Prices in United Arab Emirates 🇦🇪
In United Arab Emirates, vape liquid costs $0.84, gasoline costs $0.87 and coca-cola costs $0.95. That is 13 of the 16 everyday items in the game, priced in US dollars, in AED, and as roughly how long someone on the average local wage works to buy one.
The UAE imports almost all of its food, so groceries track global shipping and wholesale costs more than local production. Fuel is the exception: it was deregulated in 2015 and now moves with world oil prices, which is unusual for a Gulf producer and leaves petrol dearer here than in Saudi Arabia. VAT arrived only in 2018, at 5%, and it is one of the few consumption taxes in the world that makes no exception for food, so the tax line on a Dubai grocery bill is small in rate terms but applies to everything on it. The result is a country where the tax wedge is nearly invisible and almost the entire price is import logistics.
What things cost
| Item | USD | Local | Work time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Big Mac | $5.17 | 19 AED | 21 min |
| Coca-Cola (330ml can) | $0.95 | 3.5 AED | 4 min |
| Cappuccino | $5.47 | 20.09 AED | 22 min |
| Milk (1 litre) | $1.77 | 6.5 AED | 7 min |
| Eggs (dozen) | $3.12 | 11.46 AED | 12 min |
| Apples (1 kg) | $2.36 | 8.67 AED | 9 min |
| Gasoline (1 litre) | $0.87 | 3.2 AED | 3 min |
| Diesel (1 litre) | $1.04 | 3.8 AED | 4 min |
| Electricity (100 kWh) | $8.00 | 29.3 AED | 32 min |
| Natural gas (100 kWh) | no data | ||
| Cigarettes (20-pack) | $5.99 | 22 AED | 24 min |
| Beer (330ml) | no data | ||
| Spirits (750ml bottle) | no data | ||
| Vape e-liquid (1 ml) | $0.84 | 3.08 AED | 3 min |
| Mobile data (1 GB) | $4.61 | — | 18 min |
| A day's healthy diet | $2.23 | 8.18 AED | 9 min |
Most local-currency figures are printed as the source published them. The cappuccino, milk, egg, apple and petrol rows are converted from US dollars at recent exchange rates; the healthy-diet row is converted the other way. A dash means the source publishes dollars and nothing else. Work time divides the dollar price by an estimated average hourly wage, the roughest number on this page. See methodology.
How United Arab Emirates compares
Relative to the rest of the game, United Arab Emirates is most expensive for cappuccino, where it ranks 3rd out of 32 countries at $5.47, against a global median of $3.67.
It is relatively cheapest for diesel at $1.04, which is 43rd of 49, only 6 countries in the game are cheaper.
Measured against local earnings rather than dollars, the item that takes the longest to afford here is electricity (100 kWh), at roughly 32 minutes of the average wage. Dollar prices and work-time prices often rank countries very differently, and that gap is usually the more interesting number.
What the state takes
Standard rate in United Arab Emirates: 5% VAT. Ordinary groceries: no reduced rate for food. Where these come from.
Play a puzzle
United Arab Emirates comes up in the daily puzzle roughly once every 49 days, paired with a different item each time. Play today's puzzle or browse the archive of past rounds.
Other countries
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Why a country's prices look the way they do
- Why poor countries are cheap, and why it is not what you thinkThe real answer has nothing to do with profits or standards. It is a sixty-year-old piece of economics about haircuts, and it explains most of the price map.
- A fifth of what you paid was tax, and you never saw the lineConsumption tax is the largest single wedge between two countries' prices for an identical product, and the one shoppers are least able to see.
- The salary comparison you keep seeing online is wrongConverting a wage at the market exchange rate answers a question nobody asked. Purchasing power parity answers the one you meant, and has its own traps.
- How to compare two countries without fooling yourselfCost-of-living comparisons go wrong in the same six ways every time. What follows is a method that survives contact with a real decision.