A family visit is an invitation, not a tourist form.

People type “family visit visa Saudi Arabia” when a parent, a spouse or a child is still in another country and the cheap tickets are already being screenshotted. The screenshot is the wrong first move. This visa is an invitation. Someone inside the Kingdom asks. Someone outside answers with a passport and a proof of relationship. It is not the tourist eVisa, and it is not the exit re-entry a resident uses for their own holiday.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs describes the service on its own page: a citizen or a legal resident, a real family relationship, a valid passport, and the prescribed fee. That page lists the cost as SAR 379. It was still showing that figure when the ministry marked the page updated in September 2026. Treat SAR 379 as the published number, then read the checkout again, because a published number and a paid number are allowed to drift.

KSA GUIDE cannot submit the request. If a typing shop says we can, they are talking about themselves, and they should not be holding your Absher password while they do it.

Who is allowed to invite

A citizen, or a resident who is actually resident

The host has to be a Saudi citizen or a person with legal residency. A visit visa of your own does not turn you into a host. A friend who “basically lives here” does not become a cousin because the form has a dropdown. If your iqama is expired, fix that before you invite your mother. An invitation built on a dead residency is how families buy flights into a refusal.

The relationship has to be the one on the paper

Spouse, parent, child: these are the cases people mean, and they still need a document that says so. A marriage certificate, a birth certificate, a family book. “Usually certified” is not a decoration. A certificate that was never attested, or that was attested for a different embassy, comes back as a quiet no. Ask the platform which attestation it wants before you courier the original across a border twice.

• Host: citizen or legal resident, with the identity or iqama the form asks for.
• Visitor: passport that is valid, and the same name the certificate uses.
• Relationship: a document, not a story.
• If the employer or the chamber of commerce must attest the request, the platform will say so. Guessing is a lost week.

Where the form actually lives

The Foreign Ministry’s steps are ordinary and easy to skip. Open the Saudi visa platform. Choose citizen and resident services, then the family visit request. Log in as the person who is inviting, not as the visitor and not as the shop. Enter the applicant. Enter the visitor exactly as the passport prints them. Attach what it asks. Review it as if you will be the one at the airport, because someone you love will be.

Names, letter by letter

A father’s name in the wrong box, a missing bin or an extra middle name, a date of birth copied from memory: these are not small edits at the counter. They are a new application. Type from the passport, not from a WhatsApp contact card that your uncle saved in 2019. If the passport and the marriage certificate disagree, stop and fix the disagreement before you pay. Paying does not reconcile two spellings.

The request number is not the visa

Submit. Keep the request number. That number means the file exists. It does not mean anyone can board. Approval from the ministry comes later. A visa number comes after that. I have seen families buy four tickets on the request number because a cousin said “it’s the same thing.” It is not the same thing. Look at flights when the visa number exists and you have read the stay printed on it.

The SAR 379, and the fee that is not SAR 379

The Foreign Ministry page lists SAR 379 for the service. Pay that on the official platform. A typing centre that charges SAR 379 plus “our work” is charging two bills. The second bill can be honest if you asked them to sit with you and point at fields. It is not honest if they imply the ministry’s price has secretly become their price. Ask for the official receipt, then open the request yourself and see that it matches.

Do not pay a stranger who offers a family visit “without the sponsor knowing.” The host is the point of the visa. A file that hides the host is not a clever file. It is a file that fails, or worse, a file that succeeds in someone else’s name.

How long they can stay

Group chats have been arguing about 30 days and 90 days for as long as I have been reading them. Both numbers appear because visas are not printed from one mood. Some say thirty. Some say ninety. Some are single entry. The stay starts when the visitor enters, not when the visa was issued. There is often a separate window in which the visa must be used. Miss that window and you do not have a visa. You have a PDF with an old date.

Buy the return from the visa, not from hope

Read the date Absher shows after they enter, not only the date you remember from the application. If you book a return a week after the printed stay, you are booking an overstay and calling it a buffer. Buffers belong before the last day, not after it. Extensions, when they exist, are a separate request and they are refused often enough that a wedding should not depend on one. Apply for more time before the stay dies, through the official service, and do not assume a yes.

What you tell the visitor before they pack

• The stay is the date on their visa, counted from entry.
• They should carry the passport, the visa, and the proof you used, not a photo of those things on a cracked phone.
• This visit does not let them work.
• It does not become an iqama because they liked the city.
• If their country was eligible for a tourist eVisa, that may have been the simpler door. Do not run both and hope the airport picks the kind one.

The week the visit actually happens

Meet them with the address written in Arabic and English, not with a pin you will resend from a basement car park with no signal. A family visit is still a visitor. Hotels sometimes ask for the visa. So does a clinic. So does a bored officer on a Thursday night. Have it.

If they need a SIM, a shop will tell you what a visit visa can hold. Do not buy a line in your iqama’s name and hand it over as if that were a small favour. Your iqama already has a limited number of lines it will accept, and their codes are not your codes. Let the shop register what the visa allows, in front of them.

When the answer is no

A refusal is usually a document, a name, or a host who was not eligible. Read the reason before you pay a second shop to “push it.” Pushing is not a ministry service. Fix the paper, then submit again if the platform allows a new request. Sending us a photograph of your relative’s passport will not speed it. We will not keep that photograph. Write the error in your own words through the contact page if you want to know which note is closest. The click remains yours.

Do not mix it with the other two visas

The tourist eVisa is for eligible passports, applied by the traveller, on visa.visitsaudi.com. Exit re-entry is for the resident who already has an iqama and wants to leave and come back. Family visit is the third thing: you are inside, they are outside, and the relationship is the basis. Mixing the names is how people pay twice, or pay the wrong office, or tell a parent to apply for a tourist visa their passport cannot have. If you are unsure which door is yours, stop at the door that asks for the relationship certificate. That is this one.

Conclusion

A family visit starts with a host who is a citizen or a legal resident, and a relationship you can prove. The Foreign Ministry lists SAR 379. Pay that on the official platform, keep the request number, and do not buy tickets until there is a visa number and a stay you have read. Thirty days and ninety days are both rumours until they are printed on that passport. A friend is not family for the form. A shop is not the ministry. The person getting on the plane deserves the real date, not a hopeful one.

Questions people actually ask

Who can apply for a Saudi family visit visa?

A Saudi citizen or a legal resident invites a relative. The visitor needs a valid passport and, in most cases, a certified document that shows the relationship. A friend, a colleague or a host whose iqama has already expired is not an invitation the form will respect.

How much is a Saudi family visit visa?

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs service page lists SAR 379. Confirm it on the day you pay. Anything a typing centre adds on top is their charge for sitting with you, not a second official fee, and you should know which is which before you transfer the money.

Is a family visit 30 days or 90 days?

It is the stay printed on the visa you were issued. That stay starts at entry, not on the day the visa was printed. Other people’s screenshots are other people’s visas. Book the return inside the date you can see, and treat an extension as a request, not as a promise.

Related notes

• Saudi tourist visa
• Exit re-entry visa
• Absher in the first week

Updated 21 October 2026. KSA GUIDE is independent and based in Riyadh. We are not the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The official screen is the fee and the stay.

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