Average Rent in Riyadh: SAR 2,584 a Month, 189 Districts

The average rent in Riyadh is SAR 31,014 a year for an apartment, about SAR 2,584 a month, on 185,107 rental transactions registered through the Ejar network across 189 districts in Q4 2025. REGA stopped publishing a Riyadh city rent after Q4 2024 and has published the same measure district by district since, so the city figure is Omran's transaction-weighted aggregation of its cells (REGA rental indicators). Across all residential unit types it is SAR 34,774 a year, SAR 2,898 a month, on 225,800 transactions, and the unit behind the apartment number implies 111 sqm, a size most rent comparisons never state. Q4 2025 is where the public, licensed, redistributable record stops: REGA's own platform runs to Q2 2026, behind a Nafath national-ID sign-in (REGA).

Key figures at a glance

The first six rows are Omran computations on REGA's published district cells, weighted by REGA's own transaction counts, from files carrying the KSA Open Data Licence. The last three are read straight off the publication cited beside them.

What the average rent in Riyadh actually counts

Signed leases, not advertisements. REGA builds the indicator from contracts documented in the Ejar network, past 10 million of them by 29 September 2024, and excludes "transactions with extreme or abnormal values" before averaging (REGA; platform FAQ).

Watch the denominator, where most people quoting the series go wrong. REGA uses three across its own publications: the platform card divides rental values by the number of rented units, the open-data column counts transactions (عدد الصفقات), and the monthly bulletin carries lease contracts on a smaller line, 181,951 residential contracts against 205,466 residential rental transactions in March 2026 (REGA bulletin). Nothing reconciles the three, so we print counts as registered rental transactions, never a rent per contract. REGA's own two lines differ by 12.9% inside that single month, so a rent quoted per contract is wrong by about that much before anyone opens a model.

Unit size is the other silent variable. Published rent over published rent per sqm, weighted by transactions across the Q4 2025 cells, implies 111 sqm for the average Riyadh apartment and 38 sqm for a studio (REGA). Small units do not scale pro rata: a studio rents at SAR 534.82 per sqm a year, an apartment at SAR 276.00. Compare two cities on rent alone and you are comparing floor areas as much as prices (how the indicator is built).

Riyadh rent prices by district: SAR 1,094 to SAR 5,256 a month

Among the 125 apartment districts with at least 200 registered transactions in Q4 2025, the median district average is SAR 27,287 a year, SAR 2,274 a month, and cheapest to dearest is 4.81 times.

REGA's published Q4 2025 cells (REGA), monthly values being the annual figure over twelve. A selection across the range, not a ranking.

The median district sits 12% below the transaction-weighted city mean, because the expensive northern districts carry a disproportionate share of the flow: the average district and the average transaction are different claims.

Print the count or do not print the table. Of the 189 Riyadh apartment cells published for Q4 2025, 64 rest on fewer than 200 transactions and 18 on fewer than ten, and eight of the city's 197 labels are not districts: the highest cell, SAR 168,985, is a Diriyah cross-boundary composite, and the third highest, SAR 87,000, rests on five transactions in an "open area belonging to Ar Rawdah municipality" (REGA). Rank that file by rent alone and a patch of open ground sits third in the city.

What the rent freeze did to the number

Riyadh's registered apartment average fell 3.00% between Q3 and Q4 2025, the first full quarter after the 25 September 2025 freeze, and 92 of the 124 districts with 200 or more transactions in both quarters fell, median change 3.11% lower (REGA, Q3 2025 and Q4 2025).

The obvious objection is that cheaper districts took a bigger share of the quarter's transactions. It is testable, and it fails. Recomposing on fixed Q3 district weights, Q4 gives SAR 31,016 against Q3's SAR 31,972, a fall of 2.99% against the headline 3.00% on moving weights: composition accounts for 0.01 of the 3.00 percentage points. Villas are the opposite case, down 3.38% on fixed Q3 weights against 1.30% on their own Q4 weights across the 147 districts published in both quarters, so about 2.1 points of the villa print is mix rather than price (the full published cell set gives 1.40% on own weights: a different basket, not a different answer). One "Riyadh rents fell x%" line averages a real move with an artefact.

Inside Riyadh's urban boundaries annual increases in the total rental value of residential and commercial leases are suspended for five years, and a vacant property that has been let before is pinned to the value of its last executed Ejar contract; only property never let before is set freely (REGA, 25 September 2025). So from Q4 2025 the series measures an administered value as much as a clearing price. The only unconstrained route to a higher Riyadh rent is stock that has never been let, which makes new deliveries the place price discovery still happens (the provisions). The cap is policed lightly: 268 complaints and 18 landlords found in breach in the first three weeks (REGA, 16 October 2025), in a city registering 185,107 apartment transactions a quarter.

Registration behaviour moved too. February 2026 recorded 266,273 residential lease contracts nationally, up 37% year on year (REGA bulletin), and the March 2026 bulletin puts March's own 32% fall down to documentation "during the previous period" under the new provisions. Reading that back onto February is our inference, not REGA's. REGA publishes no split between genuinely new leases and previously unregistered ones, so how much of any 2026 average is a changed basket cannot be sized from the public record.

Why +5.26% is the wrong number to underwrite on

GASTAT's separate rent measure is still climbing: Riyadh actual rentals for housing printed 142.37 on a 2023 = 100 base in July 2026, up 5.26% year on year and 0.16% on the month (GASTAT CPI), 42.4% above the 2023 average, while the region's general CPI sits at 107.73.

That 5.26% is the figure most commentary repeats, and it is mostly pre-freeze history. The monthly steps in table 3.3 read +0.90% in August 2025 (GASTAT), then 0.71%, 0.60%, 0.60% and 0.47% to December, +0.56% in January 2026 (above December, so the slowdown is not a straight line), 0.27% in February and the same 0.27% again in April and May, then 0.05% in June and 0.16% in July 2026. GASTAT's March 2026 workbook is missing from its own URL series, so that month is a hole in the run rather than a reading. At July's pace the index compounds at roughly 2% a year. A valuation anchored on the published year-on-year is anchored on a market that closed in September 2025.

The two series moved in opposite directions in the same quarter and no authority publishes a bridge. REGA averages the transactions signed in a quarter; GASTAT prices a matched basket including sitting tenants whose contract is never re-signed. Read REGA as the level and GASTAT as the direction (how that index is built).

One cross-series comparison holds, same publisher and same 2023 base: Riyadh residential rents at 142.37 (July 2026) against the Riyadh regional price index at 115.98 (Q2 2026, +4.2% year on year), so rents have run about 2.6 times as far since 2023 (GASTAT REPI). That price leg is one all-sector regional index, residential, commercial and agricultural together and dominated by residential land. Nobody publishes a Riyadh house-price index, which is why Riyadh rental yields by district must be assembled rather than looked up.

The Riyadh rent nobody publishes

The gaps are specific. No rent by bedroom count, no furnished split, no rent inflation by dwelling type for Riyadh (GASTAT crosses type nationally and region separately, never both), and no vacancy or void assumption, because Ejar registers leases and not empty units.

Omran estimate: the Riyadh rent burden. Set the Q4 2025 apartment average of SAR 2,584 a month against average monthly household disposable income for Riyadh region of SAR 14,990 in 2023 (GASTAT HIECES 2023, table 1-2) and the burden is about 17%. The average hides the market: on the same table a Saudi-headed household earns SAR 25,995 a month, where that rent is roughly 10%, a non-Saudi-headed household SAR 6,405, where it is roughly 40%. Two warnings: the vintages differ (income 2023, rent Q4 2025), and the income series averages owners who pay no rent with tenants who do, the defect that also makes the published Riyadh housing line of SAR 1,360 a month useless as a rent figure.

That 40% lands on the part of Riyadh the statistics cover worst. The region held 2,273,197 households at the 2022 census, only 996,166 of them Saudi-headed (GASTAT via DataSaudi), and every published tenure share, the familiar "32.8% rented" of 2024 included, counts Saudi households alone. The population a rent cap acts on is the one the statistics describe least.

Omran keeps the full grid behind this page: every district, every unit type, every quarter REGA has published, with the count on each cell. Ask for the district table, or see how it feeds our Riyadh residential market work.

FAQ

What is the average rent in Riyadh per month? About SAR 2,584 a month for an apartment, SAR 31,014 a year, on 185,107 rental transactions registered through Ejar in Q4 2025, the last quarter in REGA's open data. Across all residential types it is SAR 2,898 a month, on 225,800 transactions.

Is that what I would actually pay? Only if your unit resembles the average one, and the average Riyadh apartment on Ejar implies 111 sqm. Across the 125 districts with 200 or more registered transactions in Q4 2025, rents run from SAR 1,094 a month in As Salihiyah to SAR 5,256 in Hittin, median SAR 2,274.

Did the September 2025 rent freeze bring rents down? Partly, and the two official series disagree. REGA's registered average fell 3.00% in Q4 2025, 92 of 124 comparable districts down, composition explaining 0.01 of those points. GASTAT's Riyadh rent index kept rising through the same months, its monthly pace falling from +0.90% in August 2025 to +0.16% in July 2026.

Can I look these district numbers up myself? Not on any open government surface. REGA's platform carries the rental indicator to Q2 2026, but its three interactive rental services each require a Nafath national-ID sign-in. The quarterly files behind the tables above stop at Q4 2025 and carry the KSA Open Data Licence, which is what makes a derived table publishable.

Sources

• REGA, rental indicators for Riyadh region, Q4 2025 (district rents, transaction counts, rent per sqm): link
• REGA, rental indicators for Riyadh region, Q3 2025 (the fixed-weight composition test): link
• KSA Open Data Licence, as distributed with the REGA files: link
• REGA, Real Estate Indicators platform (coverage to Q2 2026, per-unit definition, Nafath sign-in): link
• REGA, Real Estate Indicators platform FAQ (extreme values excluded from the average): link
• REGA, Saudi Real Estate Market Monthly Bulletin, March 2026 (contracts against transactions, Riyadh's share of the rental market): link
• REGA, Saudi Real Estate Market Monthly Bulletin, February 2026 (266,273 residential lease contracts, +37% year on year): link
• REGA, Riyadh rent freeze provisions, 25 September 2025: link
• REGA, rental violations monitoring, 16 October 2025 (268 complaints, 18 landlords): link
• REGA, Ejar passes 10 million registered contracts, 29 September 2024: link
• GASTAT, CPI tables July 2026 (Riyadh actual rentals 142.37, monthly and annual rates): link
• GASTAT, CPI tables August 2025 (2023 = 100 rebasing, +0.90% month): link
• GASTAT, Real Estate Price Index Q2 2026 (Riyadh region all-sector index 115.98): link
• GASTAT, Household Income and Consumption Expenditure Survey 2023 (Riyadh household income, housing expenditure): link
• GASTAT via DataSaudi, Al-Riyadh region profile (households, Saudi-household tenure shares): link