UAE final settlement calculator

A final settlement is the last payment from a job: salary still owed, unused leave, notice pay, the gratuity and a ticket home where one is due, minus anything the employer may lawfully take off. In the UAE private sector the rules are in Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 and its Implementing Regulation, Cabinet Resolution No. 1 of 2022. The amounts are not hard to work out. The usual mistake is putting each item on the wrong salary. Leave and gratuity use basic salary. Unpaid salary and notice pay use the full wage.

What a final settlement includes

Article 53 says the employer must pay the worker’s dues within 14 days of the contract ending. Those dues are:

• Salary for days already worked that has not been paid yet, usually the days of your last month.
• Unused annual leave, including leave earned in the final part year, paid in cash on basic salary (Art. 29(9)).
• Notice pay in lieu, if the employer ended the contract and did not let you work the notice period (Art. 43).
• The end-of-service gratuity for anyone with a year or more of service (Art. 51). The gratuity calculator explains it in full. Here it is one line of the total.
• The cost of a ticket home to where you were recruited, unless you have joined another employer or the contract ended through your own fault (Art. 13(12)).
• Anything else your contract promises, such as overtime still owed or a bonus that has fallen due.

Then the employer may subtract the deductions the law allows (Art. 51(7)), and notice pay if you left without serving your notice.

Which salary each item uses

The Labour Law uses two salaries. Basic wage is the contract wage without allowances or benefits in kind. Wage is basic plus the cash allowances and benefits in your contract (Art. 1). Your payslip usually shows both.

The salary behind each part of a final settlement

Item	Paid on	Rule
Salary for days worked	Full wage	Contract
Unused annual leave	Basic	Art. 29(9); CR 1/2022 Art. 19(2)
Notice pay in lieu	Full wage	Art. 43
Gratuity	Basic	Art. 51
Ticket home	Actual cost	Art. 13(12)

Every daily rate is the monthly figure divided by 30, because Article 67 fixes the month at 30 days. On a basic of AED 10,000 and a full wage of AED 15,000, a day of leave is worth AED 333.33 and a day of notice or salary is worth AED 500.

Unused annual leave

How much leave you earn

Article 29 gives:

• 30 days a year once you have completed a year of service
• 2 days for each month if your service is more than six months but less than a year
• leave for the part of the final year you worked, if the job ends before you have used it

Nothing is earned in the first six months. Public holidays that fall inside your leave count as leave days, unless your contract or company rules are more generous (Art. 29(7)). You may carry forward no more than half of a year’s leave into the next year (Cabinet Resolution 1/2022 Art. 19(1)).

How it is paid when you leave

Leave you take while employed is paid at your full wage. Leave you are paid out for when the job ends is not. Article 29(9) says it is calculated on the basic wage, and Cabinet Resolution 1/2022 Article 19(2) repeats that it is paid “according to the basic wage”. The only other rule on cash for leave is in Article 19(1) of the Resolution: carried-over leave paid in cash while you are still employed uses the wage you receive at the time. That rule is not about the final settlement.

So the leave line is: unused days × monthly basic ÷ 30.

Leave examples

• Leaving in the first year. After 8 months with no leave taken, you have earned 8 × 2 = 16 days. On a basic of AED 6,000 that is 16 × 200 = AED 3,200.00.
• A plain balance. 12 unused days on a basic of AED 7,500 is 12 × 250 = AED 3,000.00.
• The final part year. If you leave 213 days after your last work anniversary, the leave earned for that part year is 30 × 213 ÷ 365 = 17.51 days. Add it to any balance carried over and subtract leave already taken that year. At a basic of AED 6,000, 17.51 days is worth AED 3,502.00.

The calculator asks for your unused leave as one number of days, because only your employer’s records show what you took. Fractions such as 17.51 are accepted.

Notice period and notice pay

Article 43 sets notice at a minimum of 30 days and a maximum of 90 days, as agreed in the contract, and the same for both sides. During notice the contract continues and you are paid as normal. If the employer gave the notice, you may take one unpaid day a week to look for work, after telling the employer three days ahead (Art. 43(5)).

If either side ends the contract without letting the notice run, it pays the other side the worker’s full wage for the notice days not worked. Article 43 uses the “wage”, so allowances are included. This is the opposite of the leave line.

• The employer pays. The employer ends the contract and tells you not to come in, with 30 days’ notice unserved. On a full wage of AED 12,000 you are owed 30 × 400 = AED 12,000.00 on top of everything else.
• You pay. You resign on 30 days’ notice and leave after 10 days without the employer agreeing. You owe 20 × 400 = AED 8,000.00, and the employer may take it from your settlement.
• Nobody pays. You work the whole notice, or both sides agree to waive it.

In the calculator, choose who owes the unserved notice and enter the number of days.

During probation the rules are different (Art. 9). An employer ending the contract gives 14 days’ written notice. A worker who leaves to join another UAE employer gives one month. A worker who leaves the UAE gives 14 days. The few remaining legacy unlimited contracts from before 2022 have notice of 30, 60 or 90 days depending on length of service (Art. 65(6)).

The gratuity line

The gratuity is 21 days of basic salary for each of the first five years and 30 days for each year after that, with part years in proportion once one full year is complete. Unpaid days do not count, and there is a cap of two years’ wage. Resigning does not reduce it. The calculator here uses the same code as the gratuity calculator, so the two always agree. Open that page for the step-by-step method, the cap, part-time work and who is not covered.

A full settlement, worked out

The working: 12 days × AED 500 (15,000 ÷ 30) = AED 6,000.00 of salary. 10 days × AED 333.33 (10,000 ÷ 30) = AED 3,333.33 of leave. 63 days × AED 333.33 = AED 21,000.00 of gratuity. The total is AED 30,333.33. If the last working day was 31 October 2026, it is due by 14 November 2026.

Now suppose the same employee is owed a ticket home costing AED 1,500 and still has AED 4,000 left on a company loan. The settlement becomes 30,333.33 + 1,500 − 4,000 = AED 27,833.33.

What can be deducted

Article 51(7) and Cabinet Resolution 1/2022 Article 29 limit deductions to amounts the worker owes under the law or a court judgment:

• loans and wages paid by mistake
• pension or insurance contributions the law requires
• penalties under the employer’s approved disciplinary rules
• debts ordered by a court
• the cost of damage the worker caused through their own fault

Deductions for a penalty or for damage must be made within three months of the date they fell due, unless agreed otherwise. Anything else needs a legal basis. If your settlement shows deductions you do not recognise, ask in writing for the legal basis of each one.

The 14-day deadline and what to do if you are not paid

The employer has 14 days from the end of the contract to pay everything (Art. 53). The calculator prints the due date under the result.

If that date passes:

1. Ask the employer in writing for the settlement statement and the date of payment. Keep a copy.
2. File a labour complaint with MOHRE. Since the 2024 amendment to Article 54 (Federal Decree-Law 9/2024), MOHRE can issue a final decision itself on claims of up to AED 50,000.
3. Do not wait too long. Claims cannot be heard after two years from the end of employment (Art. 54(9)).

You are also entitled to a free experience certificate on request (Art. 13(11)).

A separate award, compensation for dismissal, is not included in the calculator. Under Article 47(2) it is capped at three months’ wage and applies only where the dismissal was found to be because the worker had made a serious complaint or lawsuit that was proved valid. It is decided case by case.

Mistakes other settlement calculators make

While researching this page we checked the method behind settlement calculators and HR guides against the law. These are the mistakes we saw most often. We do not name the sites.

• Paying leave on full salary. Some guides say unused leave at the end is paid on basic plus allowances. Article 29(9) and the Implementing Regulation say basic. In the example above, leave on the full wage would be 10 × 500 = AED 5,000 instead of AED 3,333.33.
• Paying notice on basic. The reverse error. Notice pay is the full wage (Art. 43). In the employer-pays example, AED 12,000 would wrongly become AED 8,000 on a basic of AED 8,000.
• A ×12 ÷ 365 day rate. Article 67 fixes the month at 30 days, so a day is the monthly figure ÷ 30. On a basic of AED 7,500 the ×12/365 rate gives AED 246.58 a day instead of AED 250, and 12 leave days come to AED 2,958.90 instead of AED 3,000.
• Forgetting the final part year. Leave earned between your last anniversary and your last day is part of the settlement (Art. 29(1)).
• Treating resignation as cutting the gratuity. That rule was in the 1980 law. The current law has no such cut.
• Leaving out the 14-day deadline. It is a legal deadline, not a guideline.

Who this calculator does not cover

• Domestic workers are under Federal Decree-Law 9/2022, not the Labour Law. Their unused leave is paid on the last remuneration (Art. 10(5)), which the law does not limit to basic, and the employer must settle within 10 days of the contract ending (Art. 19(9)). Their gratuity has no formula in force yet (Art. 22).
• UAE nationals get pension and social security benefits instead of the Article 51 gratuity. Their leave, notice and salary lines still follow the Labour Law.
• Government employees, the armed forces, police and security services are outside the Labour Law (Art. 3(2)).
• DIFC and ADGM have their own employment laws. The calculator’s gratuity line does not apply there.

How this calculator counts

• Salary and notice days are paid at full monthly wage ÷ 30. Leave days are paid at basic ÷ 30.
• The gratuity uses the dates you enter, includes both the first and last day, and takes out unpaid days. It follows the gratuity calculator exactly, including the 24-month reading of the cap.
• Each line is rounded to the fils and the total is the sum of the rounded lines.
• The due date is your last working day plus 14 days.
• Overtime is not calculated here. Enter any overtime you are still owed under “Other amounts”. Rules and figures come from the datasets listed in the sources, last checked against the law on 30 October 2026.