How many passenger transport companies are in Saudi Arabia?
Taxis, chauffeured cars, buses, school and pilgrim transport.
16.6K
active registrations list passenger transport & ride-hailing activities — 1.2% of classified registrations.
Ministry of Commerce data · Q3 2026 to 16 Sep
16,633 active commercial registrations in Saudi Arabia list passenger transport & ride-hailing activities as of 16 September 2026 — 1.2% of all classified registrations, the 47th-largest of the 64 sectors we track.
5,957 were registered in 2025 and are still active — +108.2% on 2024, faster than the +15% across all sectors.
Riyadh (5,420), Makkah (2,421), Jeddah (2,376) lead. Relative to its size, Makkah is the most concentrated: passenger transport companies make up 2.9× the share they hold nationally.
63.6% of these registrations are companies rather than sole proprietorships, and the median company reports SAR 50,000 of paid-up capital.
- Active registrations
- 16,633
- 1.2% of classified CRs
- Registered in 2025
- 5,957
- +108.2% on 2024 · all sectors +15%
- Companies
- 63.6%
- 10,577 of 16,633
- Median company capital
- SAR 50k
- Paid-up, main registrations
Where passenger transport companies are registered
Column height: passenger transport companies by city · select a highlighted city for its page
Leading cities
Registrations, with concentration vs the national average
- Riyadh5,4201.1×
- Makkah2,4212.9×
- Jeddah2,3761.3×
- Madinah7701.2×
- Dammam6690.9×
- Najran4701.0×
- Hafar Al-Batin4481.5×
- Jubail4280.9×
- Khobar3470.9×
- Buraydah2540.6×
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×.
Passenger transport & ride-hailing: 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
- Specialized passenger transport4,722Activity code 492243
- Car rental with driver2,539Activity code 492250
- Private hire taxis1,662Activity code 492212
- Bus rental with driver1,241Activity code 492244
- Airport taxis1,084Activity code 492215
- Intercity bus transport1,082Activity code 492282
- Seasonal out-of-city school transport for students and teachers1,066Activity code 492230
- Public taxis1,047Activity code 492211
Business structures
Legal form of registrations in the sector
- LLC10,21061.4%
- Sole proprietorship6,05136.4%
- JSC2741.6%
- SJSC390.2%
- General partnership280.2%
- Limited partnership260.2%
- Foreign branch3<0.1%
- GCC branch2<0.1%
Common questions
How many passenger transport companies are there in Saudi Arabia?
16,633 active commercial registrations list passenger transport & ride-hailing 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 passenger transport companies?
Riyadh, with 5,420 — 32.6% of the national total. Makkah follows with 2,421.
Is the number of passenger transport companies growing?
5,957 were registered in 2025 and are still active — +108.2% on 2024, faster than the +15% across all sectors.
Can a foreign investor set up in passenger transport & ride-hailing 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 passenger transport & ride-hailing?
We confirm the licence conditions for your exact activity code, then take you from MISA licence to commercial registration and municipal licence.