What is the nisab? (85 g of gold / 595 g of silver)
The nisab is the amount at which wealth becomes zakatable; below it, no zakat is due however long the money sits with its owner. The Shariah fixed it by two stable metal measures: 85 grams of gold — twenty mithqals, the mithqal being 4.25 grams — and 595 grams of silver — two hundred dirhams at 2.975 grams each. Modern money is measured by the majority of contemporary scholars and the official Gulf and Egyptian bodies against the value of 85 grams of gold at the market price on the day of reckoning, gold being today's reference of monetary value.
In practice, the money nisab moves whenever the gold price moves — which is why this calculator refuses a hard-coded threshold and derives it live: today's pure-gram price multiplied by 85. When the UAE gram price stood at AED 498.5 (5 November 2026, the figure in the UAE Awqaf zakat calculator), the nisab was exactly AED 42,372.50, and anyone below that owed nothing that day. The silver nisab (595 g) is shown alongside for comparison, since some scholars consider it the more beneficial threshold.
The 24k vs 21k nisab (Egypt's Dar al-Ifta fatwa)
The gold people actually trade is not always pure: 24k is pure gold, while 21k carries 21 parts of gold in every 24 parts of alloy. On this, Egypt's Dar al-Ifta branched from the majority in its fatwa no. 7506: the majority — the practice of Saudi Arabia and the official Gulf bodies — sets the nisab at the value of 85 grams of pure 24k gold, while the Egyptian fatwa measures it with 85 grams of 21k gold itself — only 74.375 grams of pure content — producing a lower money threshold. The gap is not symbolic: at a pure-gram price of 498.5, the 24k nisab is 42,372.50 while the 21k nisab is 37,075.94, so a person holding 40,000 is below the threshold by the majority measure and above it, owing zakat, by the Egyptian one.
Why do both exist? Egyptian-market gold has historically been 21k, and the fatwa fitted the measure to its country's reality, while others kept to pure gold as the original textual measure. Our stance is that of an honest instrument: both methods are offered under their explicit names, each attributed to its source, and the judgement between them is left to you and your mufti. Choosing 21k does not mean "less zakat" either: it brings into zakat wealth that would otherwise have stayed outside it.
Which wealth is zakatable?
The unifying rule: every item of fully-owned, growing wealth that reaches the nisab and completes a hawl is zakatable — "growing" meaning capable of increase by itself or by its owner's deployment. The calculation therefore includes: cash in every currency and what stands in its place — bank balances and owned cheques — valued in the calculation currency at the exchange rate on the due day. Gold and silver in all their growing forms — bars, coins, savings jewellery and investment pieces — gold counted by its pure content, not its gross weight: 100 grams of 18k carries only 75 grams of pure gold. And shares and funds at their market value on the hawl day — this calculator's default treatment; the scholars' detail on trading shares versus long-term holdings exceeds a tool, so consult your mufti where you hesitate.
It also includes trade goods — everything you bought intending to sell, valued at its selling price when the hawl completes, not at purchase cost — and expected receivables: debts owed to you by someone solvent who acknowledges them, your wealth in another's hands. Excluded is whatever is neither growing nor fully disposable: your car, your home, the tools of your trade, funds you cannot actually access, and hopeless debts until received. Between inclusion and exclusion stands your own debts: deducting them is the majority position, so we made it a visible toggle under your control.
What is the hawl? When is my zakat due?
The hawl is the passage of one full lunar year over wealth that stands at the nisab; no zakat is due on wealth — however large — before its hawl completes, apart from what the texts exempt such as crops and minerals. The hawl begins on the first day your wealth reaches the nisab, not on the day you received or deposited it: if your money touched the nisab on 10 Ramadan, your zakat falls due on 10 Ramadan of the following year. Two rules confuse many people. First, growth arising from the wealth itself during the year joins the principal and is zakatable with it at completion, without a hawl of its own. Second, if wealth drops clearly below the nisab mid-year, the majority hold that the hawl is cut; when it returns to the nisab, a new hawl starts from the day of return.
Because lives now run on Gregorian dates while the hawl is lunar — eleven days shorter — Gregorian-anchored memory misfires year after year. That is why the hawl helper here uses the same Umm al-Qura engine as this site's date converter: enter the date your wealth reached the nisab in either calendar, and it returns the due date as the same Hijri date next year, with its Gregorian equivalent and the days remaining. Many families simply fix one day in Ramadan to pay every year.
Zakat by the solar year: why 2.577%?
The zakat rate — a quarter of a tenth, 2.5% — is not calendar-neutral: it is calibrated to a lunar hawl averaging 354 days. Someone who pays every solar year (365 days) at 2.5% leaves eleven days of each cycle unaccounted; across thirty-three solar years that silently erases an entire lunar year of the poor's right. Egypt's Dar al-Ifta therefore ruled that whoever accounts by the solar year compensates by raising the rate: 2.5% × 365 ÷ 354 = 2.577% — not an increase in the obligation, but its full collection over a longer period. The figure is documented beyond Egypt too: the UAE Awqaf calculator returns, on AED 100,000, exactly AED 2,500 lunar and AED 2,577 solar — precisely this calculator's behaviour when you select the solar year.
The solar option suits a financial life that runs Gregorian — salaries, ledgers and a January review — while the lunar is the textual original, and a Ramadan-anchored date is, for many, the easiest to remember. Both routes are one toggle apart here, and the rate applies to the entire zakatable amount, not merely to what exceeds the nisab — once zakat is due, it is due on the whole.
Is zakat due on worn gold jewellery?
Few zakat questions are asked more than this one, and the disagreement is old and respectable. The majority — Malikis, Shafi'is, Hanbalis, and Egypt's Dar al-Ifta in its settled fatwas — hold that no zakat falls on lawful jewellery actually worn for adornment within customary bounds, because use has taken it out of growing wealth and placed it with household effects reserved for need, like clothing and the tools of a trade. The Hanafi school holds that zakat is due on jewellery absolutely, gold being gold once it reaches the nisab. The pivot is not the presence of gold but its description: growing wealth held for increase, or a personal possession kept for use.
From that pivot flow the controls on which this calculator was designed: jewellery bought to store value — even in bracelet form — is savings gold by near-consensus and is zakatable; bars and gold coins are plainly savings, not adornment; and jewellery exceeding, by a wide margin, what women of one's country customarily wear leaves the bounds of ordinary keeping in the view of many scholars. So the calculator asks of every quantity: savings, or worn adornment? The first enters; the second is excluded with its value and the reason recorded beside it — never in the dark. Whoever follows a school that obliges zakat on jewellery can enter it as "savings" and have it counted.
How to use this calculator
First: check the top of the form. The pure-gram gold price is fetched live and displayed with its timestamp; if your local market differs — jewellers' prices differ from the spot price by making charges and margins — override the number by hand. The whole calculation turns on the figure you see, never on a hidden one. Choose the nisab method and your year type. Second: enter your wealth item by item: cash per currency in separate rows if it is spread across several, gold by weight, karat and description — or as one total value — then your silver, shares and merchandise, and finally your debts and the debts owed to you, with their toggles set as you judge right.
Third: press "Calculate zakat" and read the result carefully: has the net reached the nisab? What is the zakat, and which rate was applied? Then walk the breakdown table row by row — every amount has a stated reason for entering, and every excluded amount a stated reason for leaving. Fourth: if you do not know when your hawl began, use the hawl helper, then copy the result and keep it with its date. Remember: this tool calculates; it does not issue fatwas. If a special case perplexes you — mixed wealth, a complicated debt, a company with partners — your country's Dar al-Ifta is the address, and by then the calculator will have done its job: the right question with the right numbers.