Rawdah booking: the complete guide
The Rawdah is the space between the Prophet’s minbar and his chamber in the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah. Entry needs a free permit issued through Nusuk, and the permit is the part people find hard. This guide covers what the permit is, how to obtain one, the five rules that catch most visitors out, and what changes when you are booking for a group rather than for yourself.
What a Rawdah permit is, and what it costs
Visiting the Rawdah requires a confirmed appointment issued through Nusuk, the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah’s platform. There is no other channel. No agency, hotel or intermediary can issue a permit outside Nusuk, and anyone offering to sell you one is selling something they do not have.
The permit itself is free. This is worth stating plainly, because the difficulty of getting one leads people to assume there must be a paid tier. There is not. What costs money is other people’s time spent obtaining it — which is a real cost, and an honest one, but it is not the price of the permit.
How to book, step by step
Install Nusuk and register an account against the pilgrim’s passport. The details you enter must match the travel document exactly — name spelling, passport number, nationality. Nusuk validates against the visa record, and a single transposed digit produces a failure that does not explain itself.
Once the account is verified, open the Rawdah service and select the pilgrim, then the visit date. Availability is shown per date and per time band. If the service shows nothing, that does not mean the date is closed — it usually means the current batch has been consumed and the next has not opened yet.
Confirm the appointment and save the barcode. The barcode, not the confirmation email or the screenshot of the booking screen, is what is scanned at the gate.
You do not need to be in Madinah, or in Saudi Arabia, to book. Permits can be issued days ahead of the visit, which is exactly why planning matters more than proximity.
The five rules that catch people out
One visit per pilgrim per 365 days. The entitlement is counted across Umrah, Hajj and ordinary visit trips alike. A booking made against the wrong date or the wrong profile is not simply corrected — it spends the year.
Men and women visit at separate times. The appointment has to match the pilgrim it was issued for, and a mismatch is discovered at the gate, which is the worst possible place to discover it.
You get about ten minutes inside. Plan the visit around that rather than against it.
Arrive early, and understand that there are two different clocks. Guidance is to be inside the Haram premises around thirty minutes before the slot, and at the Rawdah entrance around fifteen minutes before it. Turning up at the appointment time is turning up late.
Cancel if you cannot attend. A permit you hold and do not use is worse than one you never booked: failing to cancel can block the pilgrim from booking again for a full year.
Why the slots seem to vanish
Availability is not continuous. It is released in batches ahead of the visit window, and a batch is consumed almost immediately after it opens. Whoever happens to be looking at that moment books; whoever checks an hour later finds an empty screen and reasonably concludes the date is full.
It usually is not full. It is between releases. This distinction is the single most useful thing to understand about Rawdah booking, and it is why "keep checking" is genuinely the correct advice for an individual pilgrim — and why it stops being workable at any scale above a family.
We wrote a separate piece on the mechanics of that, because the arithmetic is more interesting than it looks.
Booking for a group
Everything above is manageable for one person. None of it scales cleanly. Forty pilgrims means forty Nusuk accounts, forty passport records entered without error, forty appointments caught inside whichever release happens to land, and a set of arrival dates that will move at least once before the group travels.
The failure mode is not dramatic. It is a group of thirty-eight with permits and two without, discovered the evening before, with no entitlement left to spend on a correction. That is the problem RawdahPass exists to remove — the same Nusuk steps, performed continuously and without typing errors, on behalf of licensed Hajj and Umrah agencies.
We do not work directly with individual pilgrims. If you are travelling independently, this guide is the whole of our advice, and it is enough.
Frequently asked
Is the Rawdah permit free?
Yes. The permit is issued free of charge through Nusuk. Nobody can sell you one, and any offer to do so should be treated as fraudulent.
How often can I visit the Rawdah?
Once every 365 days per pilgrim. The limit is counted across Umrah, Hajj and visit trips together, not separately.
Can I book the Rawdah before arriving in Madinah?
Yes. You do not need to be in Madinah or in Saudi Arabia. Permits are commonly issued several days before the visit date.
Why does Nusuk show no available Rawdah appointments?
Most often because the current batch of appointments has already been taken and the next has not been released. Availability is published in batches rather than continuously, so an empty screen usually means "between releases" rather than "closed".
What happens if I miss my Rawdah appointment?
Cancel in advance if you know you cannot attend. Holding a permit and not using it, without cancelling, can prevent the pilgrim from booking again for a year.
Do men and women visit the Rawdah at the same time?
No. Visiting hours are segregated, and the appointment must match the pilgrim it was issued for.
Can I enter the Rawdah without a permit?
No. Entry is controlled by a barcode scanned at the gate, and without a confirmed permit you will be turned away. There is no queue for people without one.
Can I book a Rawdah permit for my children?
Each pilgrim needs a permit in their own name, against their own passport, children included, and the once-per-365-days limit applies to each of them individually. Exactly how a child is added is something Nusuk’s own screens decide on the day.
What if I cannot get into the Nusuk account holding my booking?
Use Nusuk’s account recovery, which identifies you by passport and visa number rather than by email — so it works even when the account was created for you on an address you do not control. We have written the nine steps out separately.