There is no small claims court in Oman. No separate tribunal, no low-value division, no institution of that name. What Oman has instead is a single-judge circuit sitting inside each Court of First Instance, created by Royal Decree 125/2020 — and access to it depends on what your dispute is about, not on how much it is worth.
There is no small claims court in Oman
Search for one and the results are the DIFC Small Claims Tribunal, the ADGM Small Claims Court, the UAE government's own accelerator pages, Kenya's Small Claims Court, South Africa and New Zealand's Disputes Tribunal. Not one Omani institution appears, because there is not one to appear. If a page tells you how to file at Oman's small claims court, it is either describing another country or it has invented the institution.
This matters beyond pedantry. In the systems that do have small claims courts, the gateway is a money threshold — under a certain value, you go to the simplified forum. Oman's simplified route works the other way round. It is a gateway by subject matter, and once you are through it, it applies no matter how large the claim is.
Royal Decree 125/2020 lists categories of dispute. If yours is on the list, it goes to the single-judge circuit regardless of value, including for very large claims. If it is not on the list, no simplified route is available to you however small the claim.
So a OMR 400 unpaid invoice with nothing more to it does not get a fast track, while a construction dispute worth millions does. That is the opposite of what most readers expect.
The five categories that get the simplified route
The instrument is the Law on the Simplification of Litigation Procedures in Respect of Certain Disputes, Royal Decree 125/2020, issued 12 November 2020 and published in Official Gazette No. 1367 of 22 November 2020. It came into force three months after publication. Article 1 sets out the scope.
- Disputes concerning foreign capital investment projects.
- Landlord and tenant disputes over residential and commercial premises.
- Disputes arising from individual employment contracts.
- Construction contract disputes.
- Disputes arising from notarised debt-acknowledgment instruments.
Read the fifth one carefully, because it is the one people misread. It is not a general debt claim. It covers an acknowledgment of debt that has been executed before the notary public. A plain unpaid invoice, an email chain, a signed delivery note — none of those are a notarised acknowledgment, and none of them get you into the simplified circuit. They go down the ordinary civil or commercial track like any other claim. If you are lending money privately and you want the faster route available later, the time to think about the notary is when the loan is made, not when it goes bad.
One point we cannot settle. The Arabic text of Article 1 that we could read gives the five categories above. A Trowers & Hamlins analysis of the same decree lists a sixth — criminal cheque cases unrelated to other crimes. We could not reconcile the two against the Gazette text, so we are reporting both and choosing neither. If your matter is a bounced cheque, do not assume either way.
How the simplified circuit runs
- Article 3 — one or more circuits, each composed of a single judge, are formed inside each Court of First Instance, with matching divisions in the Courts of Appeal.
- Article 10 — judgment must be given within 30 days of referral, extendable once by a like period. Construction and investment disputes may extend to four months.
- Article 11 — appeal to the Court of Appeal lies only where the value of the dispute exceeds OMR 2,000.
- Article 12 — appeal is available regardless of value on limited grounds, including lack of jurisdiction, procedural nullity, a prior conflicting judgment, eviction orders and dismissal from employment.
- Article 13 — the appeal must be filed within 15 days.
On finality, our source is secondary and we will label it as such. Trowers states that the Court of Appeal decision is final and cannot go on to the Supreme Court, with a carve-out for foreign-capital-investment commercial disputes above OMR 150,000. We could not confirm that carve-out against the Gazette text of the decree, so treat it as a law-firm reading rather than a verified rule.
The OMR 2,000 threshold in Article 11 is the general rule: at or below it, the single judge's decision is the end of the matter.
Article 12 punches holes in that. If your case involves an eviction order or a dismissal from employment, appeal is available whatever the claim is worth. Those two are precisely the low-value, high-consequence situations where the threshold would otherwise bite hardest.
What it costs to file
The published tariff for ordinary civil claims is Ministerial Decision 189/2017, issued 26 September 2017, published in Official Gazette No. 1212 of 1 October 2017 and effective from 1 January 2018. It repealed Ministerial Decision 583/2010. The structure is a percentage with both a floor and a ceiling.
| Claim | Fee | Instrument |
|---|---|---|
| Civil claim, Court of First Instance | 2% of value, minimum OMR 10, maximum OMR 30 | MD 189/2017 |
| Civil claim, Court of Appeal | 2% of value, minimum OMR 20, maximum OMR 50 | MD 189/2017 |
| Personal status claim | OMR 5 fixed | MD 189/2017 |
| Estate and inheritance, first instance | 2%, minimum OMR 10, maximum OMR 30 | MD 189/2017 |
| Estate and inheritance, appeal | 2%, minimum OMR 10, maximum OMR 50 | MD 189/2017 |
| Execution request | OMR 1 | gov.om service record |
The ceiling is the striking part. Because the fee is capped at OMR 30 at first instance, a civil claim worth half a million rials costs exactly the same to file as one worth fifteen hundred. Whatever is deterring people from suing in Oman, it is not the filing fee. The gov.om service record for an urgent civil lawsuit independently gives the same range — OMR 10 to OMR 30 — which is a useful cross-check on a decision from 2017.
But the fee position is unresolved, and we are not going to pretend otherwise
Three official or semi-official positions are in play at once, and they do not agree. This is the single most important caveat in this article, because it is the number everyone wants.
- MD 189/2017, still the published tariff we could locate: 2% of value, capped at OMR 30 at first instance.
- The gov.om service record for a commercial lawsuit, live today: a range of OMR 30 to OMR 3,000. That is the commercial scale, not the civil one, but it sits alongside the civil card without explanation.
- The March 2025 Supreme Judicial Council reform: 14 fees reduced, five abolished and six introduced, replacing the old approach with a tiered bracket system that unifies first-instance and appellate fees by claim value. The reported worked examples are a OMR 150,000 commercial claim falling from OMR 3,000 to OMR 200, and a OMR 50,000 administrative claim falling from OMR 1,000 to OMR 10.
We looked for the decision behind that March 2025 reform on both qanoon.om and decree.om and could not find it. So the position is this: no official consolidated civil court fee table for 2026 appears to be published anywhere. The reform was announced, the announcement was carried by the state news agency and the Omani press, and the underlying instrument is not publicly traceable. That is a finding, not an oversight on our part, and it is why we are giving you three versions instead of one.
There is one place the tiered scale has been published in full, and the numbers line up exactly with the March 2025 examples — which strongly suggests it is the same scale. Supreme Judicial Council Decision 261/2026, dated 11 June 2026 and published in Official Gazette No. 1653 of 21 June 2026, sets the fees for the Court of Investment and Commerce.
| Claim value | Fee |
|---|---|
| Value not specified | OMR 10 |
| Up to OMR 50,000 | OMR 10 |
| OMR 50,001 to OMR 100,000 | OMR 50 |
| OMR 100,001 to OMR 500,000 | OMR 200 |
| Above OMR 500,000 | OMR 500 |
Multiple claims brought in one suit are aggregated for fee purposes under SJC 261/2026, so splitting or combining claims changes the bracket. Issuing an order or an appeal is OMR 10, an appeal against an objection OMR 20, and judicial services run from OMR 10 up to OMR 300 for enforcing a foreign judgment or for liquidation and insolvency suits.
Because the general-courts instrument is untraceable, confirm the fee at the court counter or on the portal before you rely on any figure — including ours. Any consultancy quoting you one confident number for a 2026 Omani civil filing is quoting something they cannot source.
Which forum your dispute belongs in
This is the part that actually saves you time. Three of the five simplified categories have their own front door, and going to the court first is either a waste of a trip or fatal to the claim.
| Your dispute | Where it goes | What you do first |
|---|---|---|
| Unpaid wages, dismissal, end of service | Ministry of Labour, then a single-judge circuit | File the settlement request at the Ministry — the court will not admit you otherwise |
| Rent, eviction, a residential or commercial lease | Rental Disputes Settlement Committee in your governorate | Apply in writing to the committee secretary |
| Construction contract | Single-judge circuit, Court of First Instance | File at the court; the judgment deadline can extend to four months |
| Notarised debt acknowledgment | Single-judge circuit, Court of First Instance | File at the court with the notarised instrument |
| Foreign investment project | Single-judge circuit, Court of First Instance | File at the court |
| An ordinary unpaid invoice with no notarised acknowledgment | Ordinary civil or commercial track | File in the normal way — no simplified route applies |
Tenancy: the Rental Disputes Settlement Committees
Since 7 July 2025, residential and commercial tenancy disputes no longer start at court. Royal Decree 12/2025, issued 7 January 2025 and in force six months from issuance, amended the landlord and tenant regulation under Royal Decree 6/89 and created the Rental Disputes Settlement Committees. Cases already filed before that date stay with the courts.
- Composition — one or more committees per governorate, each chaired by a Court of First Instance judge nominated by the Supreme Judicial Council, with two employees from the governorate and municipal authorities nominated by the governor, and a court secretary as administrative officer.
- Jurisdiction — all disputes arising under the tenancy regulation, expressly including eviction. There is no monetary limit.
- Filing — a written application to the committee secretary, with the parties' names and addresses, the facts, the grounds, the relief sought and supporting documents, translated into Arabic where needed. The secretary transmits it to the committee within 7 days.
- Decision — within 90 days of referral. The committee may adjourn only once for the same reason.
Decisions are reasoned, taken by majority, signed within three days and copied to the parties. And then the part that changes how you should prepare: they are final and not subject to challenge by any method of appeal. There is no second instance. Whatever you were going to say, say it to the committee.
Enforcement runs through the execution judge at the competent Court of First Instance. Decisions are to be executed within 30 days of issue, and the judge may order the detention of a respondent who refuses to comply despite having the means to pay.
Royal Decree 12/2025 delegates the fee to a decision of the Minister of the Interior with Cabinet approval. We searched for that ministerial decision and could not find it. No fee for the Rental Disputes Settlement Committees appears to have been published anywhere.
So a landlord or tenant filing today cannot find out in advance what the application costs. That is the largest single gap in this whole area, and it has been open for more than a year since the committees started work.
One correction worth making, because it sends people to the wrong building. These committees are structured by decision of the Minister of the Interior, not the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning. The chair is a judge and enforcement is judicial, but the administrative home is the Interior ministry and the governorates. Note too that searching for these committees in Arabic is close to useless: the phrase returns Abu Dhabi's judicial department, Dubai's Rental Disputes Centre and Ajman's fee decrees, all of which are irrelevant to Oman.
Employment: conciliation before court, and it is a bar
If your dispute is with an employer, the Ministry of Labour stage is not optional. Article 9 of the Labour Law, Royal Decree 53/2023, makes a claim inadmissible if it is brought to court without a settlement request having first gone to the competent administrative division of the Ministry. The Ministry has 30 days to settle it and 7 days to refer it on if it cannot, and under Article 13 the worker pays no court fees at all. We cover the deadlines, the compensation band and the absconding problem separately in the labour dispute guide rather than repeating them here.
Enforcing a judgment
Winning and collecting are separate exercises. Enforcement in Oman is handled by a judge of execution attached to the Court of First Instance under the Civil and Commercial Procedure Law, Royal Decree 29/2002. Note what that is not: Oman does not have a separate Execution Court as an institution, unlike Dubai or Qatar. If a guide refers you to Oman's execution court as a distinct building, it has imported the structure from a neighbour.
The gov.om service record puts the cost of filing an execution request at OMR 1, fixed. You need the execution request with supporting documents and the judgment bearing the writ of execution, and the applicant must attend personally or through a lawyer or legal representative. The service covers judicial judgments, settlement minutes, judicial orders, writs of performance, petition orders and foreign judgments.
The March 2025 reform reportedly abolished the judicial execution order fee outright, along with the fee for a certificate of judgment. As with the rest of that package, we could not trace the instrument, so we report it as announced.
Filing online — and the portal is not called what gov.om says
Supreme Judicial Council Decision 150/2025, dated 27 March 2025 and published in Official Gazette No. 1591 of 13 April 2025, establishes the electronic portal for litigants. Its name is Qadhaa (قضاء). The decision does not print the URL, enumerate the services, say who may register, or state whether electronic filing is mandatory or merely available — all of which we would have liked it to do.
- Court Portal (Qadhaa), litigation services — portal.sjc.gov.om
- Court of Investment and Commerce — portal.sjc.gov.om/invest
- Public Notary — notary.caaj.gov.om
- Inheritance services — tarika.sjc.gov.om
gov.om publishes a page headed 'Supreme Judicial Council Launches Najiz E-Services Portal'. But Najiz (ناجز) is the Saudi Ministry of Justice portal, and the Omani Supreme Judicial Council's own website and its own Decision 150/2025 both name the Omani portal Qadhaa.
This is cross-jurisdiction contamination on an official Omani government page. We are pointing it out because if you find it and then cannot find any Omani service called Najiz, the problem is the page, not you. Use portal.sjc.gov.om.
The gov.om service records also contradict themselves on whether you can file remotely. The commercial lawsuit card says submission happens electronically through the lawyers' portal where a lawyer has been appointed, and on the same page states that the applicant must attend court in person with the lawsuit file. Both sentences are on one official card. Assume you or your representative will be attending until the counter tells you otherwise.
On Sanad: neither the execution card nor either lawsuit card lists Sanad service centres as a channel. Both list only the Supreme Judicial Council's portal and the court counters. We found no official source authorising Sanad centres to file court cases or execution requests, so we are not going to suggest they can.
What the official record does not say
- No fee has been published for the Rental Disputes Settlement Committees, more than a year after they began work.
- The Supreme Judicial Council decision implementing the March 2025 tiered fee system for the general courts could not be located on qanoon.om or decree.om.
- No official consolidated civil court fee table for 2026 appears to be published.
- Whether criminal cheque cases fall within the scope of RD 125/2020 could not be resolved between the Arabic text and the law-firm analysis.
- SJC Decision 150/2025 does not state whether electronic filing is mandatory, which services run through the portal, or who may register.
- No tariff for Supreme Court fees was located; MD 189/2017 does not address them.
- The Supreme Court carve-out for investment disputes above OMR 150,000 rests on a single secondary source.
Is there a small claims court in Oman?
Which disputes get the simplified court route in Oman?
Can I use the simplified route for an unpaid invoice in Oman?
How much does it cost to file a civil claim in Oman?
Can I appeal a judgment below OMR 2,000 in Oman?
Where do I take a rent or eviction dispute in Oman?
Getting it filed
Most of the difficulty in a small Omani claim is not the hearing. It is working out which of the three front doors you are supposed to use, getting documents translated into Arabic before they are rejected, and — with the rental committees — understanding that you get one shot because there is no appeal. Those are things we can help assemble at the office. The 15-day appeal window and the 30-day labour deadline are yours to watch, and no one can watch them for you.