The green packet for Hari Raya, the duit raya, has no fixed rate the way some people assume. In Singapore for 2026, working adults hand small children $2 to $10, teenagers $5 to $20, young adults $10 to $30, and parents or grandparents $50 to $100 or more, all tucked into a green sampul. Hari Raya Puasa falls on Saturday 21 March 2026 (a provisional date pending the lunar sighting), so the open-house visiting and the duit raya run from that morning through the month of Syawal. The only number that really matters is the one you can give comfortably across every visit without straining the rest of your month. This guide gives you the going rates by recipient, the etiquette that separates a thoughtful packet from an awkward one, where to get clean notes without paying a cent extra, and a season budget you can set before the first visit.
There is no official rate card for duit raya, and anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing. What does exist is a settled set of ranges that most Singapore Malay-Muslim families land on, scaled by the recipient's age and how close they are to you. Children get the smallest packets, the elderly get the largest, and the gesture matters more than the figure.
Use the table as a starting point, then adjust for your own budget. A packet that you resent giving defeats the spirit of the day, and a packet that quietly empties your account does the same. Pick the band you can repeat across twenty-plus packets without flinching.
| Recipient | Usual range | What drives the amount |
|---|---|---|
| Toddlers and young children | $2 to $10 | A token to make them smile; volume adds up fast |
| Primary and secondary school kids | $5 to $20 | Older kids notice the figure, so avoid the very bottom |
| Teenagers and JC/poly students | $10 to $30 | Treat them as almost-adults |
| Young adults, NSFs, early-career relatives | $10 to $50 | Closeness matters more than a fixed number here |
| Parents and grandparents | $50 to $100 or more | Respect, gratitude, and consistency year on year |
| Surprise child guests | $2 to $5 | Keep a small stash of pre-filled packets ready |
The rule of thumb is simple: anyone earning gives, and those still studying or dependent receive. That is a wider net than the Chinese New Year ang bao convention, where typically only married people give. A single working adult is fully expected to hand out duit raya, and a married couple with no children still gives to nieces, nephews, and the elders in the family.
Elders receive too, and giving to your own parents and grandparents is the part most people underweight. The packet to an 80-year-old grandmother is not charity; it is a small, visible thank-you for a lifetime, and it is the one amount worth stretching for.
The colour is the obvious tell. Duit raya goes into a green sampul, not a red ang bao. Green carries strong meaning in Islam, tied to paradise and to peace, which is why the festive packets, supermarket displays, and bank giveaways all turn green in the weeks before Raya. The money tradition itself borrows from the Chinese ang bao custom, adapted into a local Malay-Muslim form, so the mechanics rhyme even though the symbolism does not. If you are juggling both festivals in a mixed family, our CNY ang bao rates guide covers the red-packet side.
The amount is half the gesture. The other half is how you hand it over. Give the packet at the end of a visit, as you are saying goodbye, rather than the moment you walk in, which keeps the focus on the company first and the money last. Both the giving and the receiving are done with both hands, and the recipient does not open it in front of you.
On notes: clean and modern beats crisp and new. The old habit of dishing out tired $2 notes reads as an afterthought, so use notes in decent condition even if they are not freshly minted. New notes are nice for elders who appreciate the effort, but they are not required, and chasing them is rarely worth the queue.
If you are giving digitally, hold yourself to the same standard. A bare PayNow transfer with no message is the e-equivalent of tossing cash on the table. Add a Selamat Hari Raya greeting, and confirm with older relatives that they are comfortable receiving money by phone before you skip the physical packet entirely.
Two quiet rules keep the peace across a big family. Keep amounts consistent for recipients of the same age and closeness, so cousins do not compare and feel slighted. And pre-fill and label your packets by group before you leave the house, so you are never fishing for the right note at the door.
You never pay a fee to swap cash for cash of equal value, so any service charging you a premium for festive notes is one to walk away from. The cheapest clean notes come straight from an ATM or a bank's note-exchange machine, in the small denominations duit raya needs.
DBS and POSB run a Note Exchange Service across dozens of Branch Teller Machines that dispense $2, $5, $10, $50, and $100 notes, which covers nearly every duit raya band. OCBC, UOB, Standard Chartered, and CIMB all offer note exchange too. If you want pristine new notes for the elders' packets, the banks open online pre-booking for festive new and fit notes ahead of each major festival; if you only need clean cash for the rest, fit-for-giving notes pulled from an ATM are quicker and carry higher limits.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore has been steering people toward fit notes and digital gifting to cut the carbon cost of printing fresh cash. In 2025, banks exchanged over 16 million fit notes, which MAS estimated saved emissions equal to powering about 280 four-room HDB flats for a year. A clean fit note in a green packet does the job, and the recipient almost never notices the difference.
Duit raya pain is almost never a single packet; it is the count. Twenty children at five dollars each, six elders at fifty, and a handful of surprise guests add up to real money before you notice. Setting a season total upfront, then dividing it into pools, stops the slow bleed of impulse top-ups at every door.
Estimate your packet count by visiting load, then multiply by your chosen bands. The figures below are illustrative; swap in your own amounts and headcount. If the total looks heavy, our personal budget calculator lets you slot the Raya pool against your monthly outgoings so the festival does not borrow from your bills, and the savings goal calculator makes it easy to set aside a small amount each month so next year's duit raya is already funded.
| Visiting load | Kids | Teens | Elders | Surprise kids | Rough total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Light | 6 x $5 | 2 x $10 | 2 x $50 | 4 x $2 | Around $158 |
| Standard | 12 x $5 | 4 x $10 | 4 x $50 | 6 x $2 | Around $312 |
| Busy / large family | 20 x $5 | 6 x $10 | 6 x $50 | 10 x $2 | Around $480 |
Split your season total into three envelopes the night before. A small-notes pool for tokens and surprise guests, a main pool for the children and young relatives you see every year, and an elders pool you treat as fixed and non-negotiable. Once a pool is empty, you stop, which is the whole point.
Festive inflation is real, but it is not a rule that you must give more each year. If your budget is tighter than last Raya, holding your amounts steady is entirely acceptable, and nobody worth pleasing is counting. The intention behind the packet is the part the tradition cares about.
What is worth protecting is the elders' packet and your own financial footing. Trimming a few dollars off the children's band to keep grandma's packet intact is a sensible trade, and so is keeping the whole season inside a number you set in advance. Treat duit raya like any other planned annual expense and it stops being a source of stress; for a fuller picture of pacing big one-off outlays across the year, see how Singaporeans handle other seasonal cash flows like the GST Voucher payouts.
There is no fixed rate. In Singapore, working adults typically give young children $2 to $10, school-age kids $5 to $20, teenagers and young adults $10 to $30, and parents or grandparents $50 to $100 or more. Choose the band you can repeat across every packet without straining your budget.
Green carries strong meaning in Islam, associated with paradise, peace, and harmony, which is why duit raya goes into a green sampul rather than the red ang bao used for Chinese New Year. The money custom itself was adapted locally from the Chinese ang bao tradition, but the colour and symbolism are distinct.
Yes. Unlike the Chinese New Year ang bao convention where typically only married people give, duit raya is given by any working adult, married or single. If you are earning, you are expected to hand out packets to children, unmarried young relatives, and the elderly in the family.
Yes, PayNow and similar e-transfers are increasingly common and follow the same etiquette as a physical packet. Add a Selamat Hari Raya greeting rather than sending a bare transfer, and check first that older relatives are comfortable receiving money by phone before skipping the green packet entirely.
Exchanging cash for cash of equal value is always free. The cheapest source is an ATM or a bank note-exchange machine; DBS/POSB machines dispense $2, $5, $10, $50 and $100 notes. Fit-for-giving notes are faster and have higher limits than pre-booked new notes, and recipients rarely notice the difference.
This is general financial information for Singapore, not personal financial advice. Figures change — verify current rates against the official sources above before acting. See our full disclaimer.