Real numbers, official sources

Is Dubai Expensive?

A real daily budget from people who live here, and private city tours from USD 23 per person.

Cheap to move around, expensive to sleep and drink. Official metro fares, three real daily budgets, and our own prices in full.

Is Dubai expensive? The short answer

Is US$100 a day enough in Dubai?

Yes, comfortably, if the hotel is booked separately. US$100 covers transport, three meals, one paid attraction and a margin. It does not cover a room in a beach resort, and it does not survive a night of hotel-bar drinking.

Here is a realistic day at that budget, in dirhams because that is what you pay in, with US dollar estimates at the 3.6725 peg.

Restaurant and attraction figures in that table are typical mid-range tourist prices as reported by the travel guide Full Suitcase. The metro figure is from the official RTA fare table and is exact. Prices move; the structure does not.

What three realistic budgets actually buy

Per person per day, excluding flights and excluding the hotel room, because the room is the single biggest variable and it swamps everything else.

The careful column is not a hardship trip. Dubai’s beaches, its souks, the creek and the fountain show are all free, and the metro is air-conditioned and excellent. It is entirely possible to have a very good week here without ever paying for a view.

How much for a week? Multiply the daily figure by seven, flights and the hotel room still sit on top, since the room remains the single biggest variable and is not included in any of the three columns above.

How much does getting around Dubai cost?

Very little, and this is the part travellers consistently overestimate. A Silver Nol card journey within one zone is USD 0.82 / AED 3, two adjacent zones USD 1.36 / AED 5, three or more zones USD 2.04 / AED 7.5. Children five and under travel free. These are the official published fares, not estimates.

Source: RTA’s official Nol fares table. Gold class is the front carriage and costs exactly double, it is a comfort purchase, not a faster train. Seven-day passes run from USD 16.35 / AED 60 depending on zones and card type, and thirty-day passes from USD 38 / AED 140.

Taxis are metered and, by the standards of any large Western city, cheap. Where cost appears is the airport run and the long crossings, Marina to the airport at rush hour is a real fare. If you are landing and want a fixed number rather than a meter, our Dubai airport taxi page sets out the official meter structure honestly, including when the taxi genuinely beats us.

Why the hotel decides everything

The room is the budget. Everything else on this page put together is usually smaller than the difference between a Deira business hotel and a Palm Jumeirah resort for the same week.

Three structural things worth knowing before you book.

Location changes your daily spend, not just your nightly rate. A cheap hotel far from a metro station converts into two taxis a day, every day. Price the transport into the room.

There is a per-night municipality charge on hotel stays, the Tourism Dirham, which is levied per room per night and scales with the hotel’s star rating. It is usually collected at check-out and is not always visible in the online rate you compared. The UAE government portal puts it at AED 7 to 20 per room per night, depending on the hotel category, for up to 30 consecutive nights.

Season swings the rate more than anything you can control. Rooms are dearest from roughly November to March, when the weather is perfect, and cheapest in high summer. Our guide to the best time to visit Dubai covers the trade-off in full.

How much is a meal in Dubai?

From about USD 4.08 / AED 15 to USD 82 / AED 300 for the same hunger. Dubai has one of the widest food price ranges of any city, because it feeds a very large working population and a very small luxury one in the same square kilometre.

The tiers, and where residents actually eat:

• Cafeterias and Pakistani, Indian and Filipino canteens. A filling meal in the USD 4–8 / AED 15–30 band. These are all over Deira, Bur Dubai and Karama, they are busy, and the food is very good.
• Food courts and casual chains. Roughly USD 8–14 / AED 30–50 a head.
• Mid-range restaurants. Mains in the USD 11–27 / AED 40–100 band, per Full Suitcase. Soft drinks USD 4–5 / AED 15–18.
• Hotel restaurants. Where the reputation comes from. Easily USD 54–109 / AED 200–400 a head before drinks.

The single biggest food saving in Dubai is not eating less, it is eating where the residents eat. A city with a majority-expatriate population has extremely good cheap food, and almost none of it is in a hotel.

Alcohol is what makes Dubai look expensive

Because alcohol is only served in licensed venues, which are overwhelmingly hotels, a drink in Dubai is priced as a hotel drink. There is no cheap-bar tier to fall back on the way there is with food.

That single structural fact distorts almost every “Dubai is expensive” account you will read. Two people having three drinks each in a hotel bar can spend more in one evening than a careful traveller spends in three days.

If you do not drink, Dubai is dramatically cheaper than its reputation, and the non-alcoholic menus here are genuinely good rather than an afterthought. We have set out the rules and the practicalities on can you drink alcohol in Dubai.

What a desert safari costs, from the operator

This is the one section where we are quoting our own prices rather than reporting someone else’s. A desert safari from Dubai with us is USD 190 / AED 699 for a private car and USD 272 / AED 999 for a private Land Cruiser, that is the whole vehicle and the driver-guide, not a price per person.

Read the units, because this is exactly where desert safari pricing misleads people. USD 10 / AED 35 per person and USD 190 / AED 699 per car are not competing offers, one is a transport ticket to the camp, the other is a vehicle and a driver for the evening. Four people in the private car works out around USD 54 / AED 200 each; two people are better off on a shared seat and we will say so on the phone.

The full arithmetic, including where a shared seat genuinely beats us, is on desert safari Dubai price.

We are a licensed operator, DCT Abu Dhabi, we own our camp rather than sharing one, and you pay on the day rather than up front, which matters on a page about money, because it means a booking costs you nothing until it happens.

Paid attractions: the real budget killer

Dubai’s headline attractions are priced like theme parks, and stacking three of them into one trip will cost more than a week of everything else.

Reported ranges, from Full Suitcase: Burj Khalifa At The Top around EUR 35 per person, rising to about EUR 95 for the higher Sky level; Dubai Aquarium around EUR 35; Aquaventure waterpark USD 87 / AED 320 adult and USD 71 / AED 260 child; a marina dhow cruise around USD 114 / AED 420. Those are third-party figures, quoted as reported, and they change with season and booking channel.

Two honest observations from operating here. First, the observation decks sell a view of a city you can see for nothing from a dozen public places. Second, the attraction that visitors consistently rate highest at the end of a trip is the desert, not a building, and the desert is a fraction of the price of stacking decks and aquariums.

If you are choosing what to pay for, our guides to things to do in Dubai and free things to do in Dubai separate the two.

What costs nothing at all

A genuinely full day in Dubai, at zero admission cost:

• The Dubai Fountain, shows through the evening, free, and the best views are from the public promenade rather than a restaurant table.
• Public beaches, Jumeirah, JBR, Kite Beach. Free, clean, lifeguarded.
• The creek and the abra crossing, the wooden water taxi is one of the cheapest and best things in the city.
• The gold and spice souks, free to walk, and the best photographs in Dubai are here rather than Downtown.
• Al Fahidi historical district, the old wind-tower quarter, free to wander.
• Dubai Marina and JBR walk, free, and spectacular after dark.
• Mall of the Emirates and Dubai Mall, free air conditioning, free aquarium viewing from the walkway, free fountain views.

Anyone claiming Dubai cannot be done cheaply has not tried. The city is expensive to consume and free to look at.

Why Dubai has the expensive reputation

Because the version of Dubai that gets photographed is the expensive one. Five structural reasons, none of which are about the city being costly in general.

The marketing shows one tier

Beach resorts, brunches, observation decks, yacht photos. That is a real Dubai and it is genuinely expensive. It is also perhaps a tenth of the city.

Alcohol is hotel-priced by law

Covered above, and it is the single biggest distorter of holiday spend.

Visitors book the wrong location

Booking a beach address and then commuting into the city by taxi twice a day is expensive in a way that has nothing to do with Dubai’s price level.

Attractions are stacked

People arrive with a list of six paid attractions for four days. Any city becomes expensive on that plan.

Nobody counts the things that are cheap

The metro, the food where residents eat, the beaches, the souks, the taxis. There is no tax on income here and no sales tax on most everyday purchases beyond VAT, and everyday goods are not expensive by international standards.

Eleven ways to cut a Dubai bill

1. Stay within walking distance of a metro station. The single highest-value decision on this list.
2. Buy a Silver Nol card at the airport and use the metro as your default.
3. Eat one meal a day in a cafeteria. USD 5 / AED 20 instead of USD 25 / AED 90, and often better food.
4. Travel outside November to March if you can tolerate heat. Room rates fall sharply.
5. Pick one observation experience, not three.
6. Do the free half of the city properly, creek, souks, beaches, fountain.
7. Book the desert as a private car for a group rather than per person, if there are four or more of you.
8. Skip hotel breakfast unless it is included. A bakery breakfast is a fifth of the price.
9. Carry a refillable water bottle. Small, but Dubai is hot and bought water adds up fast.
10. Decide your drinking budget before you go out, because hotel-bar rounds are where the day’s plan dies.
11. Pay in dirhams, always. If a card terminal offers to charge you in your home currency, decline, the exchange rate applied is worse than your bank’s.

How Dubai compares

Dubai’s day-to-day costs sit broadly in line with a major Western European or North American city, with two clear exceptions in each direction.

Read that table and the answer to the question falls out on its own. Dubai is expensive at exactly the two things a holiday is built around, the room and the drinks, and cheap at almost everything else. Manage those two and the city is not an expensive place to visit.

Named against specific cities rather than a generic “typical Western city”, the same pattern holds. Figures below are as reported by the travel guide Radical Storage.

Which of our pages do you need?

Where these numbers come from

Official and exact. The Nol fare table, USD 0.82 / AED 3 within one zone, USD 1.36 / AED 5 across two adjacent zones, USD 2.04 / AED 7.5 for three or more, Gold double, children five and under free, seven-day passes from USD 16.35 / AED 60 and thirty-day from USD 38 / AED 140, is from RTA’s own published Nol fares page.

Ours, and exact. USD 10 / AED 35 self-drive, USD 16.35 / AED 60 shared coach, USD 41 / AED 150 private pickup, USD 190 / AED 699 private car safari, USD 272 / AED 999 private Land Cruiser, USD 218 / AED 800 per 30 minutes for the dune buggy with a two-hour minimum. These are our own current prices.

Third party, quoted as reported. Restaurant, attraction and waterpark ranges are from the travel guide Full Suitcase, and are presented as that publication’s reported figures rather than our own measurements. They move with season and booking channel.

Currency. The dirham is pegged to the US dollar at 3.6725, which is why the dollar estimates here are stable. You pay in dirhams; dollar figures are for comparison only.

Not verified, therefore not published. The current Tourism Dirham amounts by hotel category, we have marked that blank rather than guess at a charge you will actually be asked to pay.

Royal Arabian Safari is a licensed operator, DCT Abu Dhabi.

Dubai and the desert, on our tours

Dubai costs: the questions people actually ask

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