Where Sintra Resolve is ahead
It is Sintra's official channel, so a report enters the council's work queue without the council having to contract anything from anyone.
It records a photo and exact GPS coordinates, lets you follow the case through to resolution, and the council publishes aggregate figures for reported and resolved occurrences. Sintra has also funded public-space maintenance work off the back of reports filed through the app, so the channel feeds real works.
For a pothole in Sintra, that is where the council sees it soonest.
Official channel is a status, not a capability
Two things worth separating, because they usually arrive together. Routing a report into a council’s workflow is not something CleanSpot cannot do: the CleanSpot municipal dashboard has a triage inbox scoped to the territory, assignment to internal crews or external contractors, tracking through to closure, analytics, and configurable email reports at whatever cadence the council wants.
The difference is not technical, it is adoption. This authority has adopted its own app; where a council subscribes to CleanSpot, reports enter the same kind of workflow.
And adoption cuts both ways. A municipal app exists only where it has been bought and configured. CleanSpot also works in every municipality where nothing has been adopted at all, which is most of them.
The structural difference: one municipality
Sintra Resolve covers Sintra. That is what it is for, and it is not a criticism; it is simply what defines the category.
In practice it means the app on your phone stops being useful when you cross into Cascais, Amadora, Loures or Lisbon, and that anyone living in a council which never commissioned an app like this never had a channel at all. Someone moving around the Lisbon metropolitan area would need several different municipal apps, each with its own registration and its own logic.
CleanSpot solves this server-side. The municipality and the parish are resolved automatically from the coordinates of the pin, against real administrative boundaries, with nothing for the user to choose and no dependence on postcodes. Report in Sintra and report in Beja with the same app, and each report is routed to the right territory.
A ticket to the council, or a public record
The next difference is who sees what you reported. In a municipal app the report is a case between you and the services: you follow yours, and the totals appear in a statistic.
On CleanSpot the report is a pin on a public map from the first second. Neighbours see it, confirm it, add photos and can volunteer to clear it. A dumped bag does not have to wait for a municipal crew if three people on the street decide to deal with it on Saturday morning.
That changes what happens when the council does not get there quickly. In a municipal channel, the alternative to silence is chasing. In a network, the alternative is somebody acting.
What CleanSpot has that a reporting app does not
- A public map of everything reported, with date, photo and coordinates
- Cleanups: anyone can volunteer, alone or as a group event with invitations and a shared recap
- Groups, comments, messages and mentions, because keeping a street clean is neighbours' work rather than form-filling
- Vision AI that suggests severity and tags from the photo
- Duplicate detection: if a pin already exists within a few metres, your photo joins that record instead of fragmenting the evidence
- Per-location recurrence history, which is the argument that justifies a new container or a change in collection frequency
- Works offline: the report queues and uploads when there is a connection
- 30 languages, which matters in a municipality with many foreign residents and visitors
Privacy, with one concrete note
The Sintra Resolve privacy label on the App Store declares collection of location, contact details, identifiers and usage data, including data used to track the user across third-party apps and websites.
CleanSpot carries no advertising and no ad technology, so that category of data sharing does not exist here. Reports are public by design; personal data is not, is not sold, is hosted in the EU, and anyone can export or delete it from inside the app.
They can coexist, and often that is best
They are not the same tool and they do not have to compete on your phone. A pothole in Sintra belongs to the council, and the official channel is the shortest route there.
CleanSpot covers the rest: litter and dumping the community can clear itself, the dated public record that serves as evidence when a site is recurring, and the entire territory outside Sintra, where that app does not reach.
And if Sintra council wants it, the CleanSpot municipal dashboard receives the same reports in a triage inbox, with assignment to crews or external contractors and tracking through to closure.
Sources
- Sintra Resolve — App Store (Portugal) (2026-08-29)
- Câmara Municipal de Sintra — Sintra Resolve (2026-08-29)
- Câmara lança aplicação Sintra Resolve para melhorar o espaço público (2026-08-29)
Does Sintra Resolve work outside Sintra?
No. It is Sintra council's app for the Sintra municipality. Outside it you need the channel of whichever council you are in, if one exists. CleanSpot works anywhere and resolves the municipality and parish from the coordinates.
Should I stop using Sintra Resolve?
No. For a problem that is the council's responsibility in Sintra, the official channel is the shortest route. Use both: the official one so the authority acts, CleanSpot for the public record, the community and the location's history.
Who built Sintra Resolve?
The App Store listing gives the seller as SMARTGOV - S I, S.A., a supplier of solutions to local authorities. The app belongs to Sintra council and covers the Sintra municipality.
What if my council has no app at all?
That is the common case, and it is where the difference weighs most. CleanSpot needs nothing from the authority to work: the map, volunteering, group cleanups and the public record all function regardless, and a dated, photographed record is frequently what gets a council to take a location seriously.