Visas & immigration
What a residence visa actually costs
Government fees are published and fixed. Everything else — the zone's handling charge, the PRO fee, the express options — is not, and it is usually the larger half of the quote.
What it is
Who this is actually for.
A residence visa is not one fee but a stack: the entry permit or status change, the medical fitness test, the Emirates ID, the residence stamping, and — where a company is sponsoring — the establishment card and the visa quota allocation behind it. Each is a published government charge and each varies by emirate, by visa type and by whether express processing is used. On top of that sits whatever the free zone, the typing centre or the PRO charges for handling, which is a commercial fee and is not published anywhere.
This is why quotes for the same visa differ by thousands of dirhams between providers offering an identical outcome. The government component is close to identical for everyone; the handling component is where the spread lives. The single most useful thing you can ask any provider is for the quote itemised into government fees and service fees, because the first is verifiable against published schedules and the second is negotiable. A provider who declines to separate them is telling you something. We quote one all-in figure with every government fee itemised beside our own, and we take no commission from any authority.
The conditions, precisely
- Entry permit or status change
- Published; status change costs more
- Medical fitness test
- Standard, express and same-day tiers
- Emirates ID
- Priced by the validity period of the card
- Residence stamping
- Published, varies by emirate and visa type
- Establishment card
- Company-side, annual
- Handling and PRO fees
- Commercial, unpublished, and the negotiable part
How long it takes
Proportions indicative — they shift with visa count, premises and activity.
The sequence
How it runs, in order.
- Ask for the quote itemisedGovernment fees separately from service fees. This single request tells you most of what you need to know about a provider.
- Check which emirate's schedule appliesFees differ across the seven, and a Dubai figure quoted for a Sharjah process is simply wrong.
- Decide about express processing deliberatelyIt genuinely compresses the timeline, and it should be a choice rather than a default line on someone else's invoice.
- Budget the insurance properlyMandatory, priced by age, and the item most often omitted from an initial quote.
- Include the renewalsA two-year visa costs its issuance fee again every two years, plus the medical and the Emirates ID each time.
Related
Questions
The government component is a published stack that differs by emirate and visa type. The handling fee on top is commercial and unpublished, and it is where quotes diverge.
Because the government fees are near-identical and the service fee is not. Ask for the itemisation.
Per year, longer terms are generally cheaper because issuance costs recur less often — and a self-sponsored five-year visa also removes the employer from the equation.
For employment visas the cost sits with the employer and cannot be deducted from wages. Investor and family visas are the sponsor's own cost.
One question
Where has this actually got stuck?
Then the order is the thing to get right: entry permit, medical, Emirates ID, then stamping. Each gates the next and none can be run early. Most delay comes from starting a step before the one before it finished.
The sequence, explainedOr just ask usAn overstay, an uncancelled previous visa or an absconding report will each freeze everything until resolved, and they are cleared at source by different routes. The block is rarely held by whoever delivered the bad news.
What blocks a fileOr just ask usCancel properly rather than letting it lapse. An uncancelled visa stays active on the record, blocks the next employer's permit, and leaves the company carrying a liability it will find at renewal.
Cancelling properlyOr just ask us