Prenatal care is a key indicator of the quality of health services. The current study aimed to evaluate the correlation between data from prenatal care cards and maternal recall in the city of Rio Grande, Rio Grande do Sul State, Brazil. The cross-sectional study included all mothers from 2010 who had received prenatal care. Interviews were conducted with a pre-coded questionnaire in the maternity hospital. Of the 2,288 mothers interviewed, 1,228 (53.7%) had the prenatal care card with them and thus comprised the group for comparison. The analysis used kappa correlation and confidence interval. The variables six or more prenatal visits, clinical breast and gynecological examination, two blood tests, VDRL, HIV serology, urine test, and tetanus vaccination showed statistically significant differences between annotated and maternal recall data (p≤ 0.001). Adequacy of prenatal care based on the guidelines of the Program for Humanization of Prenatal Care (PHPN) was 23.9% according to information provided by the patients and 4.4% according to information recorded on the prenatal cards (p ≤ 0.001). The prenatal care card showed underreporting, which limited the quality assessment of prenatal care.