UAE Gratuity Calculator

How to use the gratuity calculator

Enter your first day of work and your last working day, your last basic monthly salary as written in your MOHRE employment contract, and any days of unpaid leave. The amount, the eligibility check, a tier-by-tier breakdown and the full working update as you type. Until you enter a salary, the result shows a grey example for AED 10,000 a month. The optional box applies the two-year cap to your total wage instead of your basic salary; it only changes the answer for very long service. Your inputs stay in this page’s address so you can bookmark or share the result.

The gratuity formula (Article 51)

Daily basic wage = last basic monthly salary ÷ 30 Days' wage = 21 × (years of service, up to 5) + 30 × (years beyond 5) Gratuity = days' wage × daily basic wage (cap: 2 years' wage)

A full-time foreign employee who completes at least one year of continuous service is entitled to 21 days’ basic wage for each of the first five years and 30 days’ for each year after that. Part years count pro rata once the first year is complete, days of unpaid absence are left out, and the total may not exceed two years’ wage. The gratuity uses the last basic wage you were entitled to, not an average.

How the calculator counts

• Daily wage = basic ÷ 30. The law states the gratuity in days of wage but does not say how to turn a monthly salary into a daily one. Dividing by 30 treats every month as 30 days, so 30 days’ wage is exactly one month’s basic and 21 days’ wage is 0.7 of a month. It is the usual convention for monthly-paid staff, and it matches the official alternative savings scheme, whose contributions of 5.83% and 8.33% of basic salary are 21 and 30 days’ wage a year on this basis. Some employers divide the annual basic by 365 instead, which gives about 1.4% less.
• Years by anniversary. Whole years are counted from anniversary to anniversary, so a leap day never adds a sliver of extra service. The part year after your last anniversary is counted in days ÷ 365.
• Unpaid days come off the end. They are subtracted from the part year, borrowing from the last whole year if needed.

Worked example

Someone works from 1 January 2018 to 30 June 2025 on a basic salary of AED 10,000. That is 7 complete years plus 181 days, or 7 + 181 ÷ 365 = 7.4959 years of service. The daily basic wage is 10,000 ÷ 30 = AED 333.33.

The cap is 24 × 10,000 = AED 240,000.00, far above the result. With 10 days of unpaid leave, service falls to 7.4685 years and the gratuity to AED 59,684.93.

Resigning, being terminated and the two-year cap

Under the current law, resigning does not reduce your gratuity: once you have a year of continuous service, you receive the same amount as someone whose contract the employer ends. The one-third and two-thirds reductions that older articles and calculators mention come from the repealed 1980 labour law. Leaving before one year means no gratuity at all.

The cap only bites after long service. At 21 days a year for five years (3.5 months) plus a month for each later year, the gratuity reaches 24 months’ basic salary after 25.5 years. The law caps it at “two years’ wage”, and because its definition of wage includes allowances, the cap may be higher than 24 × basic. Enter your total monthly wage in the optional box to apply the cap that way.

Who this calculator does not cover

• DIFC and ADGM. The two financial free zones have their own employment laws. In the DIFC, employers pay monthly into the DIFC Employee Workplace Savings plan (DEWS) instead of gratuity for service from 1 February 2020. ADGM’s Employment Regulations 2024 have their own gratuity rules and let an employer offer a pension or savings scheme in place of gratuity.
• UAE nationals. Emiratis are registered for pension and social security with the General Pension and Social Security Authority (GPSSA), or Abu Dhabi’s own pension fund, rather than receiving this gratuity. Nationals of other GCC countries are generally covered by their home country’s pension scheme.
• Public sector. Federal and local government employees, the armed forces and police fall under their own human-resources laws, not Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021. Domestic workers have a separate law.
• The alternative savings scheme. Under Cabinet Resolution No. 96 of 2023, a private-sector employer can opt into a voluntary alternative to gratuity: monthly contributions of 5.83% of basic salary (under five years’ service) or 8.33% (five years or more) into an approved investment fund. For periods covered by the scheme, your benefit is the fund balance, not the figure here.
• Part-time and other non-full-time contracts. The gratuity is scaled by your contracted hours compared with a full-time contract, so this calculator overstates it.

If your figure is disputed, check the entitlement with the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation (MOHRE) or a UAE employment lawyer before signing a final settlement. For other pay questions, the salary calculator converts between monthly, daily and hourly pay, and the days between dates calculator counts the calendar days in any period.