UAE Green Visa Cost 2026: Every Fee By Authority

Why the UAE Green Visa cost has no single number

The Green Visa is a five-year renewable residence permit that you sponsor yourself, which the official portal describes as carrying the privilege of not needing a sponsor and the ability to sponsor family members including spouses and children. That independence is the product. It is also why the cost fragments: with no employer carrying the file, every authority bills you directly.

There are four of them, plus one. The Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation issues the work permit that makes you eligible. GDRFA Dubai or the ICP issues the entry permit, then the residence permit. A health authority sells the medical fitness certificate. The ICP issues the Emirates ID. And a UAE-licensed insurer sells the policy the residence permit requires. Each of those is a separate transaction on a separate schedule.

Three of the ranges in circulation — AED 2,300 to 6,000, AED 2,500 to 5,500, AED 12,000 to 20,000 — are all defensible depending on which of those six purchases you fold in and which emirate you file in. None of them is wrong so much as unusable, because a range that wide cannot tell you whether the quote in front of you is fair.

So we did the only thing that resolves it, which is to read each authority's own service sheet and write down what it charges. The government lines turn out to be small, stable and published. The two large numbers are the MOHRE permit and the insurance, and only one of those is knowable in advance.

• MOHRE — the self-employment or high-level skilled worker permit that establishes eligibility.
• GDRFA Dubai or the ICP — the entry permit, then the five-year residence permit.
• A health authority — the medical fitness certificate, priced by turnaround tier.
• The ICP — the Emirates ID, priced per year of residence.
• A UAE-licensed insurer — the health policy the residence permit requires.

What GDRFA Dubai publishes for the entry permit

The first immigration charge is the entry permit, and GDRFA Dubai runs two versions of the service: one for the high-level skilled worker and one for self-employment. Their fee tables are identical. The sheet lists a work visa fee of AED 200 with value-added tax at 5 per cent, a Knowledge Dirham of AED 10, an Innovation Dirham of AED 10, and a fee inside the country of AED 500.

That AED 500 line is the one to watch, because it is described as the fee inside the country. It applies when you are converting status without leaving, which is the normal case for someone already in the UAE on an employment or family visa. An applicant entering from abroad is on a different footing, so ask which basis your quote was built on.

The entry permit itself is a short-lived document. GDRFA's sheet says the foreigner is granted a work entry visa that permits the holder to remain in the country for sixty days from the date of entry, or until the processes for granting residence have been completed. It is a bridge to the residence permit, not the residence permit.

Processing is quoted at 48 hours on both sheets, through digital channels, Amer centres or customer happiness centres. The Amer route is where typing and service-centre charges appear, and those are levied by the centre rather than by GDRFA, so they will never show up on the official sheet you are checking the quote against.

• Work visa fee: AED 200, plus value-added tax at 5 per cent.
• Knowledge Dirham: AED 10. Innovation Dirham: AED 10.
• Fee inside the country: AED 500.
• Stated processing time: 48 hours. Entry permit validity: 60 days from entry.

GDRFA adds that the total amount of the visa may vary depending on the circumstances surrounding the sponsored person or for other reasons that may require it. Treat the published lines as the floor, not a fixed price.

The residence permit, and the AED 100 annual escalator

Once the entry permit is in hand, the residence permit is a second, separate transaction with its own sheet and its own fees. GDRFA Dubai lists a residence permit fee of AED 200, a Knowledge Dirham of AED 10, an Innovation Dirham of AED 10, a fee inside the country of AED 500, and delivery at AED 20. The same lines appear on both the high skilled worker sheet and the self-employment sheet.

Add the two stages together and the Dubai immigration side of a Green Visa comes to roughly AED 1,470 for a single applicant converting inside the country, before the medical, the Emirates ID, the insurance or the MOHRE permit. That is a far smaller number than the headline ranges imply, and it is the part of the quote you can check line by line.

Then there is the line nobody quotes. Both residence sheets carry the sentence that the issuance fee increases by AED 100 annually whenever the residency is over two years. A Green Visa is five years by definition, so the escalator applies to every one of them. What the sheet does not do is spell out how it compounds across a five-year permit, and we are not going to invent the arithmetic — ask GDRFA or your Amer centre to show you the applied figure before you pay.

The other thing these sheets establish is the grace period, and it is the Green Visa's quiet advantage. GDRFA states that the grace period to stay inside the country after the expiration of the residence permit or its cancellation is 180 days. On a standard employment residence permit that window is far shorter, which is precisely why a freelancer between contracts values this permit.

• Residence permit fee: AED 200. Knowledge Dirham: AED 10. Innovation Dirham: AED 10.
• Fee inside the country: AED 500. Delivery: AED 20.
• Stated escalator: the issuance fee increases by AED 100 annually whenever the residency is over two years.
• Grace period after expiry or cancellation: 180 days.
• Entry permit and residence permit combined, single applicant, in-country: about AED 1,470.

The MOHRE permit is the one number nobody publishes

Both GDRFA sheets put the same condition first: obtaining a permit from the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation is step one. For the skilled route that is the High-Level Skilled Worker permit. For the freelance route it is the self-employment permit. Without it there is no entry permit application to make, so this is not an optional line in the quote.

It is also, on the evidence of the quotes people are shown, the largest line. And here is the part that should change how you read any Green Visa cost guide: MOHRE does not publish a fee for it on its public service pages. The official portal's work permit page lists thirteen permit types, describes the freelance work permit as issued to individuals who wish to engage in freelance work independently without being sponsored by an employer, and gives no price for it.

The portal does publish a general work permit fee band of AED 250 to AED 3,450 depending on the company's classification. That band is built around employer-sponsored permits and a classification system that a self-sponsoring freelancer sits outside of, so reading your own cost off it is guesswork. We checked MOHRE's own services directory and its fees enquiry page and found no self-employment line.

The figures circulating in third-party guides — AED 500 for the federal MOHRE permit, AED 5,500 to AED 25,000 a year for free-zone freelance permits through zones such as GoFreelance, twofour54, IFZA or RAKEZ — come from providers and setup agents, not from the ministry. They may well be accurate. They are simply not sourced, and the honest thing to do is treat this line as unknown until you have it in writing from MOHRE or the free zone itself.

This is the single biggest reason a Green Visa quote can be inflated without being obviously wrong. The government lines are checkable against published sheets; the permit line is not, which is where margin hides.

Medical fitness and Emirates ID, priced from the schedules

Two costs land on every residence permit regardless of route, and both have published schedules that most cost guides ignore in favour of a rounded estimate. The first is the medical fitness test. Dubai Health Authority's Medical Fitness Centres Service Catalogue prices the regular service at AED 250 with a 24-working-hour result, the express service at AED 700 at six working hours, the Smart Salem centre at AED 700 for a 30-minute result, and the VIP service at AED 1,020 at two working hours.

The certificate is the same in every tier. What you are buying is turnaround, which means a quote built on AED 1,020 and a quote built on AED 250 are selling you identical paperwork at a four-fold price difference. Anyone quoting you a flat AED 300 to AED 700 for the medical has picked a tier on your behalf without telling you.

The second is the Emirates ID, and this is where the published schedule and the cost guides diverge most sharply. The ICP prices the card at AED 100 for each year of residence, plus AED 100 in smart service fees, plus AED 150 if you want it urgently. A five-year Green Visa card is therefore AED 600. We have seen AED 370 and AED 570 quoted for the same card in Green Visa guides; neither matches the ICP's own schedule.

Health insurance is the third, and the one we will not put a number on. A UAE-licensed policy is a condition of the residence permit, pricing depends on age, cover level and emirate, and the spread between a basic mandatory-scheme policy and comprehensive family cover is wide enough that any single figure here would mislead. Get a quote for your own circumstances and treat it as a separate budget line.

• Medical fitness, Dubai published tiers: AED 250 regular, AED 700 express, AED 700 Smart Salem, AED 1,020 VIP.
• Emirates ID: AED 100 per year of residence, so AED 500 for five years, plus AED 100 smart service fees.
• Urgent Emirates ID service: AED 150 on top.
• Running total for a single in-country applicant, excluding MOHRE and insurance: roughly AED 2,320 to AED 3,090.

Health authority fees differ by emirate and change without notice, and the Dubai catalogue above does not price an Abu Dhabi or Sharjah file. Confirm the tier and the price with the centre you will actually attend before you budget for it.

What the two income routes ask before any fee is due

The fees only matter if you qualify, and the Green Visa has three doors with very different tests. The ICP's Green Residence guide sets out the skilled worker route as requiring a valid employment contract within the UAE, a professional classification from levels 1 to 3, a qualification of no less than a bachelor's degree, and a minimum monthly salary of AED 15,000 or its equivalent. GDRFA's sheet states the same four conditions.

The freelance and self-employed route is the one most people reading a cost guide are on. It asks for a freelance work permit or self-employment permit, a qualification of no less than a bachelor's degree, a specialised diploma or equivalent, and proof of stable annual income or financial solvency. The income test is specific: annual income from freelance work during the previous two years must not be less than AED 360,000.

Read that carefully, because it is a two-year lookback, not a projection. AED 360,000 a year is roughly AED 30,000 a month, and you need to evidence it for the two years behind you. GDRFA's self-employment sheet offers an alternative of proof of financial solvency throughout your stay, which is the escape hatch for someone with assets but lumpy invoicing, and it is worth asking about rather than assuming you are excluded.

The investor and business partner route is the vaguest of the three. The ICP asks for proof of investment or contribution to a business venture within the UAE and the necessary licences and approvals from the relevant authorities, and publishes no capital threshold for it. That is not an oversight you can plan around — it means the approving authority decides, and a provider quoting you a firm threshold is quoting their own experience, not a rule.

• Skilled worker: valid UAE employment contract, MOHRE classification levels 1 to 3, bachelor's degree minimum, AED 15,000 monthly salary minimum.
• Freelancer or self-employed: MOHRE freelance or self-employment permit, bachelor's degree or specialised diploma minimum, AED 360,000 annual income across the previous two years, or proof of financial solvency.
• Investor or business partner: proof of investment in a UAE venture plus the required licences and approvals, with no published capital figure.

Green Visa against Golden Visa on cost

The comparison people actually want is whether to spend the same effort on a ten-year Golden Visa instead, and on the government lines the answer is closer than the branding suggests. The Green Visa runs five years; the Golden Visa runs five or ten depending on the category. Because the ICP prices the Emirates ID per year of residence, a ten-year Golden Visa card is AED 1,100 against AED 600 for a five-year Green card — a real difference, but not a decisive one.

The decisive difference is what each one asks of you up front. The Green Visa is bought with income or a contract: AED 15,000 a month as an employee, or AED 360,000 a year as a freelancer across two years. The Golden Visa is bought with an asset, a nomination or a classification — AED 2 million in property, an approved entrepreneurial project, a specialist nomination from an education or health authority. Neither is cheaper in any general sense; they are priced in different currencies.

Where the Green Visa wins outright is renewal cadence and grace. Five years self-sponsored, renewable, with a 180-day window after expiry or cancellation, is a materially safer position than a two-year employment permit for anyone whose income is project-based. Where it loses is duration and the annual permit underneath it: your MOHRE permit and, on the free-zone route, your freelance licence are recurring costs that a Golden Visa holder on a nomination route does not carry in the same form.

Our reading, for a freelancer earning above the threshold but without AED 2 million to place: the Green Visa is the route that matches the evidence you already have, and the Golden Visa is worth the detour only if you sit inside a named specialist category. Neither decision should be made off a fee table alone — approval is the authority's call, and nothing on this page changes that.

• Emirates ID: AED 600 on a five-year Green Visa, AED 1,100 on a ten-year Golden Visa, both from the ICP's per-year schedule.
• Green Visa qualification is income-tested and evidence-heavy; Golden Visa qualification is asset-based or nomination-based.
• Green Visa grace period after expiry or cancellation: 180 days, per GDRFA's own sheets.
• The recurring MOHRE or free-zone permit sits underneath the Green Visa and does not disappear at renewal.

Family sponsorship and what each dependant adds

The Green Visa lets you sponsor your family without an employer in the chain, which the official portal states plainly as the ability to sponsor family members including spouses and children. Abu Dhabi Residents Office goes further on the detail, describing the Abu Dhabi Green Visa as valid for five years and allowing the holder to sponsor sons up to age 25 and unmarried daughters regardless of age — terms more generous than a standard residence visa.

The cost consequence is arithmetic rather than policy. Every person on the file is their own residence permit application, their own Emirates ID at AED 100 per year of residence, their own medical fitness certificate if they are 18 or over, and their own insurance policy. A spouse on a five-year permit is another AED 600 in Emirates ID alone before anything else is counted.

Run a family of four through the published lines and the Emirates ID component by itself is roughly AED 2,400 for five-year cards. Add four residence permits, two or three medical certificates depending on the ages, and four insurance policies, and the household number stops resembling the single-applicant figure that headlines every cost guide, including this one's running total.

Which is the whole point of itemising. A Green Visa quote for a family is not a Green Visa quote for a person plus a bit, and the only way to see that is to price each line per head from the schedules rather than accepting a package number. Ask for it that way and a provider who cannot produce it has told you something useful.

• Each dependant carries their own Emirates ID at AED 100 per year of residence.
• Medical fitness certificates apply per person aged 18 and over, at the same published tiers.
• Abu Dhabi Residents Office states sons may be sponsored up to age 25 and unmarried daughters regardless of age.
• Insurance is per person and is the line least predictable from any published schedule.

Fees, thresholds and eligibility conditions in this area change without notice, and the authority that issues your permit is the only one whose current figures bind you. Confirm every number here with GDRFA, the ICP, MOHRE or the relevant health authority before you commit money. Nothing on this page is legal or immigration advice, and no fee table implies approval.