Paying Traffic Fines in Portugal 2026: The Coima Notification, the 15-Day Voluntary Payment Window, ANSR Instalments, and How to Defend

Nobody moves to Portugal planning to rack up traffic fines. And yet the autoestrada tolls are dense, the residential speed limits in central Lisbon were re-engineered in 2022, and the radar network that sits behind the Autoridade Nacional de Segurança Rodoviária (ANSR) generates a steady stream of notifications that land in the post weeks after the event. This guide explains how the contraordenação rodoviária process actually works — and, critically, how to use the voluntary-payment window before it closes.

The three-layer system

Portuguese road-traffic penalties are administrative fines (coimas), not criminal penalties. They sit under the Regime Geral das Contraordenações (the general administrative-offence regime) and are enforced principally by three authorities:

• ANSR — the National Road Safety Authority — handles radar (SCOT) fines, bus-lane and loading-zone offences recorded electronically, and most fines issued without a physical stop.
• GNR Trânsito and PSP — the traffic brigades — issue physical autos at the roadside, covering speeding when stopped, mobile-phone use, belt and seat-restraint offences, drink-driving, and documentation checks.
• Municipal police — in Lisbon and Porto — enforce parking, zonas 30, and clean-air-zone rules under the local regulamento municipal.

Each writes its fine under the Código da Estrada (Code of the Road), consolidated at diariodarepublica.pt, and forwards the case to ANSR if the fine is above the level at which ANSR takes over administration. In practice, if you are a resident driver and a fine arrives in the post more than a week after the event, it is from ANSR.

The three severity tiers — and why they matter

The Code of the Road sorts offences into three classes, and the class determines the range of the fine and whether your driving privilege is also at risk:

• Leves (light) — coima only, no driving ban. Most minor speeding offences, small documentation slips, minor parking offences. Range: roughly €60 to €300.
• Graves (serious) — coima and accessory inibição de conduzir (driving ban), typically from one month to one year. Defined in Article 145 of the Code of the Road. Range: roughly €120 to €600 before the 2024 amendments.
• Muito graves (very serious) — coima and driving ban, typically from two months to two years. Defined in Article 146. Range: €500 to €2,500 and above.

The distinction is not cosmetic: if the notification you receive indicates Article 145 or 146 as the legal basis of the offence, you are facing an accessory driving ban as well as the fine, and your defence strategy should reflect that.

The 2026 rule change expats most commonly miss: mobile phones

The Código da Estrada was amended in 2024-2025 to reflect the political pressure around mobile-phone use behind the wheel. The fine for holding a phone while driving has moved from its previous €120-€600 range to €250-€1,250. That is not a drafting tweak — it is a doubling of the upper end — and the offence now frequently comes paired with an accessory driving ban for the muito grave cases (repeated offence, combined with speeding, involvement in a collision). The enforcement posture from GNR Trânsito has tightened in parallel.

What an ANSR notification looks like, and the 15-day clock

The ANSR notificação do auto de contraordenação arrives by registered post (carta registada), or through the Via CTT electronic mailbox if you subscribed to the digital-delivery service for Finanças. It identifies the registration plate, the exact time and location of the offence, the speed recorded (if applicable), the legal basis in the Code of the Road, the base coima, and the reduced coima if paid voluntarily.

Two clocks start running the day you are notified:

• The 48-hour deposit window — if you pay the fine within 48 hours of notification, the payment is treated as a depósito (guarantee deposit) rather than a definitive closure of the case, preserving your right to contest. This is the window professional drivers and fleet managers use when they want to keep the licence clean while disputing the fine.
• The 15-working-day voluntary-payment window — during this period, the offence can be settled at the reduced voluntary-payment coima, which for contraordenações leves is 50% of the statutory minimum. This is the window most drivers use, because paying at the voluntary minimum is almost always cheaper than going to the defended hearing and losing.

Miss the 15 working days and you move into the defended-proceeding phase: the coima reverts to the full scheduled range and accessory sanctions may apply.

How to pay — the three channels

• Multibanco / MB WAY — using the referência multibanco printed on the notification. This is by far the most common and the cleanest paper trail.
• Portal ANSR online — the ANSR website publishes the case number and lets you pay by card. Useful if the original paper notification is missing but you know the case number.
• CTT / Balcão Loja de Cidadão — over the counter at a post office or citizen-service desk, for drivers who are wary of the online channels.

Once the payment is processed and ANSR records the receipt, the system issues a despacho de arquivamento and the case closes. If the fine is a grave or muito grave, voluntary payment does not automatically close the accessory driving-ban question — the ban may still be applied, which is why many drivers facing those severity tiers go to defence rather than pay voluntarily.

Instalments — Form F303, for coimas above €204

ANSR allows payment by instalments on fines of €204 or more. The rules are:

• Minimum monthly instalment: €50.
• Maximum plan length: 12 months.
• Requested through ANSR Form F303 — Pedido de Pagamento em Prestações, downloadable from the ANSR portal.
• Must be submitted within the voluntary-payment window, or the request is refused on the grounds of lateness.

ANSR's contact channels for instalment questions are [email protected] and the support line at +351 21 423 68 00, working days 9am-7pm. Expat drivers sometimes mistakenly request instalments from Finanças (the Tax Authority), which does not administer road fines and will bounce the request.

Defending the fine — when it is worth it

Defence (defesa) is the formal mechanism for contesting a fine. You file a written defesa during the voluntary-payment window, setting out either a procedural objection (the notification was defective, the time limits have run) or a substantive objection (the radar was miscalibrated, the driver was not you, the signage was inadequate at the relevant location).

Defence is worth considering when:

• The fine is grave or muito grave and an accessory driving ban is on the table.
• The vehicle was driven by a named other person (spouse, employee, rental customer) — the Portuguese regime allows the registered owner to identify the actual driver in writing, shifting liability.
• The notification is incomplete, illegible, or does not match the location description in the ANSR record.

Defence is generally not worth considering for small leve fines at the minimum coima — the legal-fee arithmetic rarely clears the voluntary-payment discount. Many Portuguese advogados will not take on contraordenação files unless the fine is in four digits or the accessory ban is contested.

The accessory driving ban (inibição de conduzir)

The most consequential piece of a grave or muito grave fine is the driving ban. It is imposed by ANSR in the same decision as the coima, and the driver must hand in the Portuguese carta de condução (or the foreign licence, if you have not yet exchanged) at the IMT district office to serve the ban. Driving during the ban is a criminal offence (crime de desobediência), punishable with up to one year's imprisonment or a fine of up to 120 days.

The ban can in some cases be substituted with a trabalho comunitário order or with a specific training programme, but these substitutions are not automatic — they must be requested and are granted sparingly.

Prescription — when ANSR can no longer charge you

Contraordenação prescription in Portugal is two years for leves and graves, and three years for muito graves, counted from the day of the offence. In practice, ANSR notifications almost always arrive well within that window, so 'just wait' is not a strategy; it only becomes relevant for the edge case of a notification that arrives two and a half years after the event, at which point the statute-of-limitations defence becomes available.

Unpaid tolls — a separate track

Unpaid portagens (tolls) on the autoestradas are not handled by ANSR. They are handled by the motorway concessionaire (Brisa, Ascendi, Lusoponte) and the Tax Authority, which generates a coima layered on top of the unpaid toll itself. The collection mechanic runs through Autoridade Tributária (Finanças), and unpaid tolls can trigger a penhora (garnishment) on your bank account if ignored.

If you drive on a Portuguese registration plate without a Via Verde transponder, you have up to five working days to pay your toll at a CTT branch, Via Verde loja, or via Pagamento de Serviços Multibanco. Past five days, the surcharge mechanism engages. For foreign-registered vehicles without a toll-passport, the rules are different and tighter — the rental agencies and Tollcard services exist precisely to handle this.

Speed cameras, red-light cameras, and bus-lane cameras

Portugal's SCOT network — Sistema de Contraordenações de Trânsito — now covers most of the major motorways, the main Lisbon and Porto arterials, and a growing number of municipal enforcement corridors. Fines from SCOT arrive by post within a few weeks of the offence. The ANSR notification cites the camera location, the speed detected, and the margin of error applied. The error margin is not negotiable at ANSR level, and SCOT cameras are calibrated and sealed annually by IPQ.

Red-light and bus-lane enforcement is municipal in Lisbon and Porto; the notification arrives from the Câmara Municipal, and the 15-day voluntary-payment mechanic mirrors ANSR's.

Five practical reminders for new residents

• Your address on the vehicle registration must match your residence. ANSR sends the notification to the address in the IMT registry; if that address is stale, you will miss the voluntary-payment window through no fault of your own.
• If you are a short-term resident still driving on a foreign plate, the notification goes to your home-country registered address via the cross-border enforcement framework (EUCARIS / CBE Directive). It arrives, and it is enforceable.
• Do not ignore the carta registada notice. Legally, refusal to collect a registered letter converts into presumed delivery on day seven, and the clock starts anyway.
• Rental-car fines come to the renter first. The agency charges the fine plus an administrative fee (typically €30-€80) to your card, and then you get the notification yourself.
• Drink-driving and phone-use cases escalate fast. Both are muito graves at meaningful levels, both carry an accessory driving ban, and in aggravated cases (accident, high BAC) they move from administrative to criminal jurisdiction — at which point the forum changes, the standards of proof change, and the coima framework no longer applies.

Bottom line

For 95% of fines an expat will encounter in Portugal, the right move is to open the carta registada, read the legal basis, check whether Article 145 or 146 is cited (which flags a driving-ban risk), and pay the voluntary-payment amount by Multibanco within the 15 working days. For the remaining 5% — graves, muito graves, or genuinely contested cases — the right move is to see an advogado who handles contraordenações, before the voluntary window closes.

Almost every costly traffic-fine story we hear from new residents turns out to be the same story: the notification was ignored, the window expired, the full coima and accessory sanctions engaged, and the cleanup cost an order of magnitude more than the voluntary payment would have. The 15 working days are the point.