How do Meta’s annual RSU refresher grants work?

What Meta says about refreshers

Two things, and they are worth having exactly right, because little else about refreshers is on file. Meta says it generally offers full-time employees equity at the time of hire and through annual equity grants, as part of standard pay, not as a bonus.[1] And the 2026 proxy prints the number the 2025 refreshers were priced at.[6]

For the 2025 awards, a refresher was quoted as a dollar value and converted into units at an average price set after an earnings release, so the share count is fixed by a price you did not pick, and the value of the grant moves with the stock from that day on. Meta also keeps an equity award policy governing the timing and process of grants, dates the annual awards for named executives on or just after March 20, and states that awards are not spring-loaded or otherwise timed around material nonpublic information.[6]

Grant totals from the 2025 Form 10-K; the employee RSU table, the median figure and its methodology from the 2026 proxy, which computed the median across worldwide full- and part-time employees other than the CEO as of October 31, 2025.[1][6]

What a refresher does not promise

A right

The award agreement says grants are “exceptional, voluntary and occasional,” create no right to future grants, and are not part of normal or expected compensation for severance, pension or similar calculations.[2]

Predictable from a filing

The filings do not state your refresher, a formula by level or role, or whether a given year’s pool went up or down. The Notice you receive is the first authoritative statement of your own number.[2]

Guaranteed to vest

A refresher runs on the same terms as every other grant: forfeited in full if your service terminates before a vest date, for any reason.[2]

Planning around it

Treat a refresher as income you have not earned yet. A plan that spends it — a mortgage payment, a tuition commitment, a spending level — is a plan with a hole in it if the grant is smaller than last year’s or the stock is lower when it is priced. The four-year stack is the useful frame instead: at any moment you hold several grants at different stages, and what matters is the total that vests in the next twelve months, not the headline on the newest one.[1]