AbstractThe phase portraits of the planar linear differential systems are very well known. This is not the case for the phase portraits of the planar continuous piecewise linear differential systems. In this paper we classify the phase portraits of the class of planar continuous piecewise linear differential systems of the form $$\begin{aligned} {\dot{x}}= a|x|+by+c,\qquad {\dot{y}}= \alpha |x|+\beta y+\gamma , \end{aligned}$$ x ˙ = a | x | + b y + c , y ˙ = α | x | + β y + γ , in the Poincaré disc when $$a\beta -b\alpha \ne 0$$ a β - b α ≠ 0 , and prove the existence and uniqueness of limit cycles. Note that on the straight line $$x=0$$ x = 0 these differential systems are only continuous.