Family Visa Costs, All of Them

Ask three people what a family visa costs in Dubai and you will get three numbers, all of them confident and none of them wrong exactly. They are answering different questions.

One is quoting the government fees for the residence permit. One is including the entry permit, which is a separate stage. One has added the medical and the Emirates ID and is closer than the other two, but has left out insurance, which in Dubai falls on the sponsor for dependants rather than on the employer.

The costs are knowable. They just sit across two authorities, several stages and one category we could not find published anywhere we looked. Here is the full picture, with the source and date against each figure and an honest statement of where the gaps are.

Before any cost: the income condition

Worth confirming before you budget anything, because if this is not met the rest does not arise.

The published condition is a minimum salary of AED 4,000, or AED 3,000 plus accommodation. That figure appears on both the UAE Government Portal and ICP's own service page, in consistent terms, which makes it one of the better-evidenced figures in this whole area. The UAE Government Portal also states expressly that employees can sponsor their families regardless of job title, so the older practice of tying sponsorship to profession no longer applies.

Who can be sponsored is also published: a spouse, unmarried daughters, sons under 25 years old, and children with special needs. Parents can be sponsored, with the residence visa granted on a yearly basis regardless of how long the sponsor's own visa runs. A mother sponsoring her children is described as possible "in special cases approved by the ICP".

One timing rule that costs money if missed. A sponsor has 60 days to apply for dependants' residence visas after they enter the UAE on an entry permit.

The cost categories, and why they behave differently

Family visa costs fall into five groups that behave completely differently from each other. Mixing them is why the quoted totals never match.

1. Government fees, published per service, charged per stage
2. Emirates ID, charged per year of residence
3. Health insurance, an annual cost that continues for as long as the person is resident
4. The medical examination, a real cost with no published fee
5. Deposits and guarantees, where the honest answer is the most useful thing in this article

Only the first two are one-off. The third recurs every year. That distinction matters more than any individual figure.

Group one: government fees

There are two stages, and each carries its own fees.

Stage one, the entry permit. GDRFA Dubai publishes a visa fee of AED 200 plus VAT at 5 per cent for an entry visa for residence without work. Where the sponsored person is already inside the country, additional charges apply: a knowledge dirham of AED 10, an innovation dirham of AED 10, and a fee inside the country of AED 500. Service duration is published as 48 hours. GDRFA adds its own caveat, which is worth repeating: the total amount "may vary depending on the circumstances surrounding the sponsored person or for other reasons that may require that."

Stage two, the residence permit. GDRFA publishes a residence permit fee of AED 200, a knowledge dirham of AED 10, an innovation dirham of AED 10, a fee inside the country of AED 500 and delivery at AED 20. Service duration again 48 hours.

There is one escalating line that catches people planning a longer permit. GDRFA publishes that "the issuance fee increases by AED100 annually whenever the residency is over two years." A three-year permit is not simply a two-year permit with more time on it.

Where the family member is already in the UAE on another status, a status amendment applies. GDRFA publishes AED 500 for registering a status amendment, plus the knowledge and innovation dirhams, with an individual fee of AED 15 and an establishment fee of AED 50. The published conditions are that the person holds a new visa and that the previous residence permit has been cancelled.

Applying federally through ICP rather than through GDRFA, the published figures are an application fee of AED 100, a residence permit issuance fee of AED 100 for each year of residence, smart service fees of AED 100, a status adjustment fee of AED 500 where applicable, and a financial security deposit fee of AED 20. Service completion duration is published as two days.

Group two: Emirates ID

ICP publishes renewal at AED 100 for each year of residence, plus AED 100 in smart application fees, with a service duration of five days.

An honest gap. We did not find a separate first-issue fee for a dependant's Emirates ID on the ICP service cards reviewed on 11 September 2026, only the renewal schedule. We are not going to invent one. Check the current figure on the ICP service card when you apply.

Worth knowing for later: if an Emirates ID is renewed more than one month after expiry, a late fee of AED 20 per day applies, capped at AED 1,000. That is not a setup cost, but it is the most common avoidable family visa cost there is.

Group three: health insurance, which is yours

This is the line most often left out of a quoted total, and in Dubai it falls squarely on the sponsor.

Since 1 January 2025 employers are required to purchase health insurance as a prerequisite for applying for the issuance or renewal of residence permits. But the Dubai split is specific and published: employers are required to provide cover for their employees, and sponsors are required to get insurance cover for their resident dependants.

So your employer covers you. You cover your family.

The basic package is published at AED 320 per year. Treat that as a floor rather than an estimate. The published basic package covers ages 1 to 64, and those over 64 require medical disclosure forms, which matters a great deal if you are sponsoring a parent.

Co-payment matters more for a family than for a single employee, because it applies per person and children use outpatient care most. On the basic package the published structure is 25 per cent on outpatient visits, capped at AED 100 a visit, and 30 per cent on medications, capped at AED 1,500 a year. Inpatient care carries 20 per cent, capped at AED 500 a visit and AED 1,000 a year including medications. Follow-up visits within 7 days carry no co-payment at all.

This cost repeats every year, for every dependant. Over a two-year permit it is not a rounding error.

Group four: the medical examination

Family members aged 18 and over must undergo and pass a medical fitness test. Children below 18 do not.

We did not find a published fee for it on the pages reviewed on 11 September 2026. Not the UAE Government Portal, not ICP, not GDRFA, not the Dubai Health Authority's public pages. It is a genuine cost, it belongs in your worksheet, and we are leaving the amount blank rather than filling it with a number we cannot stand behind. Get the current figure from the approved centre you use.

Group five: deposits, and the figure everybody quotes

Here is the most useful paragraph in this article.

We did not find a published refundable deposit amount for a standard family or dependant residence visa in Dubai on the pages we reviewed on 11 September 2026: ICP's service cards, GDRFA's service pages and the UAE Government Portal. If a deposit applies in a particular case, the authority handling that application is the body that states it.

What ICP does publish is narrower and should not be confused with it. There is a "financial security deposit fee" of AED 20, which is a fee rather than the deposit itself. We have seen references to financial guarantees attached to specific residency categories, but the only source we could locate for them was a 2024-dated services guide rather than a live service page, so we make no statement here about what applies or how much it is. If a guarantee is required in your case, the authority handling the application will state it.

The figure that circulates most widely for parent sponsorship appears only in archived government content, not on any live official page. We are not going to repeat it as a current fact.

If a deposit is requested in your case, it will be stated to you at the time by the authority or the service channel handling your application. Budget for the possibility, ask for the amount in writing when it arises, and treat any number you were given in advance by a third party as unverified until an authority confirms it.

What scales, and what does not

This is the question that actually determines your total.

Two planning consequences fall out of that table.

A spouse and one adult dependant cost more than a spouse and two young children, even though the headcount is lower, because of the medical.

And sponsoring a parent is structurally the most expensive case: the visa is granted on a yearly basis, so the cycle repeats annually rather than every two years, and insurance for someone over 64 requires medical disclosure forms and is not priced at the basic package level.

Practical asset: the per-dependant cost worksheet. One column per family member. Down the left, the rows are: entry permit, status amendment if applicable, residence permit, Emirates ID, medical if aged 18 or over, health insurance for year one, health insurance for year two, and any deposit confirmed in writing by the authority. Add a final row for provider service fees. Total each column separately, then total across. The per-column view is what tells you whether a longer permit or a shorter one is cheaper for that individual.

The variables that change everything

Whether the family member is inside or outside the UAE. In-country applications carry the additional fees and often a status amendment.

The permit duration you choose. The residence issuance fee is charged per year of residence, and GDRFA's published AED 100 annual increase applies to residency over two years.

Which channel you apply through. GDRFA Dubai and ICP publish different fee structures for overlapping services.

Age. It determines whether a medical is required, and it drives the insurance price.

The insurance product. The published AED 320 basic package is the floor.

Two things to remember about all of these figures

They are dated. Every figure here was checked on 11 September 2026 on the authority's own service page. Re-check before you commit.

There is no official consolidated price list, and the UAE Government Portal says why. It states that visa charges are stated on each service card on the ICP and GDRFA websites. Any single table claiming to be the official schedule was compiled by someone, not published by an authority. Including this one, which is why every row carries a source.

If you are working out the employer's side of the picture rather than the sponsor's, the per-employee cost breakdown is separate. If attested documents such as a marriage or birth certificate are part of your application, the attestation chain has a fixed order and is worth starting early.

Get the figure for your own family, not an average. Tell us who you are sponsoring, their ages, whether they are currently inside or outside the UAE, and the permit duration you want. We will return a written estimate built as one column per dependant, with each government figure carrying its source and the date we checked it, insurance and medical shown as separate lines, and any cost that is not officially published marked as such rather than filled in with a guess.

And a last word on what the money buys. None of these figures buys a decision. The authority handling the application, ICP or GDRFA depending on where it is lodged, decides whether the residence is granted and on what terms. RINJAZ is a privately licensed service provider. A provider in that position prepares the file, submits it, coordinates the stages and tells you where it is, within whatever its own licensed activity covers. No provider approves anything, and none should promise that anyone will.