Every UAE residence route, with the sources

Most published guidance on UAE residence is either a sales page or a summary of a summary. This is a register: what each route requires, which authority decides it, what the government charges, and when we last checked. Where we could not verify a figure against a primary government source, the figure is absent rather than estimated.

The routes

Two figures above are deliberately absent. The Green Visa investor threshold is not stated on any UAE government page we could reach, and the retirement route's monthly income test differs between the Dubai and federal schedules in a way we have not been able to reconcile from primary sources. Both are widely quoted elsewhere with a confidence the underlying sources do not support.

Where the official sources contradict each other

On the AED 2,000,000 real-estate route, UAE government sources do not agree with one another about the term of the permit.

• The ICP overview page lists real-estate investors at five years, and the federal u.ae portal renders the same entry.
• The ICP service-detail page for the same route states ten years.
• GDRFA Dubai states ten years, extendable if the same conditions continue to be met.
• The Dubai Land Department states a ten-year renewable residence permit.

We are not in a position to resolve a contradiction between two pages of the same federal authority, and we will not pretend otherwise. What we can say is that the bodies which actually transact the application, DLD, GDRFA and the ICP service desk, all issue on a ten-year basis. The five-year entry appears consistent with the pre-2022 long-term-visa schedule, when AED 5,000,000 bought five years and AED 10,000,000 bought ten. We have asked ICP for written confirmation and will publish the answer here with its date.

Anyone quoting one of these figures to you without mentioning the other has either not checked or has decided which answer suits them.

The two-year permit costs more than the ten-year one

This surprises almost everyone, and it is simply what the published fee schedules say.

The shorter permit costs more in absolute terms and roughly five times more per year. For a buyer sitting below AED 2,000,000, the honest question is not which permit is cheaper but whether the gap to the threshold is smaller than the cost of renewing the short permit repeatedly. Often it is. Sometimes it is not, and where it is not we say so.

The rule that quietly ends residences

An ordinary UAE residence permit lapses after 180 consecutive days outside the country. Golden Residence and Green Visa holders are exempt.

For anyone who genuinely lives across borders this is frequently the deciding factor, and it is the reason a cheaper permit is sometimes the wrong permit. It is also the most common way people discover, at an airport, that a permit they believed was valid is not.

Overstaying now carries a flat AED 50 per day across all seven emirates under the ICP unified fine system introduced in February 2026. Figures of AED 100 and above still circulate widely in published guidance and are out of date.

Dubai and Abu Dhabi are not the same jurisdiction

Almost all published guidance describes Dubai and calls it the UAE. Dubai residence runs through GDRFA and, for property, the Dubai Land Department. The other six emirates run through ICP federally, with Abu Dhabi adding its own residents office and its own financial free zone in ADGM.

The practical differences matter most to buyers using finance. Dubai accepts mortgaged property toward the Golden Visa threshold where a bank letter of no objection and evidence of the amount paid are produced. Abu Dhabi is reported to apply a stricter test based on equity net of the mortgage, with financing permitted only through UAE national banks. We have not yet confirmed the Abu Dhabi position against a primary source and are not going to state it as settled until we have, but if it holds it changes which emirate a financed buyer should purchase in, and we have not seen it stated clearly anywhere else.

How to use this page

There is no universal winner among these routes. The right one turns on how much time you will actually spend in the country, whether you are employed or self-employed, who is coming with you and what your position looks like in the country you are leaving.

Every figure here is either verified against a UAE government source or absent. Where we have flagged something as unconfirmed, that is a genuine gap in the public record rather than a hedge. If you are weighing two routes against each other, the comparison that matters is rarely the headline threshold: it is the term, the absence rule, the family terms and what happens at renewal.