How to Find a Portal in No Man's Sky

Portals in No Man's Sky are one of the game's most powerful fast-travel tools — letting you jump to any coordinate in the universe if you have the right address. But finding your first portal, activating it, and actually using it involves several steps that aren't clearly explained in-game. Here's what you need to know.

What Is a Portal in No Man's Sky?

A portal is a standing stone structure found on planetary surfaces that allows instant travel between star systems — or even between galaxies. Each portal has a 16-glyph address that functions like a coordinate code. Enter the right sequence, and you can teleport to that exact location anywhere in the universe.

Portals are especially useful for:

• Visiting locations shared by other players
• Reaching specific biomes or rare resources quickly
• Reuniting with other players in multiplayer

Before you can use a portal, however, you need to find one and unlock the glyphs required to enter addresses.

How to Find a Portal: The Main Method

Step 1 — Use an Alien Monolith

The most reliable method for locating a portal is through alien monoliths. These are large, ancient structures scattered across planets that, when interacted with correctly, will reveal a portal's location.

Here's how it works:

1. Scan planets from space using your ship's scanner. Look for planets that display the monolith icon (it appears as part of the planet's points of interest).
2. Land and locate the monolith on the surface. Your analysis visor can help once you're close enough.
3. Interact with the monolith and answer its question or complete its prompt. Having race-specific knowledge items (such as Gek Relics, Korvax Casings, or Vy'keen Daggers) in your inventory often improves the outcome.
4. If the interaction succeeds, the monolith will mark the nearest portal on your planetary map.

Step 2 — Ask at a Space Station

An alternative route is through the Cartographer NPC found at every space station. You can exchange navigation data (collected from signal boosters and other sources) for planetary charts. Specifically, look for charts labeled "Ancient Artifact Site" — these can point you toward monoliths, which then lead to portals.

This method works well if you're having trouble spotting monolith icons from orbit, or if you're on a planet type where surface scanning is less effective.

Step 3 — Community and Coordinate Resources 🌐

If you want to skip the search entirely, the No Man's Sky community maintains active databases of portal coordinates. Sites like the NMS Portals subreddit and the Galactic Hub's coordinate archives list addresses for specific planets — from paradise worlds to rare biome types. If you have the 16-glyph address, you can plug it directly into an active portal and travel there immediately.

Unlocking the Glyphs

Finding a portal is only half the equation. To actually enter an address and travel, you need 16 glyphs — one for each symbol on the portal's dial. Glyphs are unlocked one at a time.

How to unlock glyphs:

• Find Traveller NPCs in space stations or inhabited structures and purchase their glyph from them (costs nanites)
• Visit Traveller Graves — graves of deceased Travellers scattered across planets — which each yield one glyph when interacted with
• Complete certain story mission sequences, which reward glyphs as progression items

There are 16 glyphs total, and each one must be unlocked individually. Until you have all 16, you can only enter partial addresses — which limits where you can travel. Many players grind for all 16 glyphs early on specifically because it unlocks the full portal system.

Charging the Portal

Even after you've found a portal and have your glyphs, the portal requires charging before it can be activated. Each of the portal's 16 pedestals needs a specific resource to power it. 🔋

Common resources used to charge portals include:

The exact resources can vary, but you'll generally want to arrive at a portal with a well-stocked inventory if you plan to activate it from scratch.

Variables That Affect Your Experience

How straightforward this process feels depends heavily on where you are in the game:

• Early-game players may struggle to charge portals because they haven't yet accumulated enough resources or nanites for glyph purchases
• Players who've completed the main story will have access to more glyphs and better scanning equipment, making portal discovery much faster
• Multiplayer sessions change the dynamic — if a friend already has an active portal address in your target system, you can skip the search phase entirely
• Survival and Permadeath modes make resource gathering for portal charging more demanding than in Normal mode

The method that makes most sense — grinding glyphs first, hunting monoliths, or using community coordinates — depends on how much of the game's systems you've already unlocked and how you prefer to play.

Whether you're teleporting to a shared base, chasing a specific planet type, or just trying to cover more of the universe faster, the portal system rewards players who understand its layers — even if it takes a few steps to get there. 🪐