UAE Gratuity Calculator
Estimate your end-of-service benefits under Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021. Gratuity is calculated on your basic salary only — not your total package.
AED 10,000 basic salary over 3.0 years.
Your salary
The Gap
What your gratuity would be if the law used your whole package, against what it actually is on basic alone.
Gratuity over time
| Years of service | Estimated gratuity |
|---|---|
| 1 year | AED 7,000 |
| 3 years | AED 21,000 |
| 5 years | AED 35,000 |
| 10 years | AED 85,000 |
| 15 years | AED 135,000 |
Your salary structure
Negotiation tip. Your basic salary is a healthy share of your package, so your gratuity is close to what the headline number suggests. In any future offer, hold that ratio rather than accepting a bigger total built mostly from allowances.
Indicative estimate based on Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021. Actual entitlement depends on your MOHRE contract and individual circumstances. Free zones including DIFC and ADGM operate under separate regulations. Verify with MOHRE at u.ae.
Understanding UAE End-of-Service Gratuity
How gratuity is calculated in the UAE
End-of-service gratuity is set by Article 51 of Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021. The calculation runs on your monthly basic salary, converted to a daily wage by dividing by 30. For each of your first five years of service you accrue 21 days of that daily wage. For every year beyond the fifth, you accrue 30 days. The two amounts are added together to give your total entitlement.
Worked through: an employee on a monthly basic of AED 10,000 has a daily wage of AED 333.33. Three years of service earns 21 days per year, so 63 days in total, which comes to AED 21,000. The same employee at eight years would earn 105 days for the first five years plus 90 days for the remaining three, totalling 195 days, or AED 65,000.
Why basic salary is the figure that matters
Gratuity is calculated on basic salary alone. Allowances are excluded — housing, transport, and any other supplement paid on top of basic do not enter the formula, however large they are. Two people on an identical total package can therefore end up with very different end-of-service payments, purely because of how their contracts split basic against allowances.
This is why the split is worth treating as a negotiable term rather than an administrative detail. Raising the basic portion of an offer, even with no change to the total, increases what you accrue for every year you stay.
What counts as continuous service
Continuous service means unbroken employment with the same employer, and it is what the year count in the formula refers to. You must complete at least one full year to qualify for any gratuity at all. Once past that threshold, service is pro-rated, so additional months beyond a completed year do count toward your total rather than being rounded away.
Periods of unpaid leave are not counted as service for this purpose. If you have taken extended unpaid leave, your qualifying service will be shorter than the time elapsed since your start date.
What happens if you resign
Resignation does not reduce your gratuity. Under Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021, an employee who has completed at least one year of continuous service is entitled to the same calculation whether they resign or their employment is terminated by the employer.
This is a change from the previous law, under which employees who resigned before completing five years received a reduced fraction of their gratuity. That reduction no longer applies, and calculators or advice still describing it are out of date.
The two-year cap
Total gratuity is capped at two years of wage. Once your accrued entitlement reaches that ceiling, further service does not increase the payment. Two years of wage is equivalent to 720 days of daily wage; the first five years supply 105 of those days, and the remaining 615 accrue at 30 days a year, so the cap is reached at 25.5 years of continuous service.
Free zones are different
The rules above are the federal ones, administered by MOHRE. Free zones including DIFC and ADGM operate under their own employment regulations. DIFC in particular runs a workplace savings scheme, under which the employer makes monthly contributions to a fund rather than paying a lump sum calculated at the end. If you are employed in a free zone, check the regulations that apply there — this calculator will not reflect them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Under Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021, gratuity is based on your basic salary. You earn 21 days of basic wage for each of the first five years of service and 30 days of basic wage for each year beyond five. Your daily wage is your monthly basic divided by 30. A minimum of one year of continuous service is required, and the total is capped at two years of wage.
Basic salary only. Allowances such as housing, transport and other supplements are excluded from the calculation. This is why the share of your package that sits in basic salary directly affects how much gratuity you accrue over time.
No. Under Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021, an employee who has completed at least one year of continuous service receives the same gratuity calculation whether they resign or their employment is terminated. The reduced entitlements that applied to resignation under the previous law no longer apply.
One year of continuous service. If you leave before completing one full year, no gratuity is due. Once you pass one year, service beyond that point is pro-rated, so partial years after the first count toward your total.
Yes. Total end-of-service gratuity cannot exceed two years of wage. Once your accrued entitlement reaches that ceiling, additional years of service do not increase the payment.
No. Free zones including DIFC and ADGM operate under their own employment regulations, which differ from the federal law this calculator is based on. DIFC in particular operates a workplace savings scheme rather than a traditional end-of-service payment. Check the rules for your specific free zone.