach the 13th week of pregnancy. If you become pregnant in early March and reach week 13 at the end of May, the first payment is June's¹.

The duration depends on when the baby arrives¹:

• birth at 40 weeks or later: paid until the birth month inclusive, which can exceed 6 months;
• premature birth: 6 months are paid;
• interruption of the pregnancy (voluntary or miscarriage): paid until the month of the interruption inclusive, and Social Security must be informed within 10 days.

After the birth, the support continues in another form: the child benefit for children and young people, claimed with the baby's registration and with its own amounts by age.

How to claim

There are three routes¹:

• Automatic: the health professional issues the pregnancy certificate from 13 weeks; on the SNS 24 portal or app, the pregnant woman authorises sharing it with Social Security; if the conditions are met, an award proposal arrives in the Segurança Social Direta message box, which only needs to be accepted within the deadline.
• Segurança Social Direta: Família > Gravidez > Abono de Família Pré-Natal menu.
• Social Security desk: with form RP 5045 and the medical certification of the pregnancy stage (form GF 44). If you claim the prenatal allowance together with the child benefit, after the birth, the GF 44 is not needed.

What it stacks with

The prenatal allowance stacks with the child benefit for other children, the disability bonus, study grants, the dependency supplement, survivor, orphan and disability pensions, the Social Inclusion Benefit and the Social Integration Income (RSI), among others¹.

It does not stack with the Solidarity Supplement for the Elderly, the old-age pension (including the social old-age pension) or the pregnancy-interruption benefit¹.

Before claiming, run the numbers: the prenatal allowance calculator shows in seconds your household's bracket, the 2026 monthly amount and how much it adds up to by the birth.