The Saudi Government has spared no effort to combat the COVID-19 outbreak since its declaration by the (WHO) as a worldwide pandemic on March 11, 2020. Many restrictive policy measures were deployed. They range from social distancing, to business shutdown, school and university attendance suspension, and lock-down, etc. The way the epidemic spreads in big cities and smaller towns within the region has not yet been examined within the Saudi context. This paper explores the differential spreading of the viral infection between the large city of Riyadh and its small towns in its vicinity. The main research question consists of unrevealing whether the pandemic follows a similar pattern of COVID-19 transmission within populations of urban settings of different sizes or not. To that end, the study used data provided by the Saudi Ministry of Health (MoH) and Google Community Mobility Reports to examine the spread of the virus and the effectiveness of the policies adopted to halt its transmission. For the purpose of comparison, the basic reproduction measure (R0) was calculated for both settings. For the efficiency of policies implemented, Google Mobility Data was used to reveal how Riyadh population mobility patterns were affected by these policies. Google Mobility Data was compared to the evolution of COVID-19 confirmed cases from March 9, 2020 to May 28, 2021.