Where to live in the United Arab Emirates
We track 3 cities in the United Arab Emirates: Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah. Average temperatures run from 28°C to 29°C. We estimate a couple needs €3,402 to €3,499 a month to live centrally. The United Arab Emirates sits in our zero or very low tax tier. For citizens from outside the Gulf Cooperation Council states, long-term residency is comparatively open.
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- Tax tier
- Zero or very low
- Little to no personal income tax
- Languages
- Arabic, English
- Some English
- Safety
- 85/100
- country-level
- Healthcare
- 70/100
- country-level
- Internet
- 300+ Mbps
- median fixed broadband
The 3 cities we track
Source: City size from GeoNames, temperature from the Open-Meteo archive (2019 to 2023 averages), rainfall from TerraClimate (1991 to 2020 normals), coast distance from Natural Earth. Cost is our model estimate for a couple living centrally.
Taxes
The United Arab Emirates sits in our zero or very low tax tier: little to no personal income tax. The tier applies to every city here, and couples who cap tax below it will not see these cities in their results.
Source: OurNextCity tax tiers, assigned by hand from each country's top marginal personal income tax rate and overall tax reputation, with no fixed rate cut-offs. Coarse by design; not tax advice.
Residency and visas
Comparatively open, for people from outside the Gulf Cooperation Council states. Long-term residency is realistic via the renewable 10-year Golden Visa (property or capital), the 5-year Green Visa for skilled workers, freelancers, and investors, or a retirement visa for applicants over 55, with no personal income tax; the dirham is pegged at AED 3.6725 to USD 1.
Citizens of the Gulf Cooperation Council states have freedom-of-movement or simplified residency rights here.
It is harder for citizens of Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan.
The cheapest self-funded routes we track for the United Arab Emirates:
- Income: about $4,084 a month (UAE retirement (5-year) visa sufficient-income route, AED 15,000/mo (AED 180,000/yr), single applicant, age 55+ with 15 years' work history; as of June 2026)
- Investment: about $545k (UAE Golden Visa real-estate investor route, AED 2,000,000 in property (same threshold for the public-investment/fund deposit route); as of June 2026)
For short visits, 87 of 198 passports can enter visa-free and 111 can get an e-visa or visa on arrival.
Source: OurNextCity residency dataset, hand-reviewed approximations researched against published immigration rules, figures as of June 2026. Not legal advice: check the official source before you apply. Short-stay entry from the passport-index dataset (ilyankou, MIT).