How many building contractors are in Saudi Arabia?
General contractors registered to construct residential and non-residential buildings.
397.2K
active registrations list building contractors activities — 27.5% of classified registrations.
Ministry of Commerce data · Q3 2026 to 16 Sep
397,184 active commercial registrations in Saudi Arabia list building contractors activities as of 16 September 2026 — 27.5% of all classified registrations, the 1st-largest of the 64 sectors we track.
161,955 were registered in 2025 and are still active — +54.3% on 2024, faster than the +15% across all sectors.
Riyadh (126,269), Jeddah (32,506), Jubail (31,196) lead. Relative to its size, Jubail is the most concentrated: building contractors make up 2.7× the share they hold nationally.
48.3% of these registrations are companies rather than sole proprietorships, and the median company reports SAR 5,000 of paid-up capital.
- Active registrations
- 397,184
- 27.5% of classified CRs
- Registered in 2025
- 161,955
- +54.3% on 2024 · all sectors +15%
- Companies
- 48.3%
- 191,949 of 397,184
- Median company capital
- SAR 5k
- Paid-up, main registrations
Where building contractors are registered
Column height: building contractors by city · select a highlighted city for its page
Leading cities
Registrations, with concentration vs the national average
- Riyadh126,2691.0×
- Jeddah32,5060.7×
- Jubail31,1962.7×
- Makkah19,8021.0×
- Dammam18,1731.0×
- Najran16,8831.6×
- Madinah11,7780.8×
- Hafar Al-Batin11,4061.6×
- Buraydah10,9191.1×
- Hail8,7131.3×
Concentration compares the sector's share of a city's registrations with its share nationally; 1.0× is average. Highlighted cities are above 1.15×.
Building contractors: registrations by year of creation
Still-active registrations by the year they were created, 2015–2025. Older years read lower because cancelled registrations drop out.
Most common activities
Registrations listing each national activity code
- General construction of residential buildings214,390Activity code 410010
- Residential and non-residential building renovation79,291Activity code 410040
- General construction of government buildings44,854Activity code 410023
- On-site prefabricated building construction44,451Activity code 410030
- General construction of non-residential buildings8,981Activity code 410021
- Airport and airport facilities construction5,112Activity code 410022
- Residential real estate development using modern construction methods59Activity code 410051
- Commercial real estate development using modern construction methods43Activity code 410052
Business structures
Legal form of registrations in the sector
- Sole proprietorship204,70051.5%
- LLC189,34447.7%
- JSC1,0050.3%
- General partnership9850.2%
- Foreign branch4560.1%
- Limited partnership3620.1%
- SJSC2530.1%
- GCC branch79<0.1%
Common questions
How many building contractors are there in Saudi Arabia?
397,184 active commercial registrations list building contractors activities as of 16 September 2026, according to Ministry of Commerce data. A registration can list several activities, so it may also count in related sectors.
Which city has the most building contractors?
Riyadh, with 126,269 — 31.8% of the national total. Jeddah follows with 32,506.
Is the number of building contractors growing?
161,955 were registered in 2025 and are still active — +54.3% on 2024, faster than the +15% across all sectors.
Can a foreign investor set up in building contractors in Saudi Arabia?
Most activities are open to 100% foreign ownership with a MISA investment licence, though some carry conditions such as minimum capital, a Saudi partner or sector-regulator approval. Alpha Consultancy confirms the conditions for your exact activity code before you apply.
Figures are Alpha Consultancy's analysis of the Ministry of Commerce's open datasets on the Saudi Open Data Platform (open.data.gov.sa): the register of active commercial registrations (CRs) as of 16 September 2026.
Active CRsinclude main and branch registrations, as in the Ministry's own totals. Registered in a period counts CRs created in that period that were still active on 16 September 2026; registrations since cancelled are not in the source file, so older periods read lower than the number originally issued.
Partial quarter. The Ministry's Q3 2026 file is labelled as the quarter end but only contains registrations created up to 16 September 2026, so every figure here is as of that date and the latest quarter in the charts (marked *) is incomplete.
Sector figures cover the 1,443,322 active registrations (74.7%) that appear in the Ministry of Commerce's activity association file, which lists activities for registrations created up to 31 December 2025. Registrations created after that date are not yet classified. A registration counts once in each sector it is active in, so sectors overlap.
No individual business is identified on these pages; only aggregate counts are published.
Starting a business in building contractors?
We confirm the licence conditions for your exact activity code, then take you from MISA licence to commercial registration and municipal licence.