This page explains the rules every calculator on this site uses (zakat, ushr, fitrana, fidya and kaffara, khums, haq mehr, diyat and wirasat) and where each comes from. Where we have no specific source for a rule, we say it is our reading. If you think something is wrong, please tell us.
Rules last checked: by Ali Ahmad (site owner; not a scholar review).
Common to all Sunni schools
- Rate: 2.5% of zakatable wealth after a lunar year (hawl).
- Gold nisab 87.48 g (7.5 tola); silver nisab 612.35 g (52.5 tola), the figures used in Pakistan and India. We take 1 tola as 11.6638 g (often rounded to 11.664 g) and round the nisab weights to two decimals; charts that multiply the rounded 11.664 g get a silver nisab 0.01 g higher, a difference of less than 0.002%. Some bodies, including several in Malaysia and Singapore, use 85 g of gold and 595 g of silver (20 and 200 mithqal at 4.25 g). With 85 g the gold nisab is about 2.8% lower. We use the tola figures for every Sunni school; you can enter your own local rate if your scholars use the other one.
- Gold is counted by its pure content: weight × karat ÷ 24, for both the nisab and the value. See the Hanafi note below on jewellery that is mostly gold.
- Cash, bank balances, business stock at sale value, good receivables and plots bought for resale are counted. Committee (ROSCA) payments, prize bonds, shares and crypto are counted at their amount or market value as our reading of the general rule on money and trade goods; we do not yet cite a specific fatwa for each.
- Long loans and 12-month instalments: only the instalments due in the coming year are subtracted, where the madhab subtracts debts (our reading of contemporary Hanafi practice).
- Doubtful receivables are not counted until received.
Hanafi
Jewellery zakatable even if worn daily; debts due now deducted; gold, silver and cash combined by value against the silver nisab; only gold → gold nisab. Sources: Darul Uloom Deoband, Fatwa 2310/H=713/th=1431 (jewellery) and Fatwa 702/702=M/1429 (combining, silver nisab).
Jewellery that is mostly gold (open question): we count only the pure gold in a piece, for the nisab and the value, so 7.5 tola of 22K jewellery (6.875 tola of pure gold) is below the gold nisab if you own nothing else. Many South Asian fatwas cite the rule in al-Hidayah that “if gold predominates, it takes the ruling of gold” and count such a piece as wholly gold; on that view zakat is due. When this changes your result the calculator says so. We have asked for a written Hanafi ruling and will update this page, with a dated note, once we have it.
Shafi’i
Permissible worn jewellery exempt unless beyond custom (about 860 g); debts not deducted; gold and silver separate; cash valued on the gold standard by default (user may choose silver). Sources: Imam al-Nawawi, al-Majmu’; MUIS Office of the Mufti, “Zakat on Gold Jewellery”; SeekersGuidance, “Which debts affect zakat” (Shaykh Dr. Muhammad Fayez Awad).
Two points are our reading and await confirmation: cash and trade goods are added to the metal you choose as the standard (gold by default), while the other metal is checked on its own; and the customary jewellery limit is taken as 860 g, although 200 mithqal at 4.25 g gives 850 g.
Maliki
Permissible worn jewellery exempt; debts deducted from cash, gold, silver and trade goods; gold and silver combined; silver nisab by default (user may choose gold). Sources: Mufti of Wilayah Persekutuan, Irsyad Fatwa 38; SeekersGuidance (debts by madhab).
Maliki scholars first set a debt against things you own but do not need (a spare plot or car, for example), and only the rest reduces zakat. The calculator does not ask about such assets and deducts the whole debt; it shows a note whenever you enter a debt.
Hanbali
Permissible jewellery kept for use or lending exempt; debts deducted; gold and silver combined; cash and trade goods measured by the lower of the two nisabs, which is better for the poor. Source: Akhsar al-Mukhtasarat, Book of Zakat.
Ahl-e-Hadith
Jewellery zakatable if it reaches the nisab; cash combined with gold and silver; lower nisab; debts not deducted. Sources: Permanent Committee (al-Lajnah ad-Da’imah), Shaykh Ibn Baz and Shaykh Ibn Uthaymeen via IslamQA answers 19901, 201807 and 22426. We have not found a written fatwa from a Pakistani Ahl-e-Hadith institution on every point; this is our best reading. On adding gold and silver together these scholars differ: Shaykh Ibn Baz added them, while Shaykh Ibn Uthaymeen kept them separate. The calculator adds them.
Shia (Ja’fari)
Following Ayatollah Sistani, Islamic Laws, ruling 1912 (gold) and rulings 1913-1916 (silver, currency and jewellery): zakat on gold and silver only for coins used as currency (gold 69.12 g, silver 483.84 g); paper money and jewellery not zakatable today; khums applies to the yearly surplus.
Gold, silver and currency rates
Gold and silver spot prices in US dollars per troy ounce come from gold-api.com, with a daily fallback from the open currency-api by Fawaz Ahmed. Exchange rates come from the same currency-api. Our server refreshes them every hour and caches them; your browser never contacts these services. All values are international rates; you can enter your own local rate.
Already paid and bank deduction
Amounts entered under Already paid (the bank’s 1 Ramadan deduction, or zakat you gave earlier this year) are subtracted from the zakat due, never below zero. Savings certificates are counted at the amount invested. See bank zakat deduction and zakat on savings certificates.
The other tools
- Zakat date and missed years: the next zakat date is one lunar year of 354.367 days after the day wealth reached the nisab (“no zakat until a year passes”, Abu Dawud 1573). Hijri dates are shown from the Umm al-Qura calendar, so local moon sighting can differ by a day. For missed years the Hanafi option treats each earlier year’s unpaid zakat as a debt that lowers the next year’s wealth (al-Hidayah).
- Wirasat (inheritance): the Qur’anic shares (al-Nisa 4:11, 4:12, 4:176) with ‘awl and radd in exact fractions. Hanafi rules follow al-Sirajiyyah and Ibn Abidin’s Radd al-Muhtar; the Shafi’i, Maliki and Hanbali rules follow the main texts of each school, including Zayd ibn Thabit’s method for the grandfather with brothers; the Ahl-e-Hadith rules treat the grandfather as the father (the view of Abu Bakr and Ibn Abbas) and follow Ibn Taymiyyah on radd to the spouse (an open question, below); Ja’fari rules follow Ayatollah Sistani’s Islamic Laws (three classes, no ‘awl, a wife’s share from buildings and not from land). Pakistani law (Muslim Family Laws Ordinance 1961, section 4) is shown as a separate result. The engine is checked against 425 worked cases, with 6 more kept as open questions where scholars differ. Results with distant relatives (dhawu al-arham) carry a note to confirm with a mufti.
- Ushr: 10% for land watered by rain or rivers and 5% for costly irrigation (Bukhari 1483). Imam Abu Hanifa set no minimum; the other schools require 5 wasq, about 653 kg (Muslim 979). Ayatollah Sistani’s minimum is higher (about 847 kg) and covers wheat, barley, dates and raisins only.
- Livestock: goats, sheep and camels up to 120 follow the letter of Abu Bakr (Bukhari 1454); cows and buffaloes follow the hadith of Mu’adh (one tabi’ for every 30, one musinnah for every 40). Camels above 120 follow Abu Bakr’s letter (a bint labun per 40, a hiqqa per 50) for the Shafi’i, Maliki, Hanbali and Ahl-e-Hadith settings and the Hanafi restart of the table (al-Hidayah) for the Hanafi setting; the Ja’fari setting follows Ayatollah Sistani’s Islamic Laws (25 camels: 5 goats; 301 to 399 sheep: 4).
- Fitrana and fidya and kaffara: in Hanafi fiqh one fitrana or one day’s fidya is half a sa’ of wheat (about 1.75 to 2 kg) or one sa’ of barley, dates or raisins, or its value; the other schools use one mudd (about 0.6 kg) for fidya. Kaffara is 60 days of fasting, or feeding 60 poor people only for someone who cannot fast (Bukhari 1936, Muslim 1111). Enter the money amount announced by your scholars each Ramadan; the fitrana calculator may show amounts we have filled in from those announcements.
- Haq mehr: mehr is measured in silver dirhams, at 3.0618 g of silver to one shar’i dirham, the figure used by Indo-Pak muftis (10 dirham = 2 tola 7.5 masha = 30.618 g). The Hanafi minimum is 10 dirham (al-Hidayah), about 30.62 g; Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanwi and Mufti Rasheed Ahmad Ludhianvi gave about 34 g, which is shown too. Mehr-e-Fatimi is 500 dirham (131.25 tola, about 1,530.9 g) by default, from Sayyidah Aisha’s report of twelve and a half uqiyah (Sahih Muslim 1426), the figure of Mufti Muhammad Shafi; 480 dirham (Sayyiduna Umar’s report, Abu Dawud 2106 and Tirmidhi 1114) and 400 dirham (Ibn al-Humam) are shown as other views. The Maliki minimum is a quarter dinar or 3 dirham; the Shafi’i, Hanbali and Ja’fari schools set no minimum. Unpaid mehr is a debt, and in Pakistan section 10 of the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance 1961 makes it payable on demand when the nikah nama is silent. Values use the live international silver rate.
- Diyat: section 323 of the Pakistan Penal Code sets diyat at no less than the value of 30,630 g of silver, close to the classical Hanafi 10,000 dirham (10,000 × 3.0618 g = 30,618 g). The rupee amount is the one the Finance Division notifies for each fiscal year: Rs 1,93,52,390 for 2026-27 (circular of 27 July 2026, in force from 1 July 2026). The calculator lists the earlier notified amounts with their sources and shows the live value of 30,630 g of silver for information only; for a court case the notified amount is the legal minimum. The madhab figures (100 camels, 1,000 dinar, 10,000 or 12,000 dirham) are listed on the diyat page; Surah an-Nisa 4:92 is the Quranic basis.
- Qurbani: Hanafi fiqh makes qurbani wajib on a sane, adult, resident Muslim who owns the zakat nisab on 10 to 12 Dhul Hijjah (Bada’i al-Sana’i). We use the same nisab test as for zakat (silver for mixed wealth, gold by weight when gold is all a person owns, debts due now deducted), with two differences: no lunar year is required, and things kept beyond basic needs count even when they carry no zakat. A traveller (musafir) is exempt. For the Shafi’i, Maliki and Hanbali schools and most Ahl-e-Hadith scholars it is a sunnah mu’akkadah, and for Ayatollah Sistani a recommended act, so the tool states the ruling and shows the Hanafi test for information. The Eid date is 10 Dhul Hijjah by the Umm al-Qura calendar.
- Iddat: a widow waits four months and ten days (al-Baqarah 2:234), counted by the moon when the death fell on the 1st of an Islamic month and as 130 days otherwise, Imam Abu Hanifa’s rule for a broken month, which we apply to every school (others may differ by a day or two). A divorcee waits three quru’ (2:228): three complete periods in the Hanafi, Hanbali and Ahl-e-Hadith settings, three purities in the Shafi’i, Maliki and Ja’fari settings; three months (90 days off the 1st) without periods (65:4); until birth when pregnant (65:4), and for a Ja’fari widow the later of birth and four months ten days. There is no divorce iddat before consummation (33:49); for the Hanafi and Hanbali settings a valid private meeting counts as consummation. Khula takes one period in the Ahl-e-Hadith setting (Abu Dawud 2229). For a divorce the end date is projected from the woman’s last period, cycle length and days of bleeding, so it is an estimate. The Pakistan date is 90 days from the talaq, assuming notice to the Union Council chairman the same day (MFLO 1961 s. 7).
- Khums: 20% of the year’s surplus income, split equally into sahm-e-imam and sahm-e-sadat, following Ayatollah Sistani’s Islamic Laws (khums chapter, rulings 1769 onwards and 1851). Gifts count as income; inheritance and mahr do not.
What is not covered
- Pension and provident funds, where scholars differ
- Exact local moon-sighting dates
Open questions
These rules are disputed or not yet confirmed. We have put them to scholars and will update the calculator and this page when we get written answers:
- Hanafi: jewellery that is mostly gold (pure content or full weight).
- Shafi’i: adding cash to the chosen metal; the customary jewellery limit (850 or 860 g); 85 g or 87.48 g for the gold nisab.
- Maliki: setting debts against spare non-zakatable assets first.
- Ahl-e-Hadith: confirmation of each rule by a Pakistani Ahl-e-Hadith institution.
- Inheritance, Ahl-e-Hadith: returning the remainder (radd) to a lone husband or wife. Our setting follows Ibn Taymiyyah, who allowed it; many scholars do not.
- Fidya: the calculator uses the Hanafi amount (one fitrana a day); the Shafi’i, Maliki and Hanbali schools use one mudd (about 0.6 kg of food), which is less.
Changes
- 25 October 2026 (accuracy): the business, committee and overseas worked examples now show the Shafi’i result separately (nothing due at the gold nisab in those examples; we had grouped it with Ahl-e-Hadith); the salary guide marks “money added during the year joins the year” as the Hanafi rule and gives the other schools’ one-date route; the savings-certificates guide states the Maliki rule for money lent; the Hanbali nisab is described the same way everywhere (“the lower of the two, which is better for the poor”); the calculator’s “pay when repaid” line is named for what it does; the privacy policy describes how rates are fetched; the diyat figure links the Finance Division notification.
- 18 October 2026 (official figures): the nisab, fitrana, fidya and diyat pages show the latest figure announced in Pakistan with its source, and past years’ bank nisab (2021 to 2026) and fitrana amounts (2024 to 2026) in tables. Years we could not check against a published announcement are left out. Each madhab page now lists its rules with sources and has a worked example in rupees. A new zakat 2027 Pakistan page collects this season’s dates.
- 18 October 2026 (sources): the hadith, verses, fatwas, books and laws cited on our pages now link to their source (sunnah.com, quran.com, the fatwa pages, Ayatollah Sistani’s rulings and the Finance Division circular); this page now also explains the haq mehr and diyat rules; the About page has a fuller note on who writes the site; guides label their published and updated dates. No calculation result changed.
- 18 October 2026 (accuracy): the Ahl-e-Hadith rule on returning the remainder to a lone husband or wife is now marked as an open question; the fidya and kaffara examples use the Council of Islamic Ideology’s 1447 amounts (Rs 300 by wheat, Rs 1,600 by dates); quick answers with a live rupee figure show the time of the rate; the inheritance engine is described as checked against 425 cases plus 6 open questions. No calculation result changed.
- 18 October 2026 (inheritance): the wirasat calculator page now describes every feature of the calculator (six madhabs side by side, the worked sheet, what-if, share link and istifta, mamu, khala, phuphi and nana), and four guides were added on the daughter’s share, the wife’s and husband’s share, orphaned grandchildren and zakat on inherited wealth. No calculation result changed.
- 17 October 2026 (accessibility and privacy): the calculator now works fully in Urdu (Urdu madhab names, units and an Urdu font), screen readers hear only the zakat total once you stop typing, and a Delete saved data button removes everything the calculators kept in your browser. Urdu names in the PDF report are spelled in Roman letters. No calculation result changed.
- 17 October 2026 (Urdu): added Urdu pages for the zakat calculator, nisab, zakat on gold and fitrana, with worked examples on several English pages. They use the same rules as the English pages; no calculation result changed.
- 17 October 2026: the silver nisab is now shown everywhere as 612.35 g, the figure the calculator uses (52.5 tola of 11.6638 g); results did not change.
- 16 October 2026: listed the open questions above; added notes in the calculator for Hanafi gold jewellery, Maliki debts and fidya by madhab; marked rules without a specific source as our reading. No calculation result changed.
How the content is checked
The rules and guides on this site are compiled from the sources above and approved by Ali Ahmad, who publishes the site. They have not yet been reviewed by a scholar on our behalf; when that happens, the reviewer’s name will be shown on every page. If you find a mistake, please tell us and we will correct it.