How many building materials and hardware traders are in Saudi Arabia?
Hardware, paint, glass and construction-material traders.
56.2K
active registrations list building materials & hardware activities — 3.9% of classified registrations.
Ministry of Commerce data · Q3 2026 to 16 Sep
56,206 active commercial registrations in Saudi Arabia list building materials & hardware activities as of 16 September 2026 — 3.9% of all classified registrations, the 17th-largest of the 64 sectors we track.
8,352 were registered in 2025 and are still active — -3.8% on 2024, slower than the +15% across all sectors.
Riyadh (16,311), Jeddah (8,855), Dammam (3,563) lead. Relative to its size, Jeddah is the most concentrated: building materials and hardware traders make up 1.4× the share they hold nationally.
35.4% of these registrations are companies rather than sole proprietorships, and the median company reports SAR 100,000 of paid-up capital.
- Active registrations
- 56,206
- 3.9% of classified CRs
- Registered in 2025
- 8,352
- -3.8% on 2024 · all sectors +15%
- Companies
- 35.4%
- 19,902 of 56,206
- Median company capital
- SAR 100k
- Paid-up, main registrations
Where building materials and hardware traders are registered
Column height: building materials and hardware traders by city · select a highlighted city for its page
Leading cities
Registrations, with concentration vs the national average
- Riyadh16,3110.9×
- Jeddah8,8551.4×
- Dammam3,5631.4×
- Makkah2,7531.0×
- Madinah2,2581.0×
- Khobar1,7241.4×
- Taif1,2431.0×
- Buraydah1,0700.8×
- Khamis Mushait1,0141.0×
- Najran8750.6×
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 materials & hardware: 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
- Retail of building materials9,475Activity code 475281
- Retail of sanitary ware and sauna equipment7,195Activity code 475240
- Retail of electrical supplies and fittings5,070Activity code 475250
- Retail of scrap building materials and scrap iron5,029Activity code 475282
- Retail of paints, varnishes and adhesives4,462Activity code 475230
- Retail of decor, false ceilings, insulation and building materials3,760Activity code 475260
- Retail of hardware and carpentry and metalworking tools2,912Activity code 475210
- Retail of metal and steel pipes1,959Activity code 475286
Business structures
Legal form of registrations in the sector
- Sole proprietorship36,26864.5%
- LLC19,18734.1%
- JSC5040.9%
- General partnership880.2%
- Limited partnership780.1%
- SJSC450.1%
- GCC branch320.1%
- Foreign branch4<0.1%
Building materials & hardware by city
More in retail & trade
Common questions
How many building materials and hardware traders are there in Saudi Arabia?
56,206 active commercial registrations list building materials & hardware 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 materials and hardware traders?
Riyadh, with 16,311 — 29% of the national total. Jeddah follows with 8,855.
Is the number of building materials and hardware traders growing?
8,352 were registered in 2025 and are still active — -3.8% on 2024, slower than the +15% across all sectors.
Can a foreign investor set up in building materials & hardware 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 materials & hardware?
We confirm the licence conditions for your exact activity code, then take you from MISA licence to commercial registration and municipal licence.