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Zakat due date calculator

Find the date your zakat falls due, counted as a lunar year from the day your wealth reached nisab rather than from a Gregorian anniversary.

When your zakat year began

Not the start of Ramadan, and not January, the day you first crossed the threshold

Defaults to today

Optional. Used only to show whether you are above the threshold today.

Did your wealth dip below nisab?

At any point during the year

Nisab threshold

Measured against

Today's market price where you are

Add the current silver price and the threshold appears here. Without it there is nothing to test your wealth against, so no figure is shown rather than one assumed.

Calendar reckoning

Tabular variant
Shift the result, in days

If the calendar where you are reads a day ahead of what this gives, set +1. The shift applies to every date the tool produces.

These dates are calculated, not announced

Islamic months begin on the sighting of the new crescent, announced locally. A converted date comes from a fixed arithmetic calendar instead, so it can differ from the observed one by a day in either direction, and countries differ from each other.

Saudi Arabia’s official Umm al-Qura calendar is a third scheme again. It is published as a table rather than derived from a formula, so it is not computed here.

Zakat due date

Enter the date your wealth first reached nisab and your zakat date appears here.

Zakat has a date, and it is yours alone

Zakat on wealth is not an annual tax with a common deadline. It falls due once your own wealth has been held above nisab for one lunar year. That year starts on the day you first crossed the threshold, so two people in the same household can easily have different zakat dates.

The eleven-day trap

A lunar year runs about 354 days; a solar year runs 365. Anyone who pays on the same Gregorian date each year is therefore letting their zakat year stretch by eleven days annually. Do that for long enough and a whole zakat year goes unpaid, roughly one in every thirty-three.

It is not a dramatic error in any single year, which is exactly why it goes unnoticed. Working from the Hijri anniversary, as this tool does, avoids it entirely.

When wealth dips below the threshold

This is the part that is genuinely unsettled, and the tool asks rather than choosing. One widely held position tests only the two ends of the year: if you were at nisab when it opened and are at nisab when it closes, what happened in between does not matter. Another requires nisab to be held throughout, so any fall restarts the year from the day wealth next reaches the threshold.

The gap between those readings can be most of a year, which is too large to paper over with a default. Wealth falling to nothing ends the year on either reading, so that case is not offered as a choice.

Paying in Ramadan

Very common, and there is nothing wrong with it, paying ahead of the due date is permitted. But it is a practice rather than the rule, and it is worth being clear which you are doing. If your year closes in Shawwal and you pay each Ramadan, you are paying early every year, not on time.

What the indicative figure is and is not

If you enter your wealth, the tool shows what 2.5% of it would be. That is a sense of scale, not a bill. Zakat is assessed on what you hold when the year actually closes, and between now and then it will move. Work out the real figure on the day, with the full zakat calculator.

If you have never tracked this

Most people have not. Take the earliest date you are reasonably confident your wealth was above nisab, use it, and keep it consistent from now on. Erring earlier means paying slightly sooner than strictly required, which is permitted; erring later means paying late, which is not.

Questions

When does my zakat year start?
On the day your zakatable wealth first reached nisab. Not the start of Ramadan, not the first of January, and not the day you opened the account. If you have been above the threshold for years and never noted the date, pick the earliest date you are reasonably confident about and use it consistently, paying slightly early is not a problem, paying late is.
Why is the year 354 days rather than 365?
Because it is a lunar year. Twelve lunar months come to about 354 days, eleven short of a solar year. Working from a Gregorian anniversary instead would quietly skip a whole zakat year roughly every thirty-three years, which is the most common way people end up underpaying without realising.
What if my wealth dropped below nisab during the year?
This is genuinely disputed and the tool asks rather than deciding. On one widely held position only the two ends of the year are tested, so a dip in between does not restart it. On another, nisab must be held throughout, and any fall restarts the year from the day wealth next reaches the threshold. The difference can move your date by most of a year.
Most people pay in Ramadan. Is that the rule?
No, it is a practice, a common and understandable one, since the reward for giving in Ramadan is emphasised. But the due date is set by your own hawl. If your year closes in Shawwal and you pay each Ramadan, you are paying early, which is permitted. It is worth knowing which of the two you are doing.
Is the figure the tool shows what I will owe?
No. It is indicative only, worked out from the wealth you entered today. Zakat is assessed on what you actually hold when the year closes, which may be more or less. Use the full zakat calculator on the due date itself for the amount.
I missed a zakat year. What now?
It is still owed. A missed year does not lapse, and the usual position is that it should be worked out and paid as soon as possible, on the wealth held at the time it fell due. If several years are involved, or the records are incomplete, that is a situation to take to someone qualified rather than to a calculator.

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