UAE family visa calculator

Bringing your family to live with you in the UAE means sponsoring each of them for a residence visa — and that comes with two questions: are you eligible, and what does it cost. Eligibility turns on your monthly salary and whether your employer provides accommodation: the national rule is a minimum of AED 4,000, or AED 3,000 with accommodation — the same in every emirate. The cost is a stack of government processing fees plus a refundable deposit, charged per dependent. This calculator adds up the fees a family visa involves — entry permit, medical test, Emirates ID, status change and residence-permit issuance, about AED 1,530 a person on a two-year permit, plus a refundable AED 2,000 deposit each — and tells you whether the salary you earn clears the threshold. Enter your salary and how many people you are sponsoring, and it shows the total, the per-component breakdown, and the eligibility verdict. UAE-focused throughout, in dirhams.

Who can sponsor family in the UAE

Before any fees, you have to qualify as a sponsor, and the test is your salary. A UAE resident can sponsor immediate family for residence visas provided they earn above a minimum monthly salary — and the key nuance most people miss is that the threshold depends on whether your employer provides accommodation. If accommodation is part of your package, the salary bar is lower; if you house yourself, it is a little higher, because the authorities want assurance you can house your dependents.

This is a national, federal rule set by the Federal Authority for Identity and Citizenship (ICP), and it is the same across every emirate: a minimum salary of AED 4,000 a month, or AED 3,000 with employer accommodation. There is no Dubai-versus-Abu-Dhabi-versus-other-emirates salary difference for standard family sponsorship — the figure the calculator checks your salary against is the same wherever you live. Clearing it is a precondition, not a fee: being eligible does not cost anything, it simply unlocks your right to sponsor.

A national ICP rule — the same in every emirate: AED 4,000 on its own, or AED 3,000 with employer accommodation. This is an eligibility threshold, not a fee — the AED 3,530/dependent cost is identical nationwide. Sponsoring parents is a separate, stricter route (~AED 20,000) on a one-year permit, renewed annually.

The table above is the eligibility picture in full, and its shape is worth underlining: the accommodation question is the only thing that moves the threshold, and it moves it by AED 1,000. An AED 3,500 earner qualifies comfortably with employer housing (the bar is AED 3,000) but falls just short without it (the bar is AED 4,000). If your salary sits between the two figures, securing an accommodation allowance or company housing in your contract can be the difference between sponsoring your family and not. The calculator lets you flip that toggle and see the verdict change instantly — and because the rule is national, the answer does not depend on which emirate you are in.

Sponsoring your spouse and children

The UAE lets residents sponsor immediate family, but the conditions differ by relationship, and it is worth knowing them before you count visas.

A spouse is the most straightforward: a husband can sponsor his wife, and a wife can sponsor her husband, on the standard salary threshold, with an attested marriage certificate. The 2026 rule is unified — the same AED 4,000 / AED 3,000-with-accommodation salary applies regardless of the sponsor’s gender. Sons can be sponsored while they are unmarried and under 25 — since the 2022 reforms (Cabinet Resolution No. 65 of 2022) there is no longer a study-enrolment condition attached to the older-son age band. Unmarried daughters can be sponsored at any age, with no age cut-off, as can children of determination (special needs) regardless of age. Newborns born in the UAE must be added to a parent’s sponsorship within 120 days to avoid fines. Each child you sponsor is one dependent in the calculator, carrying the same per-person fees and refundable deposit.

Parents are a different, much stricter route — and one this calculator deliberately does not model. Sponsoring parents carries a far higher salary requirement (commonly around AED 20,000 a month), usually requires sponsoring both parents together plus a substantial refundable deposit per parent and comprehensive medical insurance for them, and is assessed case by case. Because that parental threshold and its conditions sit well outside the standard spouse-and-children rule, the calculator here covers only the standard case. If you are planning to sponsor parents, treat the per-dependent fees below as the processing cost per person, but budget separately for the AED 20,000-level salary proof, the deposit and the insurance the parental route demands — and confirm the current requirement with the ICP or a typing centre, since it is the part of family sponsorship that changes most.

What a family visa actually costs

Once you qualify, the cost of each dependent’s visa is a set of government processing fees plus a refundable deposit. The calculator itemises exactly what it charges, so there are no hidden numbers.

Five processing fees make up the per-person cost. The entry permit (about AED 100) authorises the dependent to enter or change status inside the country. The medical fitness test (about AED 320) is a mandatory screening required for every residence visa. The Emirates ID is priced by term — ICP charges about AED 100 per year of residence plus a AED 100 smart-services fee, so a two-year card runs to roughly AED 370 once the service-centre charge is counted, and a one-year card to AED 270. The status change fee (about AED 500) converts the entry permit into an in-country residence visa. And the residence-permit issuance (about AED 240 — a AED 200 permit fee plus the Knowledge and Innovation dirhams and delivery) stamps the residence itself; it is a separate charge from the status change and is easy to miss. Together these come to roughly AED 1,530 per person on a two-year permit — the figure the calculator multiplies by the number of dependents.

Each dependent is AED 1,530 in processing fees plus a refundable AED 2,000 deposit = AED 3,530. A family of three totals AED 10,590 up front, of which AED 4,590 is genuine (non-refundable) fees and AED 6,000 is the refundable deposit. Fees are identical in every emirate. A sponsored parent is on a one-year permit, so their Emirates ID is the AED 270 card and the permit is renewed — and re-paid — every year.

On top of the processing fees sits a refundable security deposit of about AED 2,000 per visa, held by immigration and returned when the visa is cancelled or the dependent leaves the country. It is real money you must have on hand, but it is not a cost you lose — which is why the calculator tags it as refundable and keeps it visible as its own line rather than blending it into the fees. Add the AED 1,530 of fees and the AED 2,000 deposit and each dependent works out to about AED 3,530, of which roughly AED 1,530 is a genuine (non-refundable) cost and AED 2,000 comes back to you. The table above shows those components for one person and for a family of three so you can see how they scale.

The cost per dependent — refundable vs not

Family-visa costs scale cleanly, because each dependent carries the same set of fees and the same deposit. That makes the per-dependent number the one to anchor on when you are budgeting for a household of any size.

Every dependent on a two-year permit costs the same AED 1,530 in processing fees (entry permit + medical + Emirates ID + status change + residence-permit issuance) and the same AED 2,000 refundable deposit — AED 3,530 all in per person. Sponsor one dependent and you are looking at AED 3,530; a family of three is 3 × 3,530 = AED 10,590; a family of six, 6 × 3,530 = AED 21,180. The calculator does exactly this multiplication — for the exact number of dependants you enter, not a capped band — and shows both the combined total and the per-component lines, so you can see at a glance how much is fees and how much is recoverable deposit.

The refundable-versus-not split matters for how you think about the number. Of that AED 3,530 per person, only about AED 1,530 is money genuinely spent — the AED 2,000 deposit is parked with immigration and comes back when the visa ends. So a family of three’s true cost is closer to AED 4,590 in fees (3 × 1,530), with AED 6,000 of deposits recoverable later. When you plan cash-flow, remember you need the full AED 10,590 up front — the deposit is only returned at the end — but when you plan your net spend, it is the AED 4,590 of fees that actually leaves your pocket for good. The calculator keeps both views in front of you rather than collapsing them into one misleading figure.

Do the cost or threshold differ by emirate?

This is the question that causes the most confusion, so the honest answer is worth stating plainly: no — neither the fees nor the salary threshold change from emirate to emirate. Family sponsorship is governed by a federal ICP rule that applies nationwide. An entry permit, a medical test, an Emirates ID, a status change and the residence permit cost the same whether you process them in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah or Ras Al Khaimah; the refundable deposit is the same AED 2,000 per visa everywhere; and the salary you need — AED 4,000, or AED 3,000 with accommodation — is identical in every emirate. The per-dependent AED 3,530 the calculator shows is a nationwide figure, which is exactly why the tool does not ask you to pick an emirate: it would change nothing.

What the emirate does change is the processing authority — the office that handles your paperwork. In Dubai, family visas go through the General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA Dubai); in the other emirates they go through the federal ICP system. The channel, the app you use, and the exact service counters differ, but the government fees and the eligibility rule are the same. So your emirate affects where you apply, not what you pay or whether you qualify.

Two honest caveats sit around this. First, typing-centre and PRO service charges — the fees a document-processing centre or a PRO adds for doing the paperwork on your behalf — do vary by provider and location, and are not government fees, so the calculator excludes them; budget an extra few hundred dirhams per application if you use one. Second, health insurance, which is mandatory for every dependent, is priced by insurers, not by the visa office, and varies with age and cover — it too sits outside these figures. The government-fee picture is uniform nationwide; the private-service and insurance layers on top are where real-world totals diverge.

A worked example: sponsoring a family of three

A single case makes the whole calculation concrete. Take a resident earning AED 15,000 a month with employer-provided accommodation, sponsoring three family members — a spouse and two children. Run it through the calculator’s own model so the numbers tie out exactly.

So this family needs AED 10,590 up front. Of that, AED 4,590 is genuine (non-refundable) fees and AED 6,000 is the refundable deposit that comes back when the visas end — a true net cost of about AED 4,590. Note what is not in that number: three health-insurance policies (mandatory, priced by insurers), any visa-stamping or typing-centre service charge, and document attestation or translation. Those are real costs to budget for separately. Change the salary, the number of dependents or the accommodation toggle and the calculator redoes exactly this arithmetic and re-checks eligibility instantly.

What's not in the number: insurance, stamping, translation

To keep the calculator honest, it is precise about its scope: it computes the government processing fees and the refundable deposit, and nothing else. Several real costs of bringing family to the UAE sit deliberately outside that figure, and you should budget for them on top.

Health insurance is the big one. Every dependent must hold valid medical cover to get a residence visa — it is mandatory, and the visa will not issue without it. But it is priced by insurers based on age, cover level and provider, not by the immigration office, so it varies far too much to fold into a government-fee estimate. A basic plan might be a few hundred dirhams a year per person; comprehensive family cover, several thousand. Price it separately with a health-insurance tool and add it to your family-visa budget. Visa stamping and typing — the document-processing and PRO service charges levied by typing centres or agents who submit your paperwork — are not government fees either and vary by provider; expect a few hundred dirhams per application if you do not process everything yourself through the ICP app or GDRFA channels.

Document attestation and translation round out the extras. Marriage certificates, birth certificates and educational documents issued abroad generally need to be attested (in the country of origin and by the UAE authorities) and, where not in Arabic, legally translated — each of which carries its own fee and lead time. None of this is a visa fee, so none of it appears in the calculator’s total, but all of it is part of the true cost of a family relocation. The number the calculator gives you is the clean, uniform government-fee baseline; the insurance, service and document layers are what you add for your own situation.

Method, sources (ICP/GDRFA) & honest limits

The calculator sums the standard family-visa government fees per dependent and multiplies by the number of dependents. Precisely: each dependent carries an entry permit (~AED 100), medical fitness test (~AED 320), Emirates ID (~AED 370 on a 2-year card, ~AED 270 on a 1-year one), status change (~AED 500) and residence-permit issuance (~AED 240) — about AED 1,530 in fees on a two-year permit — plus a refundable AED 2,000 security deposit, for roughly AED 3,530 per person. The eligibility check compares your monthly salary to the national threshold: AED 4,000, or AED 3,000 with employer accommodation. A spouse or child’s residence visa is issued for 2 years; a parent sponsored by an expatriate gets 1 year, renewable annually, so the calculator also shows what each renewal costs. Both typically process in 4–6 weeks.

The figures follow the published schedules of the Federal Authority for Identity and Citizenship (ICP) and the General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA) in Dubai, and the salary rule follows the UAE government portal u.ae (“Residence visa for family members”): “the sponsor must have a minimum salary of AED 4,000 or AED 3,000 plus accommodation.” Fees and the threshold are uniform nationwide; only the processing authority (GDRFA in Dubai, the ICP elsewhere) differs by emirate.

Three honest limits. First, this is a planning estimate, not a quote or immigration advice: exact fees vary slightly by channel (ICP app, typing centre, Amer/Tas-heel), and edge cases — parents, domestic staff, urgent processing, or a lapsed status — carry different rules and costs. Second, it deliberately excludes mandatory health insurance (priced by insurers), visa-stamping and typing-centre service charges, and document attestation/translation — all real costs you budget separately. Third, the parental-sponsorship route has a much higher salary requirement (~AED 20,000) and extra deposit and insurance conditions the standard model here does not apply. Content last verified July 2026. For every other visa type, use the full UAE visa cost calculator.

UAE visas & family sponsorship — frequently asked questions