Saudi nationals
Annuities, occupational hazards and unemployment cover.
Employer and employee both contribute. Which annuities rate applies turns on whether the employee had a contribution period before 3 July 2024.
KSA compliance · General Organization for Social Insurance
Social insurance is a registration obligation first.
The rates are the easy part and they are on the calculator. What decides whether a Saudi payroll is compliant is who is registered, against which establishment, from which date — and whether the contribution reached GOSI in the month it was due.
This page is the regime. The calculator is the number. Branch rates, the contributory wage floors and ceiling, and the split between employer and employee live on the calculator, where they are dated and sourced. They are not repeated here, so there is one place to correct them.
Last reviewed
Who is covered, and for what
Nationality decides which branches exist at all.
Not just the rate — the branches. This is the distinction most payroll configurations get wrong, and it runs in the expensive direction: applying the Saudi rate across a mixed workforce over-remits on every expatriate on the file, every month, and nobody complains.
Non-Saudi employees
Occupational hazards only.
Employer contributes; nothing is deducted from the employee. There is no pension branch and no unemployment branch.
Other GCC nationals
Insured under their own country’s scheme, through the GCC extension of insurance protection.
Rates differ by country. Neither this page nor the calculator carries them.
What the regime requires
Five obligations, and two of them compound.
01
Register the establishment, then every employee
An employer registers with GOSI and then registers each employee against that establishment. Registration is what creates the contribution record an employee’s pension, injury cover and unemployment claim are all computed from later — an unregistered month is not a saving, it is a gap in somebody’s entitlement that surfaces years afterwards.
Secondary sources give a 30-day window from the start date to register a new employee. Not confirmed against GOSI.
02
Contributions are monthly, and late is expensive
Contributions fall due for each month and are remitted in the month following. A delay fine accrues monthly on the unpaid amount, and where an employer has deducted the employee’s share and not remitted it, the fine runs without a ceiling. This is the one payroll obligation in the Kingdom where the penalty compounds rather than sitting as a fixed sum.
Reported as the 15th of the following month, with a 2% monthly fine. One source gives the last day of the month instead. Confirm before building a payroll calendar on it.
03
The contributory wage is a contractual fact, not a payroll setting
Contributions are charged on basic wage plus cash housing allowance, floored and capped. Where a contract states a single package with no split, the split has to be established before any figure is defensible — and it has to survive in the employee record rather than being derived at run time from gross pay.
04
Two systems now run in one payroll, indefinitely
The Social Insurance Law in force from 3 July 2024 applies to Saudi nationals with no prior contribution period at that date, and steps their pension rate up each 1 July. Everyone already contributing stays where they were for the rest of their working life. The rate therefore belongs on the employee record, not on the company — a company-level setting is wrong for one of the two populations from the day the second one is hired.
05
GOSI data is read by systems other than GOSI
The contribution record is what Nitaqat counts a Saudi employee from, and wage protection reporting is checked against it. An employee who is on the payroll and not registered is absent from the Saudization ratio as well as from their own entitlement, so a registration gap costs twice.
The number
Branch by branch, with the working shown.
Saudi and non-Saudi, both systems, every branch separated, and the totals checked against the combined rates GOSI publishes. The arithmetic is tested outside the browser before it reaches the page.
Open the GOSI calculator →The other headcount number
Saudization moves with the same payroll.
A Saudi employee counts toward the Nitaqat ratio through their GOSI registration, so the two obligations read the same record from different directions and a gap in one shows up in the other.
Saudization and Nitaqat →Sources
- Contribution rates, contributory wage and branch coverage — employer FAQ — General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI)
- Contributor FAQ — General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI)
- Establishment and employee registration — General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI)
- New Social Insurance Law in force 3 July 2024 — scope and the stepped pension rate — Argaam
- Saudi Arabia — social insurance contributions — PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries
Two figures on this page are corroborated rather than confirmed: the 2% monthly late-payment fine and the thirty-day window to register a new employee. Both are consistent across secondary sources and neither appears in the GOSI employer FAQ text retrieved for this page. They are flagged where they are used.
The rate belongs on the employee, not on the company.
Two GOSI systems in one payroll for the next forty years is a data problem before it is a rates problem. Registration date, nationality and the basic-and-housing split all have to be real fields that survive transfers, rehires and entity moves.