How do Meta RSU grants and vesting schedules work?

How a grant becomes shares

That distinction is the whole game. Treating an unvested RSU as money you have is how people commit to a house, a career break, or a tuition bill on compensation that can still change. The award agreement Meta files sets the terms for grants made under the 2025 plan; older grants keep the 2012 plan’s terms, so read the agreement attached to each grant. The schedule itself lives in your Notice, which Meta does not file.[2]

1. 01

   Grant

   Share count, vest dates, and conditions, all in the Notice.

2. 02

   Vest & settle

   Shares within 30 days of each vest date, usually net of the shares withheld for tax.

3. 03

   Hold or sell

   What the remaining shares are for.

What the agreement actually says

The form agreement Meta files with the SEC, clause by clause, in plain English. Your own award, its Notice, the Jurisdiction-Specific Addendum for your country, and any amendment control where they differ.[2]

Vesting schedule

Whatever your Notice says. The agreement prints no cadence and points to “the vesting schedule set forth in the Notice.” Meta states only that RSUs in general vest over four years; the four-year quarterly, one-sixteenth cadence in the proxy is stated for named executive officers, which tells you nothing about your own grant.[2][1][6]

Settlement

Within 30 days of each vest date, in shares or, at Meta’s sole discretion, in cash. The shares are Class A — the listed class, ticker META — because the plan defines common stock that way.[2][3]

Withholding

Five methods, and the committee picks, not you: cash from you, withholding from your wages, withholding shares up to the maximum statutory amount, withholding from the proceeds of a sale the company arranges, or any other arrangement it approves. Meta paid $18.40 billion of taxes related to net share settlement of RSUs in 2025, so share withholding is what happens at scale. If the withholding is not settled, Meta may refuse to deliver the shares or the cash.[2][1]

Dividend equivalents

By default a dividend equivalent accrues on unvested RSUs for each dividend declared between your grant date and settlement, carries the same vesting conditions, earns no interest, and is settled in cash, ordinarily within 60 days of the vest it attaches to, unless your Notice or the committee provides otherwise. Nothing is paid on an RSU that is forfeited.[2]

Leave of absence

The agreement and the plan are silent. Neither document contains a leave-of-absence provision, so nothing in Meta’s filings says whether vesting continues during a leave. Ask before a long leave that straddles a vest.[2][3]

Leaving

Everything unvested, and every dividend equivalent attached to it, is forfeited when your service terminates “for any reason,” measured from the date you are no longer actively providing services. There is no death or disability exception in the US form; the one death provision in the document sits in the French sub-plan and applies to French awards. No vesting runs through a notice period or garden leave unless local law requires it.[2]

Transfer

RSUs cannot be sold, pledged, or given away before they vest, other than by will or the laws of descent or a transfer the committee approves case by case. Vested shares can, subject to the trading policy.[2]

If Meta is acquired

Acceleration is conditional, not automatic. Awards may be assumed or replaced by the successor; only if the successor refuses to assume, convert, replace or substitute them do they accelerate, unless the board decides otherwise, and the plan says awards need not be treated alike.[3]

Your broker

Charles Schwab. The agreement names it as the designated broker for the plan, which is where your grants, your vest history and your cost-basis records live.[2]

The next grant

Not promised by this one. Grants are “exceptional, voluntary and occasional,” create no right to future awards, and their value is not part of normal compensation for severance or pension calculations.[2]

Company-wide figures from the 2025 Form 10-K; 78,865 employees worldwide at year end and 454 million Class A shares still reserved for future awards.[1]

If you received stock options in 2026

For the first time in the filings reviewed, Meta granted nonstatutory stock options in 2026: options over 20 million Class A shares to certain executives and employees in the first half of the year, at a weighted-average exercise price of $2,788 and roughly five years of remaining term. The 10-Q does not say who received them or how they vest; your option agreement does.[8]

What it is

The right to buy a share at the exercise price. It is worth something only while the market price is above that price, and nothing at all if it expires unexercised.[46]

How it is taxed

Nothing at grant. At exercise, the spread between the market price and the exercise price is ordinary wage income, withheld like a vest. A later sale is a capital gain or loss against that exercised value.[46]

If you leave

The plan’s default gives you 90 days after termination to exercise what has vested, a different period on death or disability, and immediate expiry on a termination for cause, unless your agreement says otherwise. Unvested options are forfeited.[3]

The window

Exercising and then selling the shares is a trade under the insider trading policy; the option agreement and the window both have to allow it on the day.[4]

Does Meta have an employee stock purchase plan?

None that Meta describes. Its 10-K describes two equity plans, the 2025 Equity Incentive Plan and its predecessor 2012 plan, and the phrase “employee stock purchase” appears nowhere in it.[1] RSUs are the equity program for most employees, so there is no discounted purchase to budget for.