Insurance in Dubai, and everything else nobody warns you about
Your offer letter says nothing about Ejari, the DHA, or why your bank wants a salary certificate. We wrote the guides we needed when we landed. Every price on this site carries the source it came from.
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- Every figure sourced
- 15 guides, free to read
What you must have, what it costs, what it leaves out
Health cover is a legal requirement and your visa renewal depends on it. The rest is a judgement call, and the exclusions matter more than the premium. Pick the guide that matches where you are.
Insurance in Dubai: the complete guide
Health, car, home, life, travel and takaful in one place. Who needs what, what the law says, and how to read a policy before you sign it.
What health insurance really costs
The Essential Benefits Plan sits near AED 600 a year, not the five thousand people repeat online. Private cover averages AED 3,000 to 4,000. Here is where each dirham goes, and what pushes it up.
Travel insurance for expats and visitors
Your Dubai plan usually stops at the border. Single trip against annual multi-trip, what a Schengen application actually requires, and the exclusions people discover at the hospital desk.
Also inside the main guide: car cover home and tenant life takaful business
Your first ninety days, in the order they have to happen
The sequence is not optional. Your visa unlocks the bank account, the account unlocks the tenancy, and the tenancy unlocks almost everything else. Skip a step and you wait a fortnight.
Get the right visa
Tourist, work permit, Green Visa, Golden Visa. Which one fits your situation, what it costs, and how long each stage really takes.
Open a bank account
Which banks say yes to newcomers, the minimum balance traps, and the digital options that skip the branch queue entirely.
Arrive prepared
The documents to certify before you leave, what to pack for the first month, and the local rules that catch newcomers out in week one.
Build a realistic budget
Rent, schooling, groceries, transport and utilities across three lifestyles, so you can see where your own salary actually lands.
The salary is only half the conversation
Housing allowance, flights home, school fees and no income tax change the maths completely once you compare an offer here with one back home.
Which sectors are actually hiring
Realistic salary bands by role, where the recruiters look, and how to negotiate the parts of a package that matter more than the base figure.
Free zone or mainland, and where to put your desk
What a trade licence adds to the bill, which districts justify their rent, and the setup costs that only appear at signature.
Why there is no income tax, and where the money comes from
The 9% corporate tax introduced in 2023 applies to company profit above AED 375,000. Salaries stay untouched. Here is what that means for your payslip.
Dubai makes more sense once you know how it got here
A little background makes the culture, the pace and the prices far easier to read. These five are the ones our readers finish.
Fifteen reasons that hold up beyond the postcard
What is genuinely worth your weekend, and what is a queue with a view.
Oil was the start, not the story
Where the money comes from now that petroleum is a small slice of the emirate’s income.
From creek-side trading post to skyline
The decisions that built the city, and the ones that nearly sank it in 2009.
Where to buy an abaya
The shops locals send you to, and the difference between the rules and the rumours.
Skydiving over the Palm
Prices, drop zones, and how to book the jump everyone photographs.
Everything we publish, newest first: browse all fifteen guides
Why people come, and why they stay
We would rather give you a smaller number we can back than a rounder one we cannot. Where a figure is disputed, we say so.
Personal income tax
Nothing on salaries, dividends or capital gains. Companies pay 9% on profit above AED 375,000.
UAE Federal Tax AuthoritySafest city worldwide
Dubai scores 83.8. Five of the ten safest cities on the index are in the UAE, with Abu Dhabi first.
Numbeo Safety Index 2026Of residents are expats
Around 3.7 million people live here. Being foreign is the norm, not the exception.
Dubai Statistics CenterPrivate schools
Seventeen curricula across 387,441 pupils. Fees are frozen for the 2026-27 year.
KHDASix questions we answer every week
Short answers with 2026 figures. The long versions live in the guides.
Yes. Every resident must hold valid cover, and your employer is legally required to arrange and pay for yours. They cannot take it out of your salary.
Sponsoring a spouse, children or parents makes their cover your responsibility, not your employer’s. A lapsed policy blocks your visa renewal, so treat the renewal date as a hard deadline.
Less than most newcomers expect at the bottom of the range. The Essential Benefits Plan, the minimum for anyone earning AED 4,000 a month or less, costs roughly AED 600–1,000 a year and caps claims at AED 150,000.
Above that, a private individual plan averages AED 3,000–4,000. Wider hospital networks run AED 3,000–7,000. International cover with maternity reaches AED 10,000–20,000 and beyond. Age, medical history and your hospital network move the price far more than the brand on the card. Full breakdown in the cost guide.
Two are compulsory: health cover for every resident, and third-party car insurance if you own the vehicle. Third-party runs AED 450–1,000 a year, comprehensive AED 1,200–5,000.
The rest is your call. Tenant contents cover starts near AED 200 a year and pays for itself the first time a neighbour’s pipe bursts. Life cover matters if anyone depends on your salary. Travel cover matters every time you leave the country. The main guide works through each one.
Partly. Visitors can buy short-term travel and medical cover with no visa at all, sometimes under AED 100 for a single trip. Full local health plans generally need a valid residence visa first.
The practical route is to travel insured, then switch to a resident policy once your visa is stamped. Our travel insurance guide covers what to buy in the gap.
The names you meet most often are Daman, Sukoon (the former Oman Insurance, renamed in 2022), GIG Gulf (formerly AXA Gulf, rebranded the same year), Cigna, Bupa Global and MetLife.
There is no single best one. Cigna and Bupa lead on international networks. Daman and Sukoon compete hard on DHA-compliant local plans. Compare the hospital list, the co-pay and the exclusions before you compare the premium, because that is where the real difference sits.
A male sponsor needs AED 4,000 a month, or AED 3,000 plus employer-provided accommodation. A housing allowance on your payslip does not count: your employer has to certify that housing is actually provided.
A female sponsor needs AED 10,000, or AED 8,000 with accommodation. Sponsoring parents requires AED 20,000, reduced to AED 10,000 through the humanitarian route at a Dubai Amer centre. Golden Visa holders face no threshold. The visa guide covers the paperwork.
Ask us the thing you cannot find an answer to
We read every message ourselves. If we do not know, we say so rather than guess, and we go and find out.