The Austrian state pension
When you can draw an Austrian old-age pension, how many insurance months it takes, and how the pension account decides the amount — under the Allgemeines Pensionsgesetz as in force from 1 January 2026.
Three routes to an old-age pension
The Austrian pension act provides three routes to an old-age pension. The ordinary one opens at 65 years — the Regelpensionsalter of § 4 Abs. 1. Before that, only two expressly regulated routes lead in: the Korridorpension (corridor pension) and the Schwerarbeitspension (heavy-work pension). Both cost a permanent reduction, and both demand considerably more insurance months than the ordinary route.
The minimum insurance period
Age alone is never enough. By the Stichtag — the reference date — § 4 Abs. 1 requires at least 180 insurance months, that is 15 years; and inside that total, at least 84 months (7 years) must have been earned through actual employment. The second condition is the one people miss, and it decides cases: reach the total mostly through credited substitute periods and the minimum insurance period is not met.
Where to go from here
- Pension age — the ordinary age and the statutory table for women.
- Early retirement — the two routes, their conditions by birth cohort, and what each costs.
- The pension account — how yearly credits become a monthly pension.
What these pages do not do
They do not work out a pension amount. The reason is § 16 Abs. 3 APG rather than convenience: for everyone born after 1954 who holds even one insurance month up to the end of 2004, the old ASVG rules are applied in parallel and whichever result is more favourable governs. That Parallelrechnung is not modelled here — and it reaches virtually everyone thinking about their retirement date today.