Moving to Dubai is exciting. Figuring it out alone isn’t.
Wherever you’re coming from, this is the guide for the whole journey, to help you get settled as soon as possible.
It’s everything we wish someone had told us.
You’re coming from the US. You file every year regardless. Zero income tax here doesn't change that, and the FEIE exclusion stops at USD 130,000.
- 152 articles
- 22 parts
- Everything to get you started
- Built by expats, for expats
There is no shortage of advice
There is a shortage of it in one place
You have the visa sorted, or you are still deciding, and now there are a hundred open tabs. Reddit threads, a three-year-old blog post, every Facebook group you could find, and relocation sites that get paid when you sign with their partner. Between them you could eventually answer most of it.
The trouble is the eventually. Most people learn after they have already made the mistake.
We know, we lived it. We got turned away from a government office over a pair of shorts. Then an electricity and water bill arrived carrying a 5% housing fee nobody had mentioned at the viewing, and it turned out to be an annual charge rather than a one-off.
None of it was written down in one place.
So we started keeping notes.
What is actually in it
The kind of specific advice we mean
The things that make the transition easier, not just the high level.
Budget
A single person earning AED 25,000 a month can save roughly AED 13,000. For a family, international school fees of AED 25,000 to 110,000 per child a year can erase that entire tax advantage.
Part 1, Is Dubai Right for You? Here's How to Tell
Freelancing
The honest first-year total for a free zone freelance permit is roughly AED 12,000 to 18,000, not the AED 5,750 headline.
Part 3, The Freelance Permit: What It Costs and What It Lets You Do
Tax
Income tax is 0%, and that is where most guides stop. There is a 5% housing fee inside your DEWA bill, and the 30% alcohol tax came back in 2025.
Part 5, Do You Actually Pay Any Tax in Dubai?
Housing
On an AED 80,000 rent, expect AED 26,000 to 47,500 in one-time move-in costs. Agency fee, deposits, Ejari and furnishing, all on top of the first cheque.
Part 6, The Move-In Costs Nobody Puts in the Listing Price
Healthcare
Dental and optical sit outside Dubai's mandatory Minimum Essential Benefits, so an AED 800 to 4,500 root canal can leave you owing most of the bill on a policy that claims cover.
Part 8, Dentists and Opticians in Dubai: The Real Costs
Transport
RTA's direct-exchange list covers 57 countries. Hold one of those licences and same-day conversion runs AED 950 to 1,500. Miss the list and it's the full driving-school route instead.
Part 10, Converting Your Foreign Licence to a UAE Driving Licence
We’ve covered the whole move, in order
Twenty-two parts laid along the move itself.
Pick where you are and see what that stage usually gets wrong.
Before you decide
This is not for you if…
You want legal, tax or immigration advice
We are not lawyers, accountants or agents. The articles on visas, money, housing, work and the law name the authority they draw from, so you can take a real question to a real professional, better briefed than you were.
You have already lived here for years
Most of this will be things you worked out the hard way. The parts on leaving and on wills might still earn their keep. The rest of it will not.
You are moving somewhere else in the Gulf
This is written for Dubai. Some of it carries across the rest of the UAE, but visas, leases and costs work differently in Riyadh, Doha or Muscat, and we do not cover them.
You want someone to file the paperwork for you
This explains what to file, in what order, and what it costs. It does not do it on your behalf, and it is not a relocation service. Nobody pays us to send you anywhere either, so when you do need a professional, we tell you which kind, not which company.
One-time payment. No subscription.
- All 152 articles across 22 parts
- Checklists that save your progress
- Search across the whole guide
- Read on any device
Buy now at the launch price and save $20.
Instant access. You’re reading within a minute of paying.
Prices in USD. Any local tax is added at checkout.
The questions people actually ask
Why pay $39 when Reddit and Facebook groups are free?
Free information is genuinely useful and we still use those groups ourselves. But it is written to answer whatever the original poster happened to ask, at whatever moment they asked it, and nobody goes back afterwards to organise it. We have done the digging and the sorting, and put it all in the order you will actually need it.
Does anyone pay you to recommend things?
No. The guide earns from one place, the readers who buy it. No agent, bank, visa firm, school or free zone pays us for a mention, and there are no referral links anywhere in it. When an article names a bank or an area, it is because we think it fits the situation it describes, and when there is a cheaper route than the one a company would sell you, we say so.
Who are you, and why should I trust you?
We are a couple who moved to Dubai from Australia and worked most of it out the slow way: a lot of searching, a few expensive surprises, and more than one wasted trip to a government office. Somewhere along the way we started writing down everything we wished we had known on day one, and those notes grew into this guide. You do not have to take our word for any of it. 4 articles are free to read, so you can judge it for yourself before you pay anything.
What exactly am I paying for?
The whole guide: all 152 articles across 22 parts, from deciding whether to move, through landing and settling in, to eventually leaving. Each one gives you the real figures, the order to do things in, and our honest take on which option is the right one when there is more than one. You also get checklists that save your progress, search across everything, and access on any device, all for one payment. To see exactly what each part covers, browse the contents.
How do I know the information is accurate?
The articles on visas, money, housing, work and the law name the authority they draw from, whether that is GDRFA, ICP, MOHRE, DEWA or the Federal Tax Authority, and every article is dated. Rules here change. Anything consequential, check against the source we name. We tell you which one that is.
How do I know this applies to me? We are not Australian, not moving for a corporate job, and we have kids.
The 22 parts follow the move itself, so visas, housing, money and settling in are the same shape whatever passport you hold. Family-specific and single-mover-specific articles are flagged inside the parts that need them, and the free reads let you see exactly how it is written before you pay.
I will not need all 152 articles. Most of them will not apply to me.
True, and it is true of any guide covering a full move. The parts are organised by what is happening in your move right now, so you use the five or six that match this month and come back for the rest when they become relevant.
You’ve got the move.
We’ve got the rest of it written down.
The mistakes are cheap to read about and expensive to make.
Buy now at the launch price and save $20.