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What a nanny costs in the UAE, with the sources
The salary is the easy part. This adds up what the state charges on top of it, with the government page behind every line, and then tells you plainly what nobody publishes a figure for. It will not invent the missing numbers, which is the whole point of it.
What the state charges
ICP, Issuing Residency Permit, 11 December 2024
ICP, Issuing Residency Permit, 11 December 2024
ICP, Issuing Residency Permit, 11 December 2024
ICP, Issuing Residency Permit, 11 December 2024
ICP, Issuing Residency Permit, 11 December 2024
ICP calls this a guarantee and publishes nothing about whether or when it comes back. We are not going to decide that for them, so treat it as money out until you have asked.
ICP, New Identity Card Issuance, 11 December 2024
ICP, New Identity Card Issuance, 11 December 2024
DHA Medical Fitness Centres service catalogue, undated, several years old
The only official Dubai price list we could find, and DHA reserves the right to change it. The current dubai.ae page tells you to attend a centre and states no figure at all.
DHA Medical Fitness Centres service catalogue, undated, several years old
Typing fees are not included in either figure.
Dubai Health Insurance Corporation, General Circular 03/2024, 23 July 2024
Plus VAT, and the circular allows a further AED 25 either way. The sponsor arranges and pays it, and may not deduct it from her salary or reduce the salary to cover it.
u.ae, insurance system for employees in the private sector, 7 August 2025
Covers up to AED 20,000 of unpaid wages, end of service benefits and repatriation. u.ae presents a bank guarantee of at least AED 3,000 as an alternative while MoHRE's employer guide calls the policy a prerequisite for the work permit; we report both rather than pick one.
So far, and not a total. The list below is missing from it because nobody publishes those numbers, and two of them are not small.
What this will not make up for you
End of service gratuity
There is no published formula. The 14 days a year everybody quotes came from Federal Law No. 10 of 2017, which Article 31 of Federal Decree-Law No. 9 of 2022 repealed. Article 22 of the new law says the Cabinet shall adopt the rules and no such decision appears to be published, and MoHRE's own 2025 employer guide does not mention gratuity at all. Budget for something, because the entitlement is clearly still contemplated: the government's own wage insurance covers it.
A Tadbeer package
MoHRE sets price ceilings for the packages and does not publish the ceilings, so the number is per centre and per nationality. Ask the centre. The AED 12,000 that circulates online traces back to an arithmetic example in a government document about refunds, not to a tariff.
The ticket home
The obligation is real and is once every two years, not annually, and only if she spends her annual leave in her home country. Article 10(4). No authority publishes a fare, because it is an airline ticket.
Medical fitness outside Dubai
We could not find an official price list for the other emirates. Dubai publishes one, and it is several years old.
Dubai visa fees specifically
Dubai is administered by GDRFA rather than ICP, and GDRFA publishes no domestic worker schedule we could find. The ICP figures here are the federal ones.
Things that cost money and are not on any invoice
Thirty days of paid annual leave a year, thirty days of sick leave with the first fifteen at full pay, a paid rest day every week, and for a live in arrangement, accommodation, meals and work clothing. The leave is already inside the salary figure above rather than on top of it, which is why it is here as a reminder and not as a line. The rest is real money with no published price.
The reasoning behind every figure, and the three things most guides get wrong, are in what a nanny actually costs. For what nannies here ask to be paid, counted from live profiles rather than quoted from a price list, see the salary report.