Makkahمكة المكرمة
Inside the designated zones, and only for Muslim non-Saudis. Which zones, what share may be held and for how long are all on the REGA portal rather than here.
In build
My Hijra
A free, independent guide to relocating to Saudi Arabia, centred on Makkah and Madinah. It sells nothing, gates nothing and collects nothing.
The four routes in
The four routes into Saudi Arabia, each ending at the iqama.
- Employment: Block visa quota, MOFA authorisation, Embassy stamping, Entry, Iqama within 90 days, then the shared route.
- Residency: Contribution tier, then the shared route.
- Business: Activity classification, Investment Registration, Commercial Registration, then the shared route.
- Investment: Qualifying asset, TAQEEM appraisal, then the shared route.
- Shared from the iqama onward: Settle, Trade, Settled.
Four doors, two permits
Four ways in, and that is how people arrive and how they describe themselves. Underneath there are only two permits, and it is worth knowing which one you are heading for before you start.
Employment
An employer sponsors you, and the permit is an iqama tied to that employer. The route cannot be started alone: the employer holds the quota, obtains the authorisation and issues the iqama.
Residency
You pay for the right to reside. No employer, no company. This is Premium Residency, applied for directly.
Business
You set up or move a company, and the company qualifies you. The permit at the end is Premium Residency.
Investment
You put capital in, including into property, and the holding qualifies you. The permit at the end is Premium Residency.
- Three of the four doors end at the same permit
- Employment gives an employer-sponsored iqama. Residency, business and investment all land on Premium Residency — one government service with seven products behind it. They are three ways of qualifying for the same permit, not three different permits. The map shows them converging because they do converge.
- Buying a property does not grant residency
- It makes you eligible to apply. A separate application and a separate approval are both mandatory, and the residency lasts only while the qualifying ownership is maintained — if the asset is sold it must generally be replaced within 90 days or the residency ends. The qualifying property must be residential, developed and ready to occupy, appraised by a TAQEEM-accredited valuer, and free of mortgage.
- There is no freelance route
- The Freelance Work Document is a Saudi-citizen scheme. It is not open to expatriates, and there is no self-sponsored freelance permit. If a route you have read about rests on freelancing your way in, it does not exist.
- In the holy cities a company may do what a person may not
- Premium Residency does not give you ownership in Makkah and Madinah. Article 2 of the Premium Residency Permit Law grants a holder ownership "in areas other than the cities of Mecca and Medina and border areas", and inside the two cities grants usufruct instead — a use right for a period not exceeding 99 years, transferable, taken by deed from a notary public. A company is a separate question and the answer is different: one incorporated in Saudi Arabia is not treated as non-Saudi under M/14 even if it is wholly foreign-owned, so it may hold property in the two cities for business purposes and staff housing. That is a materially wider permission than the permit gives a person, which is why how you are structured sits upstream of the property question.
- The MISA licence is now called Investment Registration
- Under the updated Investment Law the Ministry of Investment issues an Investment Registration. The old term is still in common use, including by people who will be advising you, so both names refer to the same thing.
Source Premium Residency service, Saudi National Portal checked 2026-08-30
Source Premium Residency Permit Law, Article 2, Ministry of Investment checked 2026-08-30
Which line is yours
Settling in the two cities
What Royal Decree M/14 changed
Royal Decree M/14 was issued on 14 July 2025 and came into force on 22 January 2026. The Council of Ministers approved the Executive Regulation and the Geographic Scope Document on 23 June 2026 — the regime only became usable on that date.
Muslim non-Saudis may hold title in Makkah and Madinah, resident or not. That is the real change: the position before was effectively leasehold only.
Ownership in the two cities is confined to zones designated by the Council of Ministers and mapped by REGA. Registration, payment and title issuance all run through one REGA platform.
A non-Saudi resident may also own one residential property outside the designated zones for personal use. Makkah and Madinah are excepted from that allowance. Someone living abroad is confined to the zones.
For a company, what matters is where it is incorporated, not who owns it. A company incorporated in Saudi Arabia is not treated as non-Saudi under M/14 even if it is wholly foreign-owned, so it may hold property in the two cities. The purpose is limited: business use and staff accommodation, not investment. That is a wider permission than any individual non-Muslim has, which is why how you are structured sits upstream of the property question.
REGA has left the door open to designating further zones, and has not said when.
Source Real Estate General Authority (REGA), Saudi Properties — link and check date still to be recordedThe portal holds the official interactive zone maps, the permitted ownership percentages, the rights types and the duration limits. It is the authority on all of them; property blogs are not.
Madinahالمدينة المنورة
The same rule as Makkah: designated zones, Muslim non-Saudis, and the portal as the authority on the boundaries.
How far from the Haram
Distance from the Haram is the decision underneath the decision. It is not really about the commute — it is about how often you go, and whether the Haram is part of an ordinary week or a trip you save up for.
- 01
Walking
Close enough to walkEvery prayer, if you want it. You go because you are passing, not because you planned to.
- The highest price per square metre anywhere in the Kingdom, and the smallest space for it.
- Crowds are your daily weather, not an event. Hajj and the last ten nights are lived through, not visited.
- Parking and deliveries are somebody else's problem to solve for you, at a price.
- 02
Shuttle
Too far to walk, close enough for a short rideFajr and Isha most days, if the shuttle runs when you need it. The decision to go is a small one but it is still a decision.
- More space for the money, and a building that was designed for families rather than for pilgrims.
- You are dependent on a service you do not control, and it thins out exactly when demand peaks.
- The walk at either end is the part people underestimate in August.
- 03
Commute
A journey across the cityJumu'ah, and the nights you set aside for it. The Haram becomes something you go to rather than something you are near.
- Ordinary city prices, ordinary city space, and a car that you will need.
- Traffic into the central area is the constraint, and it is worst at the times you most want to go.
- The thing you moved for is now a journey, and journeys get postponed.
Making a living
Getting in is one problem. Trading once you are there is a different one, and the part people get wrong happens before any of it — at the moment they pick what their company is allowed to do.
The activity classification decides everything after it
Your business activity is registered under an ISIC4 classification, and that single choice sets the capital requirement, the ownership ceiling, which regulator has to co-approve you, and what you may lawfully sell. It is not an administrative label attached to a business you have already designed. It is the constraint the business has to be designed around.
Getting it wrong is not fatal and it is not cheap. Reclassifying later means amendment fees, an update to the Commercial Registration, and usually a fresh attestation cycle for the parent-company documents — so it costs less to be right the first time than to correct it afterwards.
Full foreign ownership is available across most activities, subject to an excluded-activities list. Which list you fall on is decided by the classification too.
Monsha'at
Small and Medium Enterprises General Authority
The main way in for a small business. It runs a financing gateway, the Kafalah credit guarantee, an academy, a franchise centre, Jadeer pre-qualification, and business facilitation offices.
Most small and medium businesses, whatever the sector.
SIDF
Saudi Industrial Development Fund
Development finance for industrial and manufacturing projects rather than for trading or services.
Anyone building or making something.
Etimad
Ministry of Finance procurement platform
Where government buys. It carries mandatory set-asides reserving part of public procurement for small and medium businesses.
Anyone who wants the government as a customer.
All of it needs a Saudi entity first
A foreign founder can reach these programmes, but generally only through a company registered in the Kingdom. None of them is a route in on its own — they are what becomes available once you are already through one of the four doors, which is why they sit here and not on the map.
Source Monsha'at, Small and Medium Enterprises General Authority — link and check date still to be recorded
Source Saudi Industrial Development Fund, SIDF — link and check date still to be recorded
Source Etimad, Ministry of Finance — link and check date still to be recordedThe activity-classification rules sit with the Ministry of Investment; the programmes above each publish their own criteria. None of these pages has been opened, so none of them is shown as checked.
How it compares
There is no honest single number for this. What follows is four structural facts, chosen because each one changes a relocation decision on its own — and no index, because the index everyone reaches for is crowd-sourced and licence-restricted.
| Saudi Arabia | LondonNew YorkTokyoIslamabadDelhiDubai | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tax on employment incomeThis does more work than any cost-of-living comparison, because it changes take-home pay directly rather than estimating what things cost. | None. | Income tax, plus National Insurance. | Federal, plus state, plus city. | National income tax, plus a residence tax. | Income tax. | Income tax. | None. |
| Tax on what you buyThe shape differs more than the rate does, and the shape is what you can state honestly without a source for every jurisdiction. | VAT, one standard rate nationally. | VAT, one standard rate nationally.The rates themselves are not printed here. Each one needs its own national tax authority as a source and a date it was last checked, and none of them has been read yet. | No federal sales tax. New York City levies a combined state and city rate.The rates themselves are not printed here. Each one needs its own national tax authority as a source and a date it was last checked, and none of them has been read yet. | Consumption tax, one standard rate nationally.The rates themselves are not printed here. Each one needs its own national tax authority as a source and a date it was last checked, and none of them has been read yet. | GST, banded.The rates themselves are not printed here. Each one needs its own national tax authority as a source and a date it was last checked, and none of them has been read yet. | GST, banded.The rates themselves are not printed here. Each one needs its own national tax authority as a source and a date it was last checked, and none of them has been read yet. | VAT, one standard rate nationally.The rates themselves are not printed here. Each one needs its own national tax authority as a source and a date it was last checked, and none of them has been read yet. |
| Housing and schoolingThis is the row that stops the rest of the page being read naively: the same headline salary is not the same money. | Frequently part of an employment package. | Rarely part of a package. | Rarely part of a package. | Sometimes subsidised, rarely provided. | Varies. | Varies. | Frequently part of an employment package. |
| Currency riskAnyone earning in one currency and thinking in another carries this whether or not they have noticed it. | The riyal is pegged to the US dollar. | Sterling floats. | The dollar is the reference. | The yen floats. | The rupee floats. | The rupee floats. | The dirham is pegged to the US dollar. |
There is no score on this page, and there will not be
The usual cost-of-living index is crowd-sourced from user submissions rather than published by anyone official, and it is licence-restricted. Two of the sites that appear to corroborate it are republishing the same data, so agreeing with them is agreeing with one source three times. A page that reduced six cities to a number would be built on that, and would look far more certain than it had any right to.
Source GASTAT, General Authority for Statistics, the sole official Saudi statistical authority — link and check date still to be recordedEach jurisdiction above needs its own tax authority as a source, and each city its own national statistics office — ONS, BLS, the Statistics Bureau of Japan, PBS, MoSPI and Dubai Statistics Centre. None has been opened, so no rate is printed and no row is shown as checked.