Search for "sponsorship transfer fees" in Saudi Arabia and ten pages come back saying the same thing: SAR 2,000 the first time, 4,000 the second, 6,000 the third. The numbers are not invented. They are mostly just not yours.
They belong to a different track: transferring domestic workers through the Musaned platform — a housemaid, a private driver. Transferring a professional employee between two private-sector establishments, which is what most companies are actually asking about, is a different service, on a different platform, under entirely different conditions. And on the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development's own service card, under "service fees", there is a single line: no fees.
So fees are not the obstacle. Something else is, it is written into the regulation, and most of what gets published on the topic skips it: your Nitaqat band.
The legal route: Article 14, not "sponsorship"
"Sponsorship" is no longer the regulatory term. The service is called transfer of an expatriate worker's services, its conditions sit in item (second) of Article 14 of the Executive Regulation of the Labour Law, and it runs on the Qiwa platform as the "job mobility service" under the Labour Relations Improvement Initiative the ministry launched on 14 March 2021.
The distinction is not linguistic. Article 14 ties the transfer directly to the Saudization programme: the requesting establishment must meet the Saudization rate required for its activity or entity under the Nitaqat programme. Your eligibility to receive an employee from another company is decided in a file you do not normally open when you are thinking about hiring.
That is why transfer requests get rejected for no visible reason. The company thinks it is buying an administrative step. It is in fact being tested across six files at once.
The six conditions on the receiving establishment
Per the ministry's official user guide for the initiative's services, an establishment wanting to receive the worker must satisfy all of the following:
- Valid work permits across the establishments under the unified number — not just the one entity, the whole group.
- Green Medium band or above. This is the real gate.
- Wage Protection System compliance of at least 80% for the last three months.
- 100% contract authentication for its employees — not 99%.
- Self-assessment programme compliance of at least 80%.
- An approved internal work regulation on file.
Read the list again and notice where those numbers live: the band in Nitaqat, the wage compliance rate in Mudad, authentication in Qiwa, self-assessment in a third system, and the internal regulation in a file approved by the ministry. Five separate sources that must all agree at the same moment.
The second point in particular turns on small and mid-sized firms. A company can be entirely compliant and paying on time, then discover its band slipped to Green Low because two Saudi employees resigned, closing off recruitment from abroad and from inside the Kingdom at once. And because the band is computed on a 26-week average rather than today's snapshot, recovery is not immediate even after hiring. We covered that mechanism in why your band turned red and how to get out, and you can check your current rate and the hiring gap with the Nitaqat calculator.
The five conditions on the worker
On the other side, the expatriate worker must:
- Be professional labour subject to the Labour Law — the service does not cover domestic workers at all.
- Have completed 12 months with the current employer on first entry to the Kingdom.
- Be actively on the job.
- Have no other pending transfer request.
- Observe the notice period where an authenticated contract is in force.
Two answers in the same guide's FAQ settle recurring arguments: a worker with an absence-from-work report filed against them cannot use the service; and transfer during the first year is possible, but requires the current establishment's consent.
Five cases that void every condition
Here is the part both sides search for in the bluntest possible phrasing: transfer without the sponsor's consent. The official guide exempts the following cases from the conditions entirely:
- The worker has no authenticated employment contract.
- Wages unpaid for three consecutive months.
- No work permit issued within 90 days of the worker entering the Kingdom.
- The work permit or residency permit has expired.
- The current establishment consents to the move.
The first four are not loopholes for workers to exploit; they are documented employer failures, and the system reads them that way. The second deserves a pause: it is proven not by a complaint but by the Wage Protection System's own data. A rejected file in Mudad does not just cost you a fine — month after month, it can build the very evidence your employees leave on without your permission. The reasons a wage file gets rejected are in why Mudad rejects your WPS file, and the cumulative effect in WPS violations and payroll data reconciliation.
Note the fourth case too. A routine renewal delay — the kind many treat as something that can slip two weeks — opens a lawful exit for the worker that does not need your signature.
Fees: what the ministry actually says
In the Guide to Services Provided to Expatriates (1445-2024) issued by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, the service card for "transfer of an expatriate worker's services" records, under service fees: no fees.
The initiative's user guide confirms the other half: the worker pays no government fees on accepting the job offer, and the new establishment bears any costs relating to the service. Charging an employee for their own transfer is not merely poor practice — it contradicts what the ministry states outright.
As for the current establishment losing a worker before the contract ends, the guide answers that it is granted an immediate visa subject to terms and conditions, and that the service does not affect visa issuance for employers.
The notice period — and the button that shortens it
The service runs in four stages: the new establishment creates a job offer on Qiwa, the worker reviews it and accepts or declines, the current establishment is notified, and then the notice period begins. It is counted from the moment the worker accepts the offer and the current establishment is notified — not from a resignation date, and not from the application date.
If the remaining contract term is shorter than the agreed notice period, the shorter period applies.
More useful in practice: the current establishment can shorten the notice period from its Qiwa account, through "received requests" and then editing the contractual relationship end date to something earlier. Many employers do not know the option exists, even though it is the cleanest way to close out a relationship that has already ended, rather than carrying an unwilling employee on payroll for two more months.
Where HR systems fail here
The problem we see at clients is not ignorance of the conditions. It is that the conditions are spread across systems that do not talk to each other.
Your HR system knows your headcount, but not your band as computed over 26 weeks. It generates the payroll file, but does not read its acceptance rate in Mudad. It stores contract copies, but does not know which ones are genuinely authenticated in Qiwa and which are incomplete. So the gap surfaces on the day the transfer request is rejected, rather than two months earlier when it could still have been fixed.
The fix is not a new system. It is one reading layer over what you already own: an indicator that pulls the band, the WPS compliance rate, the authentication rate and permit validity onto one screen, and warns before any of them drops below its threshold. The technical detail of connecting to Qiwa — integration levels and where the countable numbers come from — is in the Qiwa integration guide for HR systems.
Before you build a hiring decision on an assumption
If you are planning to recruit someone away from another establishment this quarter, start from the right end: verify your band, your wage protection compliance and your authentication rate before you offer anyone a job. Check where you stand with the Nitaqat calculator, and if a gap appears that you do not know how to close — or if your numbers disagree across Qiwa, Mudad and your own system — talk to us for a quick review of your data sources, and we will tell you exactly where the discrepancy is.
Sources: User guide for the Labour Relations Improvement Initiative services, Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, 14 March 2021 · Guide to Services Provided to Expatriates 1445-2024, Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development · Item (second) of Article 14 of the Executive Regulation of the Labour Law.