Quick answer: if you resign from an open-ended contract with less than two full years of service, Article 85 of the Saudi Labor Law gives you no end-of-service benefit. You are still owed everything else in your final settlement — unpaid salary, unused annual leave and any other contractual dues.
The two-year rule
The end-of-service benefit (EOSB) rewards length of service. When the employer ends the contract, you receive the benefit whatever your service length. When you resign, Article 85 reduces it on a sliding scale:
| Service when you resign | Share of the benefit |
|---|---|
| Less than 2 years | Nothing |
| 2 years up to and including 5 years | One third |
| More than 5 and less than 10 years | Two thirds |
| 10 years or more | The full benefit |
The benefit itself is defined by Article 84: half a month’s wage for each of the first five years and a full month’s wage for each year after that, with part years counted pro rata.
Exactly two years is enough
The thresholds are generous at the boundary: two years exactly already earns the one-third share. Service is counted to the day, so resigning even a few days early can mean the difference between nothing and a meaningful amount.
Example (10,000 SAR wage):
| You resign at | Benefit |
|---|---|
| 1 year 11 months | 0 SAR |
| 2 years exactly | 3,333.33 SAR |
One month of patience is worth more than three thousand riyals in this example. If you are close to a threshold, the calculator shows a note telling you how many days remain until your share rises.
Resignations that still pay in full
Not every early exit counts as an ordinary resignation. The law protects workers who leave for a reason it considers justified:
- Article 81 — you leave because the employer broke its obligations: unpaid wages, serious safety failures, assault, or being assigned fundamentally different work without consent. You receive the full benefit, whatever your service length.
- Article 87 — the contract ends by force majeure, or a woman resigns within six months of her marriage or three months of giving birth. The full benefit applies here too.
These cases can be disputed by employers, so keep evidence and consider advice from the Ministry of Human Resources’ labor offices before acting.
What you get even with zero benefit
A final settlement is more than the EOSB. Even when the benefit is zero, you are owed:
- your salary up to the last working day;
- payment for unused annual leave days, at your daily wage (monthly wage ÷ 30 per day);
- any commissions, bonuses or allowances already earned under your contract;
- your end-of-service certificate, and an exit that follows the contract’s notice period.
Worth knowing before you decide
- Fixed-term contracts are different. Resigning before the term ends has extra consequences — see our guide to EOSB on fixed-term contracts.
- The wage that counts is your actual wage — basic plus regular allowances such as housing. Our guide on what counts as wage covers it.
- Check your record on Qiwa. Your registered wage and contract details decide the official numbers.
The full rules we apply, with 20 worked examples, are on the How we calculate page.