UAE car vs taxi calculator

Do you actually need a car in the UAE, or would taxis and ride-hailing be cheaper? The honest answer is a total-cost question, not a monthly-payment one. Owning a car costs far more than its purchase price once you add depreciation, fuel, Salik tolls, insurance, registration, maintenance and parking — but you recover a chunk of the price as resale value at the end. Taxis and Careem cost nothing upfront and carry no running costs, but every trip is metered. This calculator builds the full five-year cost of three routes — buying (with cash or finance), leasing, and taxis — from your own numbers, and tells you which is genuinely cheapest, by how much, and where the money goes year by year. UAE-focused throughout, in dirhams, from a budget runabout to a luxury SUV.

It's the 5-year total, not the monthly payment

The question “is a car worth it, or should I just take taxis?” is almost always answered with the wrong number: the monthly car payment versus a rough guess at taxi spend. That comparison is misleading in both directions. A car’s monthly payment ignores the biggest cost of owning (depreciation) and the running costs that pile on top (fuel, Salik, insurance, servicing, parking); a casual taxi estimate usually undercounts how many trips a real week involves. The only fair comparison is the full cost of each option over the same period — this calculator uses five years — with everything counted.

Three routes go head to head. Buying a car means paying (or financing) the price, running it for five years, then recovering its resale value — so the true cost is price plus running costs minus what you sell it for. Leasing means a deposit plus a fixed monthly payment that usually bundles insurance, servicing and registration, plus your own fuel and Salik, with nothing owned at the end. Taxis and ride-hailing mean no upfront cost and no running costs — just the metered fare on every trip, which adds up fast for a daily commuter and stays small for a light user.

Buying with cash is the lowest 5-year cost here at AED 101,834 (net of AED 65,524 resale), ahead of taxis (AED 109,200) and leasing (AED 179,885) — a saving of AED 78,051 vs the most expensive option. Financing the same car adds AED 8,301 of interest. Winner: Buy (Cash). Change your mileage, car price or taxi usage and the verdict can flip.

The table above runs a representative case through all three (plus financing as an alternative way to buy) so you can see the shape of the decision. The calculator does exactly this for your own inputs, then declares the lowest five-year cost the winner and shows how much it saves against the most expensive option. Everything that follows — depreciation, the three ownership routes, the running costs, the taxi maths and the break-even — is an unpacking of the totals this section compares.

Depreciation: the biggest cost of owning

If you own a car, the largest amount it costs you is not fuel, insurance or servicing — it is depreciation, the value it quietly loses just by ageing and being driven. A new car in the UAE sheds roughly 15% of its value in the first year and slows to a few percent a year after that. No one hands you a bill for it; you only feel it on the day you sell and discover the car is worth far less than you paid. The calculator models this with a front-loaded curve — about 15%, 10%, 8%, 5% and 2% across the five years — compounding on the falling value, so the early years hurt most.

On a AED 100,000 car that curve leaves a resale value of roughly AED 65,500 after five years — a loss of about AED 34,500. That loss is the true cost of the car itself, and it dwarfs any single year’s running costs. It is also the cost taxis let you sidestep entirely: a taxi passenger never owns a depreciating asset. But the counterweight for the owner is real — that AED 65,500 of resale value comes straight back to you, which is exactly why the calculator measures owning as a net cost (everything you spend, minus what you recover on resale) rather than a scary gross number. Depreciation only bites for the portion you do not get back.

Buying with cash, financing, or leasing

There are three ways to put a car under you, and they cost differently even for the same vehicle. The calculator models all three.

Buying with cash is the cheapest way to own, because you pay no interest. You put down the full price, carry the running costs for five years, and recover the resale value at the end. Its net cost is the honest baseline for “what owning this car really costs”. Financing is the same ownership, but you borrow most of the price and repay it with interest over the loan term — typically 2.5–5% APR in the UAE. The car, the running costs and the resale value are identical to the cash case; financing simply adds the loan interest on top, which is why the calculator shows it as an alternative way to buy rather than a separate contender in the verdict. A bigger down payment or a shorter term cuts the interest.

Leasing is a different model altogether. You pay a deposit and a fixed monthly amount — a typical UAE personal lease is around AED 2,000–3,000/month — that usually bundles insurance, servicing and registration, so you write fewer separate cheques. But you still pay your own fuel and Salik, most leases cap your mileage (with an excess charge beyond it), and crucially you own nothing at the end — there is no resale value to recover. That makes leasing simple and predictable but, over a full five years, usually the most expensive way to have a car, because you are effectively renting the depreciation without ever getting the residual value back. The calculator counts the deposit, every monthly payment, your fuel and Salik, and any excess-mileage charge to get the true lease total. The lease quote itself is sized off the car you picked, exactly as a real one is: 2.2% of the car’s price per month plus a deposit of 5% of the price. So the AED 100,000 car in the worked example leases at AED 2,200/month, while a AED 200,000 one leases at AED 4,400/month — a pricier car costs more to lease, not just more to buy.

How much it costs to own a car in the UAE, year by year

“How much does it cost to own a car in the UAE?” has two halves, and most answers give only one. The half you pay every month is the running cost — registration, insurance, maintenance, fuel and Salik. On the AED 100,000 car used throughout this page that is about AED 13,597 in the first year, roughly AED 1,133 a month, and AED 67,358 across five years — before the purchase price enters at all. The other half is depreciation, covered above, which you pay silently and settle on the day you sell. Put both together and the true cost of ownership on this car is AED 101,834 over five years — about AED 1,697 a month, all in. Everything below is the running-cost half, line by line, so nothing is hidden.

Fuel is the cost you feel most often. The calculator works it out properly from your driving: annual kilometres × your car’s consumption (litres per 100 km) × the pump price. At 15,000 km/year, a car using 8.5 L/100km at AED 4.28/litre (Special 95, October 2026) burns about AED 5,457 a year — and a thirstier SUV or a longer commute pushes that up quickly. UAE pump prices are re-set every month, so the calculator carries the current price rather than a fixed assumption. Salik is the Dubai road toll (Abu Dhabi’s equivalent is Darb). Since 2025 it uses variable pricing: AED 6 per crossing at peak hours (6–10 AM and 4–8 PM, Monday to Saturday), AED 4 off-peak, free overnight (1–6 AM) and a flat AED 4 on Sundays — with a 5% VAT added from June 2026. The calculator prices your crossings at the AED 6 peak rate per gate, from how many gates you cross on a typical day and how many days a week you drive. That is the honest default rather than a flattering one: the model’s working week is a weekday commute, so those crossings fall inside the peak window by construction — pricing them off-peak would have quietly made owning a car look cheaper than it is. If you genuinely travel outside 6–10 AM and 4–8 PM, or mostly on Sundays, you will pay less than shown. Salik is a genuinely UAE-specific cost, and one taxis fold invisibly into the fare.

Insurance is modelled as a percentage of the car’s value that falls as the car ages — roughly 3.5% in year one easing toward 2.4% by year five — because comprehensive premiums track the car’s worth. Each year’s rate is applied to the value the car actually carries into that year, not to what you originally paid, so the premium falls on both counts: a lower rate on a smaller number. On a AED 200,000 car that is AED 7,000 in year one and AED 3,209 in year five. Registration is a flat annual Dubai RTA charge of AED 520 for a private light vehicle — AED 350 ownership renewal + AED 20 Knowledge and Innovation + AED 150 technical inspection — not a percentage of the car’s value. Maintenance — servicing, tyres, brakes, the odd repair — runs from around AED 1,000 in the early warranty years to AED 3,000 as the car ages. And parking can be free, or a real monthly cost in a building or paid zone; the calculator lets you pick your situation. Add these to fuel and Salik and you have the annual running cost the year-by-year table lays out — the number that, together with depreciation, makes owning cost what it does.

What taxis and Careem actually cost

The taxi side is refreshingly simple to model: no upfront cost, no running costs, just the fare on every trip. But that simplicity hides how quickly trips add up for someone who relies on them daily, which is why the calculator asks for your real usage rather than a single monthly guess.

One thing to be clear about, because it changes how you should read the verdict: the taxi side is priced per trip, from the average fare you enter — not per kilometre, and not from the annual mileage you gave for the car. RTA publishes a flag fall but not a per-kilometre rate we can source and stand behind, so rather than invent one we ask you for the fare instead. The practical consequence is that your average fare has to match the journeys you are actually replacing: if your driving is long cross-town runs, an AED 35 short-hop fare will understate the taxi bill badly. Raising your annual mileage moves your fuel and any lease excess-mileage charge; it does not move the taxi total.

It builds your taxi spend from four honest inputs: how many trips you take on a working day (usually two — there and back), your average fare per trip, how many working days a month you commute, and how many weekend or non-work trips you take. A common commuter pattern — two AED 35 trips a day, 22 working days a month, plus 8 weekend trips — works out to about AED 1,820 a month, or roughly AED 109,200 over five years. That is a large, steady number, and it is why heavy daily commuters usually find a car cheaper. A light user, though — someone who works from home, lives near a metro, or only needs the occasional ride — might spend a fraction of that, and for them taxis can easily beat the full cost of owning, insuring, fuelling and parking a car that sits idle most of the week.

The honest framing is that taxis convert a fixed cost (a car) into a purely variable one (fares). If you travel a lot, the variable cost overtakes the fixed one and owning wins; if you travel little, you avoid the fixed cost entirely and taxis win. The calculator finds exactly where your usage falls, using the same five-year horizon for both sides so the comparison is fair.

When owning wins and when taxis win

Neither answer is universal — it turns on how much you travel, what car you would buy, and how you would pay for it. Clear patterns emerge, though.

Owning tends to win for regular drivers. If you commute daily, run errands, and cover a normal 12,000–20,000 km a year, the metered cost of doing all that by taxi almost always exceeds the net cost of owning a sensible car — because the car’s biggest cost (depreciation) is partly recovered on resale, while every taxi fare is money gone. Buying with cash is the cheapest ownership route; financing is close behind, just adding interest. A modest car, driven regularly, kept five years and sold on, is usually the lowest-cost way to get around a lot.

Taxis tend to win for light users and in a few specific cases: if you travel little (work from home, live on a metro line), if you would otherwise buy an expensive car that depreciates hard, if you face steep parking costs, or if your UAE stay is short and buying-then-selling in a hurry is a poor bet. Leasing, meanwhile, rarely wins the pure cost contest over five years — it is chosen for its simplicity and predictability, not because it is cheapest, since you never recover a residual value. The through-line: the more you travel and the longer you keep a reasonably-priced car, the more owning’s resale recovery tilts the total in its favour; the less you travel, the more taxis’ zero fixed cost wins. Put your real numbers in and the calculator tells you which side of that line you fall on, and by how many dirhams.

A worked AED 100,000 example

A single worked case makes the whole comparison concrete. Take a mainstream AED 100,000 car, a normal 15,000 km/year of driving at 8.5 L/100km and AED 4.28/litre, two Salik gates a day over a five-day week, free parking — against a commuter’s taxi habit of two AED 35 trips a day, 22 working days a month, plus 8 weekend trips. Run all of it through the calculator’s own model so the figures tie out exactly.

Annual running cost of owning (excludes the car price and depreciation — those are captured via the AED 65,524 resale value in the net cost above). Fuel and Salik depend on your driving; insurance falls as the car ages; registration is a flat RTA renewal.

Put the three side by side: buying with cash AED 101,834, taxis AED 109,200, leasing AED 179,885. Buying with cash wins, saving about AED 78,051 against the most expensive option (leasing) over five years. Financing the same car would add roughly AED 8,301 of interest but still land well below taxis. The year-by-year table above shows where the owning cost falls each year. Change any input — a pricier car, more mileage, steep parking, or a much lighter taxi habit — and the calculator redoes this arithmetic and can flip the winner: drop the taxi usage low enough and taxis win outright.

Method, sources & honest limits

The calculator builds a five-year total for each route. Buying (cash) = car price + five years of running costs (flat AED 520/year registration; insurance at 3.5% of that year’s opening value falling to 2.4%; maintenance AED 1,000–3,000/year; fuel = km × L-per-100km ÷ 100 × price/litre; Salik = gates × AED 6 peak rate × days-per-week × 52; parking) − resale value from a 15/10/8/5/2% compound depreciation curve. Financing adds amortized loan interest on the financed balance to the same ownership. Leasing = deposit (5% of the car’s price) + monthly payment (2.2% of the price) × 60 + your fuel + Salik + parking + any excess-mileage charge (AED 0.75/km over the limit); nothing is recovered. Taxis = (trips × fare × working days + weekend trips × fare) × 12 × 5 — priced per trip from your own average fare, not per kilometre, so annual mileage does not enter the taxi total. The winner is the lowest of buy-cash, lease and taxi, and the saving is measured against the most expensive of the three.

The defaults are UAE-typical: Salik is the Dubai toll, priced variably since 2025 — AED 4 off-peak, AED 6 at peak (6–10 AM, 4–8 PM), free 1–6 AM, plus 5% VAT from June 2026; the calculator uses the AED 6 peak rate, because a weekday working pattern crosses inside the peak window (Abu Dhabi’s Darb works similarly), and an off-peak driver will pay less than shown. Registration is a flat Dubai RTA charge, not a percentage of value; depreciation, insurance rates and maintenance figures reflect prevailing UAE market experience; lease pricing is derived from the car’s price (2.2% a month plus a 5% deposit) rather than a fixed quote, so it moves with the car you choose; fuel price is a recent pump figure you can adjust as prices move month to month.

Three honest limits. First, this is a planning estimate, not a quote: real prices, interest rates, insurance premiums, depreciation, lease terms and fares vary by car, bank, insurer, dealer and trip — confirm your specifics. Second, it deliberately keeps the comparison clean: it does not model car-sharing, occasional rentals, the value of your own time, or the convenience factors that matter beyond money. Third, this is a UAE-focused planning tool, not financial advice. Content last verified August 2026.

Car vs taxi in the UAE — frequently asked questions