First-order discount codes in the UAE and Saudi Arabia: how welcome codes work, where they are biggest, and why they fail

Type the name of almost any Gulf store into a search box and the first suggestion that follows is 'first order discount code'. In Arabic it is 'كود خصم اول طلب', and it is attached to noon, Amazon, Shein, talabat, Namshi, Nahdi, Ninja, Keeta and dozens more. The demand is not a coincidence. A welcome code is the largest discount most stores will ever give a single customer, because it is the store paying to win you rather than to reward you, and it is the one code that everyone is eligible for exactly once. This guide covers how first-order codes work in the UAE and Saudi Arabia and where they are genuinely largest. It then sets out the rules that decide whether a code is accepted, how to combine one with a bank offer, and how to avoid the two mistakes that quietly waste the only welcome discount a store will ever give you.

A word on what this guide does not do. It does not print a list of codes from memory, because a first-order code that has expired or been replaced is worse than no code at all. It costs you the attempt, and some stores treat a failed welcome code as the welcome used. The live, hand-checked codes for each store, with their minimum spends and exclusions, sit on that store's page on Hassalna, and what follows is how to read and use them.

What a first-order code actually is

A first-order code is a customer-acquisition discount: the store's marketing budget, spent on your first checkout, in exchange for an account, an app install and, it hopes, a habit. That origin explains every rule attached to it. The code is limited to new customers because newness is exactly what it is paying for. It often requires the app, since an installed app is worth more to the store than a browser visit. There is a minimum spend because the store wants the first basket to be a real one, and sale items are frequently excluded because the store is already discounting those. Later codes from the same store are smaller, which is why searches for the welcome code outnumber every other coupon phrase in the Gulf, and why spending it well matters.

There are three shapes to know. A percentage off the first order, sometimes capped at a maximum amount, is the commonest on fashion and beauty. A fixed amount off above a minimum spend is the marketplace and grocery shape, and it is worth reading as a percentage of the minimum: a fixed discount on a small minimum basket is generous, the same discount on a large one is not. And free delivery on the first order, which the food and grocery apps favour, is only a discount if you would otherwise have paid for delivery. When a store offers a choice, the arithmetic is simple: compute what each shape saves on the basket you actually intend to buy, not on the basket the banner imagines.

Marketplaces: noon, Amazon and AliExpress

noon's welcome offer in the UAE and Saudi Arabia is the single most-searched first-order code in the region in both languages, and it behaves like a marketplace offer: a fixed amount or a percentage on the first order above a minimum, usually app-only, applied to eligible items rather than the whole catalogue, with the store's own sale events sometimes suspending it. Amazon.ae and Amazon.sa are different in kind. Amazon rarely runs a classic welcome code; the searches for one mostly find bank-card offers for new cardholders, Prime trial promotions and category vouchers, which is why an 'Amazon UAE first order code' search so often ends at a card offer. AliExpress is the opposite extreme: its new-user coupons are among the most generous anywhere, stacked in the app as welcome bundles, with Gulf-wide codes that apply on top and which the AliExpress page on Hassalna keeps current.

The marketplace-specific trap is eligibility by item. A welcome code that applies to 'eligible items' can be rejected on a basket full of a brand that has opted out, most often electronics from a major manufacturer, and the store's error message rarely explains why. When a marketplace welcome code fails, remove the branded electronics from the basket and try again before you conclude the code is dead; if it then works, buy the electronics separately with a bank-card offer, which is the discount those items were always going to get.

Fashion: Shein, H&M, Namshi, ASOS, Next and Trendyol

Fashion is where first-order codes are largest as a percentage and most likely to exclude sale items, which is the tension to manage. Shein's welcome discount, the second most-searched in Arabic after Amazon's, is a percentage on the first app order, and Shein's constant sale pricing means the code often applies to items that are already reduced, which makes a first Shein order one of the cheapest baskets in Gulf retail. H&M currently carries several hand-checked Gulf-wide codes at once, some of which work on new customers and some on everyone, and the store page states which; Namshi, Next and Trendyol each run app-first welcome offers of the percentage kind with the usual sale exclusions; ASOS's is smaller and is often beaten by its student code. The shared rule across all of them: the welcome code is your largest, so spend it on the largest full-price basket you genuinely want, not on a single sale item where it will be rejected or capped.

There is a second-order trick in fashion that the search data hints at with 'first order' attached to brands like Crocs and Pull & Bear: many brands run their own welcome code on their own store while also selling through Namshi or noon, so a shopper who has used up a marketplace welcome can still be a new customer at the brand, and vice versa. The brand's own code is usually the larger, the marketplace's the more flexible on returns. Check both store pages on Hassalna before your first order of a brand you have only ever bought through a marketplace.

Food, grocery and pharmacy apps: talabat, Deliveroo, Ninja, Keeta and Nahdi

The delivery apps are where first-order codes are most aggressively advertised and most tightly policed. talabat, Deliveroo, the quick-commerce grocers Ninja and Keeta in the Kingdom and the UAE, and the pharmacy chains led by Nahdi in Saudi Arabia all run welcome offers, typically a fixed amount off or free delivery on the first order above a small minimum, and the Arabic search data names every one of them. Two things distinguish this category. The codes are tied to the device and the delivery address as well as the account, so a second account on the same phone does not become a second first order and may get both accounts flagged. And the offers are geo-fenced: a UAE welcome code is not a Saudi one, and a code advertised in Riyadh may not apply in Jeddah, which the app only reveals at checkout.

Because delivery-app welcome offers are usually fixed amounts on small minimums, they are the most generous first-order codes in the region as a percentage of the basket, and the right way to use one is on a first order that just clears the minimum rather than a large one, since the discount does not grow with the basket. Pharmacy welcome codes at Nahdi and its UAE counterparts are the exception worth a bigger basket, because they are often percentages that apply across vitamins, baby care and skincare, which are the categories people stock up on anyway. The Deliveroo page on Hassalna carries the hand-checked UAE codes; the Kingdom's apps change their offers frequently enough that the in-app onboarding screen is the authoritative source on the day.

Beauty, home and baby: where the welcome code is published in the clear

Not every first-order discount is a secret code in an app. A growing number of brands publish an open code that works for any customer, new customers included, and simply state it. At the time of writing, Home Box's code BX15 takes a percentage off furniture, décor and kitchen at checkout in both the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and KIKO Milano's Saudi code K28 applies to discounted and full-price makeup alike. Both sit on their Hassalna pages in the clear, with no reveal step, because the advertiser publishes them openly. Sephora, Golden Scent, Nice One and Faces run the classic app-first welcome percentage on beauty, with fragrance and prestige brands sometimes excluded; Mumzworld's welcome offer on baby and kids is one of the few in the category that reliably combines with its own storewide sales.

The lesson from the open codes is a general one. A code published openly is meant for everyone and is not a one-time welcome, so save your first-order status for the stores that gate it and use the open code whenever you shop. A code hidden behind an app install and a new account is the opposite signal: the discount is the welcome, so make the first basket count. Reading which kind of code a store runs is most of the skill in this guide, and the store page makes it visible before you sign up.

Why a first-order code fails, and what to do

Most rejected welcome codes fail for one of six reasons, and only one of them means the code is dead. The account is not new: an old account from years ago, or a guest checkout that created one without you noticing, counts as an existing customer. The order is below the minimum spend, which the code's terms state and the cart page rarely repeats. The basket is all sale items, or all items from a brand that opted out, and the code excludes them. The code is app-only and you are on the website. The code is for the other country: a UAE welcome code on a Saudi checkout, or the reverse, is the commonest failure on stores that serve both. And, finally, the code has expired or been replaced, which is the only case where trying another code helps. The store page on Hassalna shows the minimum, the exclusions, the platform and the market for each code precisely so the first five reasons never cost you the sixth.

Two mistakes waste welcome codes permanently, and both are avoidable. The first is using it on a tiny order to 'test' it: the store records the welcome as used and the large basket you place next week gets nothing. The second is creating a second account to get a second welcome, which the delivery apps and the marketplaces detect by device and address, and which can get both accounts restricted; it is not worth a fixed-amount discount. The honest strategy is slower and pays more: one account per store, one welcome code spent on one deliberate full-price basket, and the store's public and open codes for everything after that.

How to stack a first-order code with a bank offer

A welcome code and a bank-card offer live at different steps of checkout, which is why they usually combine, and a first order is the best moment to prove it because the welcome code is the largest code you will ever hold at that store. The sequence never changes: apply the welcome code in the promo box on the cart page and confirm the total drops; go to payment, choose the card that carries the current offer with that store, and confirm it drops again; then, only if it genuinely helps, split the reduced total with Tabby or Tamara, which changes nothing about the price. If the second discount replaces the first instead of adding to it, the store allows one, and you keep the larger, which on a first order is almost always the welcome code.

That is the whole method. Find the store's page on Hassalna, read which kind of code it runs and its terms, build a deliberate first basket that clears the minimum and avoids the exclusions, apply the code, pay with the card that carries the offer, and keep the account. Done once per store across the marketplaces, fashion, delivery, beauty and home, the welcome codes alone add up over a year of shopping.