You get the year your position as an owner overtakes your position as a renter, on your rent, your price, your mortgage rate and how long you actually intend to stay.
Buying is front-loaded here. A Dubai transfer costs 4% of the price to the Dubai Land Department, plus 2% agency commission (each side pays its own agent) and a registration-trustee fee of AED 2,000 below AED 500,000 and AED 4,000 at or above it. That money leaves on day one, and rent never refunds it.
Rent vs Buy CalculatorYou get the highest property price a UAE lender will fund for you, the deposit that implies, and the monthly payment underneath it.
Your salary is usually not the binding limit. The Central Bank caps total monthly debt service at 50% of income (Regulation No. 29/2011, Article (7)(a)) and the loan itself at 7x annual income for an expat, 8x for a UAE national, over a maximum 25-year term (Circular No. 31/2013, Regulations Regarding Mortgage Loans). A car loan and two card minimums can cost you more borrowing power than a raise gives back.
Mortgage Affordability CalculatorYou get the cash needed at the counter, line by line, kept separate from the deposit. It is the number that decides whether a purchase happens this month or next year.
In Dubai that is the 4% DLD transfer fee, a fixed DLD administrative charge of AED 580 on a ready residential property, the trustee fee, and 2% agency commission. VAT at 5% applies to the trustee and agency lines because those are services; it does not apply to the government charges.
Property Fees CalculatorYou get the published fee for the grade your child is actually entering, by named school, through to Grade 12, and what the years after that add up to.
Dubai is the only emirate that publishes per-school, per-grade fees. We hold 218 of the 233 private schools KHDA lists for Dubai (2025-26), so every school tool on this site is Dubai-only and says so on the page rather than implying national coverage it does not have.
School Fee CalculatorYou get the monthly distance at which owning stops being the cheaper option, with depreciation, insurance, fuel, tolls and parking all counted rather than assumed.
Two of those move without you. UAE pump prices are deregulated and re-set every month by the fuel price committee: as of October 2026 Special 95 is AED 4.28 a litre, with E-Plus 91 at AED 4.21 and Super 98 at AED 4.40. Salik has priced by time of day since 31 January 2025, so there is no single rate — AED 6 at peak, AED 4 off-peak and AED 0 overnight per crossing. 5% VAT applies to all toll transactions from 1 June 2026 (effective AED 6.30 peak / AED 4.20 off-peak).
Car vs Taxi CalculatorYou get your end-of-service gratuity for the service you have already put in, and what one more year adds to it.
Gratuity accrues on basic wage, never on the total package: 21 days of basic pay for each of the first five years, 30 days for each year after that, capped in total at 2 years of basic pay (Federal Decree-Law 33/2021). If basic is half your salary, so is your gratuity.
Gratuity Calculator