How our numbers work
Dubai Reality Check is a free calculator and a set of guides for people weighing a Dubai job offer. This page explains where each figure comes from, what is left out and when the data was checked.
What the calculator does
You enter the Dubai offer, any partner income and allowances, your household, the area and flat size you want, your lifestyle, transport and whether you want a maid. The calculator prices nine monthly cost lines for Dubai, adds them up and takes them away from your Dubai income. It then compares what is left with what you save at home today.
Anything the employer covers comes off the bill. Employer housing makes rent zero and leaves a small amount for personal utilities. Covered school fees are zero. Covered transport, food or utilities leave a small personal amount.
Where each Dubai cost comes from
Every Dubai cost is a fixed rule on a table in our cost model. The same model runs the calculator, the salary guides, the area pages and the schools page. The amounts below are read from the model, for the mid-range setup: rent at the middle of the JLT range, balanced lifestyle, half home cooking, eating out once or twice a week, metro.
| Cost line | How it is worked out | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Rent | A table of 12 Dubai areas, each with a low and a high monthly rent per flat size. Saving mode uses the bottom of the range, Balanced the middle and YOLO mode the top. A shared room uses one fixed amount for all of Dubai. | Bayut, Property Finder and Gulf News rental market reports for the first half of 2025, checked November 2025 |
| School fees | Charged only for children. Each child is priced at the mid-tier band, 5,000 AED a month. | KHDA school fee data and the Edarabia 2025 school fees report, checked November 2025 |
| Utilities and housing fee | A typical DEWA bill of 800 AED a month, plus the Dubai Municipality housing fee: 5% of the annual rent, paid monthly on the DEWA bill. No housing fee for a shared room or employer housing. | Numbeo and typical DEWA bills, checked November 2025 |
| Transport | A monthly budget for the choice made: metro (320 AED), taxis, a mix, walking or cycling, a company car or your own car. | Numbeo, RTA and Gulf News, checked November 2025 |
| Food and groceries | A base amount for a single person, a couple or a family, adjusted for home cooking, how often you eat out and the lifestyle chosen. | Numbeo, Dubai cost of living, November 2025 |
| Maid or nanny | None, part time or full time. | Numbeo and Gulf News domestic worker surveys, checked November 2025 |
| Phone and internet | One amount, 400 AED a month. | Numbeo, checked November 2025 |
| Going out | A base amount of 800 AED a month, lower in Saving mode and higher in YOLO mode. | Set in our cost model |
| Emergency buffer | A fixed 400 AED a month for the month that goes wrong. | Set in our cost model |
The comparison with your home city
You enter your take-home pay now, after tax, in your home currency, and if you can, what your household spends at home in a normal month. Both are converted to AED at the Central Bank of the UAE exchange rate (a dated snapshot of its published rates). With your own home costs the comparison uses your numbers. Without them, for the cities in our list we estimate home costs by scaling the Dubai costs with a fixed Numbeo city cost of living index, November 2025, and label it an estimate. For any other city we show no comparison until you add your costs.
No AI model produces any number on this site. The one place AI is used is the written offer review for pass holders: Claude, an AI model by Anthropic, turns the numbers the calculator has already worked out into a short verdict and checklist. Every figure in its text is checked in code against those numbers before you see it; if any figure does not match, you get a review written from the same numbers without AI.
What is not in the numbers
- Health insurance, flights home and one-off moving costs such as deposits, agent fees and furniture. Our guide to the hidden costs of moving to Dubai covers the one-off fees.
- Income tax in your home country. The calculator uses the take-home pay you enter and takes no tax off the Dubai salary. If your home country still taxes you after you move, that is not included.
- The UK salary to Dubai pages are the exception: they work out UK take-home pay at GOV.UK rates for the 2026/27 tax year (England, Wales and Northern Ireland), checked October 2026.
- Future rent rises and inflation. Every figure is one month at the prices last checked.
- Your exact building, school or commute. Rents are area ranges and school fees are a fee band, so a real flat or school can cost more or less.
When the data was checked
- Dubai rents by area and the other cost tables: November 2025.
- School fee bands: November 2025. The official KHDA facts on the schools page: October 2026.
- Area facts such as metro stations and distances: October 2026.
- UK tax rates and thresholds: October 2026, for 2026 to 2027.
- Rules and official fees in our guides and the gratuity calculator: October 2026. Each rule names its source.
- Jobs: the site reloads the job list every hour.
Each page names the month its figures were checked.
Independence
- No paid placement. No employer, school, landlord or agent pays to appear on the site or to change a figure.
- The site shows Google ads. Ads do not change any figure.
- Job listings are collected from employer career pages. You apply on the employer site, and we never charge candidates.