Working Hours and Overtime Pay in Saudi Arabia
Saudi law caps actual working time at eight hours a day or 48 hours a week under Article 98 of the Labor Law, and Article 107 requires the employer to pay overtime at the hourly wage plus 50% of the basic wage. Hours worked on official holidays count as overtime hours. Managers with real employer authority are excluded.
That is the rule in three lines. The money question is what “hourly wage” and “basic wage” mean on your specific payslip, because that single detail decides whether a year of extra hours is worth 4,000 SAR or 12,000 SAR. This guide gives you the caps, the calculation, a worked example in real riyals, and the paper trail to use if the hours were worked but never paid. It sits inside our Saudi labor law guide for employees.
Quick answer
- Daily and weekly cap: 8 hours a day or 48 hours a week (Article 98). Reduced to 6 hours a day or 36 a week for Muslim employees during Ramadan.
- Overtime rate: hourly wage + 50% of basic wage (Article 107). Practically, a 1.5 multiplier.
- Holidays: all hours worked on official holidays are overtime hours.
- Friday: the weekly rest day (Article 104), full pay, minimum 24 consecutive hours, and it cannot be replaced by cash.
- Excluded: senior management and supervisory roles exercising the employer’s authority (Article 108) — by actual authority, not by title.
What are the legal working hours in Saudi Arabia?
Article 98 sets the ceiling on actual working hours: no more than eight hours a day if the employer uses the daily standard, or no more than 48 hours a week if the employer uses the weekly standard. Which standard your company uses matters more than people realise, because it changes when overtime starts.
Two definitions do most of the work here:
Actual working hours — time you are effectively working. Prayer breaks and the statutory rest period are not counted as working hours, which is why the law also limits how long you can be held at the workplace overall, not just how long you work.
The daily vs weekly standard — under the daily standard, hour nine on Tuesday is overtime even if your week totals only 40 hours. Under the weekly standard, only the hours above 48 in that week are overtime. A company running the weekly standard can legitimately give you a ten-hour Tuesday and a six-hour Thursday with no overtime at all.
Article 101 requires rest periods so that you are not working more than five consecutive hours without a break, and total daily presence at the workplace stays bounded. Article 106 allows extended hours for narrow situations — annual inventory, budget preparation, closing accounts, preparing for seasons — capped at a limited number of days per year, and those extra hours are still paid as overtime.
Ramadan gets its own reduced ceiling. That has its own timing consequences for hiring and resignations, covered in Ramadan working hours in the private sector.
How is overtime pay actually calculated?
Article 107 obliges the employer to pay an additional wage for overtime hours equal to the hourly wage plus 50% of the basic wage. Read that slowly, because the article uses two different terms in one sentence, and that is exactly where payroll disagreements live.
Reading A — the wide base. “Hourly wage” is derived from your total wage (basic plus fixed regular allowances such as housing and transport, as wage is defined in Article 2), and the 50% premium is added on top of the basic component.
Reading B — the narrow base. Everything is computed on basic salary alone, so overtime is simply 1.5 × basic hourly.
Companies overwhelmingly implement Reading B because it is cheaper and simpler. If your contract splits a 15,000 SAR package into 9,000 basic plus 6,000 in allowances, the difference between the readings is roughly 40% of your overtime income. This is one more reason the split between basic and allowances in your contract is not cosmetic — see basic salary vs total salary.
Two practical rules regardless of reading:
- The monthly-hours divisor most Saudi payrolls use is the monthly salary ÷ 30 days ÷ 8 hours = 240. Ask HR which divisor they use and get the answer in writing; some use 208 or 216, which produces a higher hourly rate.
- Article 107 also allows the employer, with the worker’s consent, to grant compensatory paid leave instead of overtime cash. Consent is the operative word. “We do time off in lieu here” announced in a meeting is not consent to your individual arrangement.
Worked example, in riyals
Take an employee at a Riyadh logistics company. Monthly package 15,000 SAR: basic 9,000, housing 3,750, transport 1,500, phone 750. In March they work 22 hours of overtime.
Divisor: 30 days x 8 hours = 240 hours
Reading B — basic only (what most payrolls do)
Basic hourly 9,000 / 240 = 37.50 SAR
Overtime hourly 37.50 x 1.5 = 56.25 SAR
22 hours = 1,237.50 SAR
Reading A — hourly on total wage, premium on basic
Total hourly 15,000 / 240 = 62.50 SAR
Premium 9,000 / 240 x 0.5 = 18.75 SAR
Overtime hourly 62.50 + 18.75 = 81.25 SAR
22 hours = 1,787.50 SAR
Gap on one month: 550 SAR. Over a year at the same
pace: about 6,600 SAR.Neither number is invented from a rate card — both come from the same article read two ways. Your leverage is to ask, before you sign, which base the company uses and to have it written into the offer. If you are comparing two offers where one pays overtime and the other does not, run the arithmetic on the realistic hours, not the promised ones: how to compare two job offers.
What about Friday, holidays, and rest days?
Article 104 makes Friday the weekly rest day for all workers. The employer may substitute another day for some employees after notifying the competent labor office, and must still allow religious duties. The rest day is paid in full, cannot be shorter than 24 consecutive hours, and cannot be compensated with money instead of time.
Article 107 states that all hours worked on official holidays are overtime hours. That is the clean rule people miss: on Eid, the multiplier applies from your first hour, not from hour nine.
| Situation | How it is treated |
|---|---|
| Hour 9 on a normal day (daily standard) | Overtime |
| Hour 49 in the week (weekly standard) | Overtime |
| Any hour worked on an official holiday | Overtime from the first hour |
| Work on your weekly rest day | You are owed the rest day, not a cash substitute |
| Extra hours during annual inventory or closing accounts | Permitted within Article 106 limits, still paid as overtime |
| On-call at home, not working | Not actual working hours unless your contract says otherwise |
Who is excluded from overtime?
Article 108 states that Articles 98 and 101 do not apply to people occupying senior positions of responsibility in management and direction, where those positions give their holders the employer’s authority over workers. There are also exclusions for certain preparatory or complementary work and for roles defined by ministerial decision.
The misunderstanding is universal, so be precise: the exclusion attaches to authority, not to the word on your business card. A “Senior Manager” who has no hiring, disciplinary, or scheduling power over other employees and simply does specialist work at a senior grade is not obviously inside Article 108. Companies sometimes hand out manager titles partly because of what it does to overtime liability.
Ask yourself three questions:
- Do I hire, dismiss, or discipline employees, or recommend it with weight?
- Do I set other people’s schedules and approve their leave?
- Do I represent the employer in front of the team?
Three noes make the exclusion hard to defend. That is a conversation with HR before it is a claim, and if the answer changes your compensation logic entirely, it belongs in your next salary conversation rather than in a resignation.
Overtime was worked and never paid. What now?
The single reason most of these claims fail is not law, it is records. The employer has the attendance system. You need your own parallel log, kept from the day the pattern starts, not reconstructed later.
Keep, from today: a dated log of start and end times per day; screenshots of shift rosters and schedule changes; the timestamps on work messages sent outside hours; any written instruction to stay late.
Then escalate in order.
Step 1 — one written request. Email, calm, specific, no accusations. Copy this shape:
Subject: Overtime hours — March and April
Hi [Name],
I logged the following hours beyond my contracted schedule:
March: 22 hours (detailed list attached)
April: 17 hours (detailed list attached)
These do not appear in either payslip. Could you confirm
how overtime is calculated here — the base used and the
monthly hour divisor — and when these hours will be paid?
If the company applies compensatory leave under Article 107
instead, I would like to agree the days in writing.
Thanks,
[Name]Weak: “I’ve been working late for months and nobody cares. This is illegal.”
Strong: “I logged 39 overtime hours across March and April, attached by date. They aren’t on either payslip. Can you confirm the calculation base and the payment date?”
The strong version gives HR something to process and gives you a dated record. The weak version gives them an emotional conversation to manage.
Step 2 — file through Qiwa. Labor claims start with an amicable settlement stage and move to the labor court if no agreement is reached. Bring documents, not arguments: contract, payslips showing the basic/allowance split, your attendance log, and any written schedule instructions. See Qiwa for employees for what your file looks like from the platform side.
Step 3 — check the clock. Labor claims are time-bound, and the longer you wait after leaving, the harder recovery becomes. If you are already planning your exit, resolve the money question before the last day, not after — the same principle that applies to end-of-service calculation.
Before you sign, price the hours
Almost every unpaid-overtime story starts with an offer that looked fine because nobody asked two questions: what is the basic-to-allowance split, and which base does overtime use. Both are answerable in one email before you sign, and unanswerable in your favour two years later.
That is part of why TrueSira builds offer comparison around the real structure of a package rather than the headline number: you enter the actual split and the realistic hours, and see what each offer is worth over a year — including the components that only surface on your last day. Your Master Profile keeps your history in one place, so every comparison runs on your numbers, not a generic template. Get started free.
FAQ
How many hours per week is legal in Saudi Arabia?
Eight actual working hours a day, or 48 hours a week, under Article 98 of the Labor Law, depending on whether your employer uses the daily or weekly standard. During Ramadan the ceiling drops to six hours a day or 36 hours a week for Muslim employees. Rest and prayer breaks are not counted inside actual working hours, and Article 101 requires a break so you are not working more than five consecutive hours straight.
How is overtime pay calculated?
Article 107 sets overtime at the hourly wage plus 50% of the basic wage, which most payrolls implement as 1.5 times the basic hourly rate using a divisor of 240 hours a month. The disputed part is the base: whether the hourly figure comes from basic salary alone or from total wage including fixed allowances. On a 15,000 SAR package split 9,000 basic, the two readings differ by roughly 25 SAR per overtime hour. Ask which base your employer uses and get it in writing.
Is Friday work paid at a higher rate?
Friday is the weekly rest day under Article 104, paid in full, no shorter than 24 consecutive hours, and it cannot be replaced by a cash payment. The employer may swap the rest day to another weekday for some employees after notifying the labor office. Separately, Article 107 treats every hour worked on an official holiday as an overtime hour, so Eid work carries the overtime multiplier from the first hour.
Can my employer refuse to pay overtime?
No. For employees covered by Article 98, overtime pay is a statutory entitlement rather than a discretionary benefit, and a contract clause stating that the salary is “inclusive of all overtime” does not extinguish it. The one lawful alternative in Article 107 is compensatory paid leave instead of cash — and only with the worker’s consent, agreed individually, not announced as company policy.
Are managers entitled to overtime?
Article 108 excludes people holding senior positions of responsibility in management and direction where the position carries the employer’s authority over other workers. The test is real authority — hiring, discipline, scheduling, representing the employer — not the title printed on the contract. A senior specialist with a manager title and no authority over anyone is not clearly inside the exclusion, and companies sometimes hand out those titles for exactly this reason.
How do I claim unpaid overtime?
Start your own dated log of hours today, because the employer controls the attendance system and reconstructed claims lose. Send one written request stating the hours by date and asking which calculation base and monthly divisor apply. If nothing moves, file a labor claim through Qiwa, which begins with an amicable settlement stage before the labor court. Bring the contract, payslips showing the basic and allowance split, your log, and any written instruction to work late.