How to Muslim
Zakat al-Fitr is a small amount of food given at the end of Ramadan, and it has to reach the poor before the Eid prayer. Every Muslim with food to spare that day owes it, babies and children included. The amount is one saa’ per person, roughly 2 to 3 kg of whatever your household normally eats. It is paid at the end of Ramadan, before the Eid prayer, and is separate from your regular Zakat.
The Messenger of Allah enjoined Zakat al-Fitr as a purification for the fasting person from idle talk and obscenities, and to feed the poor. Whoever pays it before the prayer, it is an accepted Zakah, and whoever pays it after the prayer, it is ordinary charity.
Count everyone you feed and house, including babies and anyone living with you that you support. One saa’ is due for each of them.
A saa’ is a measure of volume, not weight, so the kilos shift depending on whether you are giving rice, flour or dates. Round up rather than down if you are unsure.
The window is short, and missing the end of it changes what your payment counts as.
The companions did this, so paying a couple of days early is fine. Useful if you are giving through a charity that needs time to buy and deliver the food.
The moment the last fast of Ramadan ends. A baby born before this sunset is counted; someone who dies after it is still owed on.
The Prophet (peace be upon him) ordered it to be paid before people went out to pray. This is the window the hadith actually points at.
It still has to be paid, but it no longer counts as Zakat al-Fitr. It becomes ordinary charity instead, and delaying without a reason is a sin.
It gets its name from fitr, the breaking of the fast. It falls due exactly when Ramadan ends, which is why it is tied to Eid rather than to a date in your own financial year.
Two jobs, according to the hadith at the top of this page. It patches up the fasting you did badly, and it puts food in someone’s house on the one morning of the year nobody should be going without.
There is no wealth threshold here. If you have food beyond what you and your dependants need for the day and night of Eid, you owe it. That catches people who are nowhere near paying regular Zakat.
You pay for yourself and for everyone you are responsible for feeding: your spouse, your children, and any relative living under your support.
Yes, and this is the part people miss. A newborn owes it the same as an adult. The parent or guardian pays on their behalf, so a family of six pays six times over rather than once.
For an unborn baby past four months, giving on their behalf is recommended but not required. The early generations of Muslims did it. If you skip it, nothing is owed.
Regular Zakat is 2.5% of your savings, worked out once a year against the Nisab threshold. It varies with how much you own, and plenty of people never reach the threshold at all.
Zakat al-Fitr ignores all of that. Fixed amount, fixed deadline, owed per head. Paying one does nothing about the other.
Read the Zakat guide →A saa’ is four mudd, and a mudd is what you can scoop up in two cupped hands. So: four double handfuls per person, or about three litres.
By weight that lands somewhere around 2 to 3 kg, depending on what you are measuring. Dates and rice do not weigh the same for the same volume, which is why you will see different figures quoted.
Whatever people around you actually eat. Abu Sa’id al-Khudri listed what they gave in the Prophet’s lifetime: barley, dates, raisins and dried cheese, because that is what was in their kitchens.
In most homes today that means rice, flour or pasta. Buy the sort of thing a family would be glad to receive, not the cheapest sack on the shelf.
Zakat al-Fitr is given as food. Every narration describes a saa’ of something edible, and the companions kept giving food even in years when money was plainly available to them.
So handing someone a note is not how this one works, even though it feels more convenient.
You can give money to your mosque or a charity as your agent, on the condition that they use it to buy food and hand out food. They are doing the shopping for you, which is a different thing from you donating cash.
This is how most masjids run it, and it is why charity pages ask for a per-person amount rather than a percentage. Worth checking that whoever you pay actually distributes food.
Pay it anyway. The obligation does not disappear because the window closed, so it stays owed until you hand it over.
What changes is the category. Given late it counts as ordinary charity rather than Zakat al-Fitr, and if there was no real reason for the delay, that delay is itself a sin to seek forgiveness for.
Travelling when it fell due, or genuinely having nobody to give it to, are both accepted. In that case there is no sin in the delay. You still owe it, and you give it as soon as you are able.
Simply forgetting is not in the same bracket, though the payment is still valid and still worth making.
The safe answer is one or two days before Eid, which is what the companions did and what the timeline above shows.
If you are giving through a charity that ships food abroad, pay early enough that it lands before Eid morning. What matters is when the food reaches the person receiving it.
Your deadline follows the Eid prayer you are attending. If your community prays on the Saturday, your food needs to be given before that prayer.
Paying a day or two ahead sidesteps the whole problem, which is another argument for not leaving it to Eid morning.
Zakat al-Fitr is for the poor and needy. Regular Zakat has eight categories it can be spread across; this one is narrower, because its whole purpose is food on the table for Eid.
It goes to poor Muslims. If you want to feed a neighbour who is not Muslim, that is Sadaqah, and Sadaqah has no such restriction on it.
Read the Sadaqah guide →Almost every masjid collects Zakat al-Fitr in the last week of Ramadan and hands it out locally before the prayer. Ask what they charge per head, since it is set against local food prices rather than a global figure.
Giving it near home is worth something in itself. The people it reaches are the ones you will be standing next to at the Eid prayer.
Runs a per-person Fitrana payment and buys and distributes the food on your behalf in over 40 countries. Useful if you want it to reach a crisis zone rather than your own city.
Pay Fitrana via Islamic Relief →Distributes Ramadan and Eid food parcels alongside its emergency work. US-registered, so it is the simpler option if you are giving from the States.
Visit Human Appeal USA →Being poor yourself does not automatically excuse you. If you have food spare beyond what your household needs across Eid day and night, you give a saa’ of it.
And a household can be on the receiving end of this while still owing it. The two are not in conflict.
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Where to take this further.
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