This Nitaqat calculator estimates your company's Saudization rate in Saudi Arabia with the published counting weights. Enter your Saudi employees grouped by wage and your non-Saudi headcount: a national earning SAR 4,000 or more counts as one worker, and one earning SAR 3,000 to under 4,000 as half. If you add the rate your activity requires, as shown on the Qiwa platform, you also see how many nationals you need to hire to reach it. Only Qiwa shows the official band, because the required rates vary by activity and company size and change with ministry decisions.
How the Nitaqat calculator works
Not every national counts the same in Nitaqat. Under the ministerial decision announced by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, a citizen counts as one full worker on a monthly wage of SAR 4,000 or more, as half a worker on SAR 3,000 to under 4,000, and not at all below SAR 3,000. A part-time employee counts as half a worker if registered with GOSI and paid SAR 3,000 or more, and someone on the flexible work scheme counts as a third once they have completed 168 working hours and their contributions are paid.
Saudization rate = (full + ½ × SAR 3,000–3,999 + ½ × part-time + ⅓ × flexible) ÷ (counted nationals + non-Saudis)
The calculator rounds the number of hires up, because a company cannot hire part of a person. If you choose in advanced mode that the new hire earns between SAR 3,000 and 4,000, the number needed roughly doubles, since each of them counts as half a worker.
Why your rate differs from Qiwa
Qiwa calculates from the social insurance data actually registered, not from the numbers you type. A national employee not yet registered with GOSI, or registered at a lower wage than they are paid, shows up in Qiwa with a smaller weight than you expect. The ministry says a worker's weight counts as soon as they are registered and that bands are updated weekly, and that a band can change with no change in headcount when the required rates rise, as happened with the Developed Nitaqat programme, which began on 1 December 2021 with rates stepping up over three years.
Developed Nitaqat and the required rates by activity
Developed Nitaqat sets, for each economic activity and company size, the Saudization percentage required for each band, and shows them year by year in the Nitaqat calculator on the Qiwa platform. That is why this page does not publish a table of rates: the official figures change with decisions, and a copied table can go out of date without anyone noticing. Open the Qiwa calculator, choose your activity and headcount, and copy the required percentage for the band you are aiming at into the Required rate for your activity field.
Common Saudization calculation mistakes
- Counting every national as one full worker whatever their wage.
- Dividing nationals by non-Saudis instead of by the total.
- Working out the hires needed from the gap between the two rates alone, and forgetting that every new national also raises the total.
- Relying on old activity rates instead of the rate Qiwa shows today.
- Hiring a national on less than SAR 3,000 in the belief that it lifts the rate.
What to do with the result
Compare the rate here with what Qiwa shows. If Qiwa is lower, check the wages registered with GOSI for your national employees and the dates they were registered. If you need new hires, plan them before the weekly update, and download the result as a PDF to present to management with the cost of the new salaries.
When you track the rate every week
The Saudization rate moves with every hire, resignation and pay change, and each of those passes through HR, payroll and GOSI. With the data spread across separate spreadsheets, you only learn the rate has dropped once Qiwa shows it, by which time the window to hire before the update has passed. At Microtec we build an ERP accounting system for companies in the Kingdom, with human resources alongside finance, sales, purchasing and inventory. Try it with your current staff list.