UAE Salary Calculator: Take-Home Pay and Gratuity

All of it. Personal income tax on UAE salaries is 0%, so your gross monthly package is your take-home pay. There is no PAYE deduction and no National Insurance equivalent.

Applies to employment income. Business profits above AED 375,000 carry 9% corporate tax and most spending carries 5% VAT — neither is a deduction from a salary.

The headline that draws most British professionals to the UAE is simple and true: there is no personal income tax on salaries. The rate is 0%. Whatever your employment contract states as your monthly package is, in cash terms, what lands in your account. There is no PAYE deduction, no National Insurance equivalent taken from your wage, and no annual self-assessment on your earnings. For someone moving from a higher-rate UK band, the difference in monthly take-home can be substantial — which is exactly why it pays to understand what the package is really made of.

The cost that does exist sits on the spending side. The UAE charges 5% VAT on most goods and services — a fraction of the 20% standard rate in the UK. There is also a 9% corporate tax, but it applies only to business profits above AED 375,000 and does not touch employees on a salary. If you are freelancing or running your own company, that 9% may be relevant to you; if you are on a standard employment contract, it is not. The practical takeaway is to plan your budget around the cost of living and 5% VAT, rather than around income deductions you simply will not face.

What is the difference between basic salary and allowances?

Basic salary is your core contractual wage. Allowances are add-ons such as housing, transport and schooling. They spend identically each month, but end-of-service gratuity is paid on basic salary alone.

Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021, Article 51. Allowances build no gratuity, so two people on the same package can leave with very different payouts.

UAE pay packages are almost always split into two parts: basic salary and allowances. Basic salary is the core contractual wage. Allowances are the add-ons — typically housing, transport, and sometimes schooling or a flights allowance — that top the package up. In cash terms today the two are identical: AED 1,000 of basic and AED 1,000 of housing allowance spend the same way. The split only matters when you leave, because of how end-of-service pay is calculated.

This is the trap that catches people who look only at the total. Two colleagues can both be on AED 30,000 a month, yet walk away with very different end-of-service payouts if one has a basic of AED 20,000 and the other a basic of AED 9,000. The gratuity is built on basic salary alone, so a package that is heavy on allowances and light on basic quietly shrinks the payout you accrue every month. When you decode a job offer, the basic-to-allowance ratio is one of the first things worth checking — and, where you can, negotiating before you sign.

How is UAE end-of-service gratuity calculated?

You earn 21 days of basic pay for each of your first five years and 30 days for each year after that, capped at two years' wage. One full year of service is the minimum.

Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021, Article 51. The daily rate is monthly basic salary ÷ 30 and fractions of a year are pro-rated.

End-of-service gratuity is your statutory lump sum for completing time with an employer, set out in Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 (the UAE Labour Law). The rules are clearer than most expats expect. You must complete at least one full year of continuous service to qualify. For the first five years, you earn 21 days of basic pay for each year of service. For every year beyond five, you earn 30 days of basic pay. The total is capped at two years' worth of total wage, however long you stay. Since the 2021 law took effect in 2022, completed years count in full whether you resign or are let go — the old penalty for resigning early no longer applies.

A worked example in plain terms: suppose your basic salary is AED 15,000 a month and you serve exactly three full years. Your daily basic is AED 15,000 divided by 30, which is AED 500. For three years inside the first five-year window you earn 21 days each year, so 63 days of basic pay in total. Multiply 63 days by AED 500 and your gratuity is AED 31,500. Note that the calculation rests entirely on the AED 15,000 basic — if that same person's basic had been only AED 9,000 on the identical total package, the daily figure and the whole payout would fall in proportion. That is the basic-versus-allowance trap made concrete.

The full gratuity ledger: 1 to 30 years, six basic salaries

Every figure below is produced by the same function that runs the calculator at the top of this page, executed for each year of service against each basic salary. The two-year cap is applied at 24 months of basic pay, so the rows marked cap are held at the ceiling rather than at the accrued day count.

Read a row across to compare packages, or down to see what another year of service is worth. Gratuity alone, at a fixed basic salary — pay rises, unpaid absence and lawful deductions are not modelled. For gratuity on its own, without the take-home figures, use the UAE gratuity calculator.

Do limited and unlimited contracts still change my gratuity?

No. Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 moved the entire private sector onto fixed-term contracts on 2 February 2022. One formula now applies to everyone, whatever your contract is called.

Employers had until 31 December 2023 to convert existing unlimited contracts. If a calculator asks you to pick limited or unlimited, it is running the repealed 1980 law.

If you have read about UAE gratuity anywhere else, you have probably met the terms limited contract and unlimited contract. That distinction no longer exists. Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 came into force on 2 February 2022 and moved the entire private sector onto fixed-term contracts. Article 8 is a single line: the employment contract is concluded for a definite period, renewable by agreement of the parties. Employers were given until 31 December 2023 to convert existing unlimited contracts to the new form. A later amendment, Federal Decree-Law No. 14 of 2022, removed the three-year ceiling the original text placed on the term, so a fixed-term contract can now run for whatever period the two sides agree.

This matters to your payout because the contract type used to change it. Under the old Federal Law No. 8 of 1980, a worker who resigned from an unlimited contract with one to three years of service received a third of the gratuity, and with three to five years, two thirds. Resigning early from a limited contract could cost the entitlement altogether. Under the current law there is one formula for everybody: 21 days of basic pay for each of the first five years, 30 days for each year after that, once you have completed a full year. Nothing in that calculation asks what kind of contract you signed.

The outdated version still circulates because it was the law for over forty years and a great many pages have never been rewritten. Use it as a test. If a gratuity calculator asks you to choose "limited" or "unlimited" before it will give you a number, it is running the 1980 rules and its answer is out of date. The tool at the top of this page does not ask, because the answer does not depend on it.

Do I keep my gratuity if I resign?

Yes, in full. Article 51 ties gratuity to completed service, not to who ended the contract. Once you have finished one full year, resignation and dismissal produce the same figure.

The tiers that cut a resigning worker to a third or two thirds of the payout were in Federal Law No. 8 of 1980, repealed on 2 February 2022.

Under the current law, resignation and termination produce the same gratuity. Article 51 ties the entitlement to completed service, not to who ended the contract. Finish one full year and you are owed the same 21 days and 30 days per year of service whether you resigned, were made redundant, or were dismissed. The pre-2022 resignation tiers described above are the most common piece of stale advice in this subject, and they are why people hand in their notice expecting to lose a third of their money. They no longer apply.

What does differ is notice. Either side can end a fixed-term contract by giving written notice of not less than 30 days and not more than 90 days, as set out in the contract, and you are paid your full wage through that period. Your gratuity keeps building while you work your notice, because notice is service. If your employer ends the contract because you filed a valid complaint with the ministry or brought a case that succeeded, that is unlawful dismissal, and the court may award compensation of up to three months' wage on top of your notice and your gratuity.

What happens to my gratuity if I leave before one year?

Nothing is payable. Article 51 requires one full year of continuous service, so leaving at 11 months earns AED 0 however the job ended.

The calculator above shows completed months, not years, below the one-year line, and returns AED 0 for the payout. There is no pro-rata entitlement under twelve months.

This is the one genuinely hard edge in the law, and it is worth knowing where it falls. Service is counted from your start date to your leaving date, so 364 days is not one year. If you are close to the anniversary and leaving is your choice, the difference between month eleven and month twelve is the whole entitlement: on a basic of AED 15,000 that is AED 0 against AED 10,500. Notice counts as service, so a notice period served in full can carry you across the line.

Days of absence from work without pay are excluded from the length of service, so a long unpaid break can push a return date past the anniversary you were counting on. Paid annual leave is unaffected.

Does dismissal forfeit my end-of-service gratuity?

No. Article 39 lists dismissal from service among the disciplinary penalties while expressly preserving the worker's right to end-of-service gratuity. Dismissal costs you your notice pay, not your gratuity.

Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021, Articles 39 and 44. The forfeiture rule people remember was Articles 120(e) and 139(1) of Federal Law No. 8 of 1980, repealed on 2 February 2022.

Article 44 allows an employer to dismiss you without notice on a defined list of grounds: impersonation or forged documents, an error causing serious material loss, breaking documented safety rules, failing to perform basic duties after two written warnings, disclosing trade secrets, being intoxicated at work, assaulting a manager or colleague, and absence of more than 20 non-consecutive days or more than 7 consecutive days in one year without a valid reason. The dismissal must follow a written investigation and be given to you in writing.

Note precisely what that costs you: your notice and your notice pay. It does not cost you your gratuity. The belief that it does has outlived the rule by more than four years, because under the 1980 law an equivalent dismissal genuinely did wipe out the entitlement. Two provisions did it — Article 120(e) and Article 139(1) — and both were repealed when the 2021 law came into force. The full comparison of the old and new positions is set out in gratuity after dismissal in the UAE.

When can gratuity be reduced or refused?

On three grounds only: fewer than twelve months of continuous service, unpaid absence days excluded from the service length, and sums you legally owe your employer. Dismissal is not one of them.

Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021, Article 51 and the Executive Regulations. A lawful deduction reduces the payout; it does not cancel the entitlement.

There are fewer grounds than most people fear, and each one is specific.

Under one year of service. The entitlement requires one full year of continuous service. Leave at eleven months and you are owed nothing, however the job ended. The calculator above returns AED 0 below that line for the same reason.

Unpaid absence. Days of absence from work without pay are excluded from the length of service used in the calculation. Paid annual leave is unaffected; a long unpaid break is not.

Amounts you legally owe. Your employer may deduct from the gratuity any sum due to it by law or under a court judgment, following the procedure in the Executive Regulations. That is a deduction from the payout, not a cancellation of it.

Dismissal without notice. Article 44 costs you your notice and your notice pay. It does not cost you your gratuity — see does dismissal forfeit my end-of-service gratuity above and, for the full old-law comparison, gratuity after dismissal in the UAE.

How does the two-year gratuity cap work?

Article 51 caps the total at two years' wage. This calculator applies the cap as 24 months of basic salary, so no payout can exceed 720 days of basic pay.

Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021, Article 51. Reading the cap against basic salary rather than total package is the cautious reading, and it is the one used throughout this site.

Article 51 finishes with a ceiling: in all cases the total gratuity shall not exceed the wage of two years. Because the whole calculation runs on basic pay, this calculator applies that cap as 24 months of basic salary, which is the cautious reading of it.

Worked through: on a basic of AED 20,000 a month, your daily basic is AED 666.67. Thirty years of service earns 105 days for the first five years plus 750 days for the following 25, which is 855 days in total, or AED 570,000. The cap is 24 × AED 20,000, so the payout stops at AED 480,000. The ceiling first binds at exactly 25 years and 6 months of service. Below that the day count is worth less than 24 months of basic, so the cap never applies — and if the calculator tells you your figure is capped, this is the arithmetic behind it.

At what length of service does the two-year gratuity cap first bind?

At 25 years and 6 months of continuous service. Below that, the accrued day count is worth less than 24 months of basic salary, so the cap never applies.

Arithmetic on this page's own gratuity function, run for every year from 1 to 30 on 27 August 2026. Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021, Article 51.

The working is short. The first five years earn 21 days each, which is 105 days. Every year after that earns 30 days. The cap is two years' wage, and on a 30-day month that is 720 days of basic pay. So the accrual equals the ceiling when 105 + 30 × (y − 5) = 720, which gives y = 25.5.

The threshold does not move with salary. Both sides of the comparison scale with basic pay, so a worker on AED 5,000 basic and a worker on AED 50,000 basic reach the ceiling at the same 25.5 years. That is why it is a single number rather than a range, and it is worth knowing before you plan a long career with one employer: past 25 years and 6 months, another year of service adds 30 days of accrual and AED 0 of payout.

Is the UAE gratuity daily rate basic salary ÷ 30 or ÷ 365?

Divide by 30. Your daily basic is your monthly basic ÷ 30, so AED 15,000 of basic salary gives a daily rate of AED 500, not the AED 493.15 that dividing by 365 produces.

Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021, Article 51 sets the entitlement in days of basic wage. On three years at AED 15,000 basic the two bases differ by AED 432, or 1.37%.

This is the most common reason two UAE gratuity calculators disagree on identical inputs. The law expresses the entitlement in days of wage but does not spell out the divisor, so some tools annualise the basic salary and divide by 365. That produces a slightly smaller daily rate, and the gap runs through every figure they show you.

This site divides the monthly basic by 30 everywhere, which treats a month of basic salary as buying 30 days of gratuity. It is the more generous of the two bases, and it is internally consistent with the two-year cap being applied as 24 months of basic pay. If your employer works to the 365-day basis, expect a figure roughly 1.4% below the one shown here, and check which basis your MOHRE-registered contract actually uses before you argue the point.

What can I do if my employer underpays my gratuity?

Your employer must pay your wages and all other entitlements within 14 days of the contract ending. If the payment is late or short, file a labour complaint with MOHRE.

MOHRE toll-free line 80084. It refers the dispute to the competent court if it cannot settle within 14 days of your application, and decides claims of AED 50,000 or less itself. A claim is not heard once two years have passed since the employment ended.

Mainland private-sector employment across the UAE, Dubai included, is regulated by MOHRE, the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation. Your employment contract is registered with MOHRE, and the basic salary written on that registered contract is the figure your gratuity is built on. If the basic on your payslip and the basic on your MOHRE contract disagree, settle that long before you hand in your notice.

No calculator can see everything, and that includes this one and every tool badged as a MOHRE gratuity calculator. They apply the Article 51 formula to the numbers you type in. What they cannot see is your unpaid absence days, any deduction your employer is legally entitled to make, a pay rise that lifted your allowances but not your basic, whether your contract sits in Dubai's DIFC or another free zone running its own scheme, or whether your employer has joined the voluntary savings scheme introduced by Cabinet Resolution No. 96 of 2023, under which the employer pays 5.83% of basic salary a month for the first five years of service and 8.33% after that into a regulated fund instead of accruing a lump sum. Treat any result as a well-founded estimate and check it against your contract.

Your employer must pay your wages and all other entitlements within 14 days of the end of the contract. If that does not happen, or the amount is short, the route is a labour complaint. Call MOHRE's toll-free line on 80084, or use its register a labour complaint service. MOHRE first tries to settle the matter amicably; if it cannot do so within 14 days of your application it refers the dispute to the competent court with a summary and its own recommendation, and it can decide claims of AED 50,000 or less itself. One deadline matters more than the rest: a claim for entitlements under the labour law is not heard once two years have passed since the employment relationship ended.

What is the difference between DIFC DEWS and mainland gratuity?

Mainland employees accrue the 21-and-30-day lump sum. Inside the DIFC your employer instead pays monthly contributions into the DEWS funded savings plan, so your entitlement is the contributions themselves.

DIFC Employee Workplace Savings scheme. If your contract sits inside DIFC, the mainland formula in this calculator is the wrong reference point.

The 21-days-and-30-days formula above is the mainland UAE Labour Law model, and it covers most employees. Some free zones run their own arrangements. The most notable is the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), which replaced the traditional end-of-service lump sum with the DIFC Employee Workplace Savings (DEWS) scheme. Under DEWS, your employer pays a monthly contribution into a funded savings plan on your behalf, rather than you accruing a single lump sum payable at the end. If your contract sits inside DIFC, the mainland formula in this calculator is the wrong reference point — your entitlement is the contributions made into your DEWS account, not a 21-day accrual. If you are unsure which regime applies to you, it is worth confirming your zone before relying on any single figure. Two offers from the same city can sit on different sides of that line: a Dubai mainland employer registered with MOHRE follows the 21-and-30-day formula, while a DIFC-registered employer runs DEWS.

How do I use this calculator?

Enter your total monthly package, drag the slider to the basic-salary share stated in your contract, then set your start and leaving dates. Every figure updates as you type.

Nothing is sent anywhere. The calculation runs in your browser, there are no cookies and no account. Treat the result as an educational estimate, not regulated advice.

The tool above is built to make the split visible. Enter your total monthly package as the gross, all-in figure, then drag the slider to set how much of it is basic salary — if you do not know, your offer letter or contract will state it. Set your start and leaving dates to model any length of service; the default runs three years to today, but you can shorten or extend it freely. Toggle + GBP to see every figure converted at £1 = AED 4.95, the fixed rate this site last reviewed in August 2026. Your tax-free annual take-home, the basic-versus-allowance breakdown, and your accruing gratuity all update instantly. Treat the result as an educational estimate: your final entitlement depends on your contract and, in any dispute, on labour inspection — this is not regulated financial, tax, or legal advice.

Once you can see the package clearly, the next question is whether the move actually leaves you ahead. Put this package beside your UK salary in the relocation cost calculator, run the offer itself through the offer decoder, read the moving from the UK guide for tax-residence timing, and the already working here guide if you are settling in. If gratuity is the only figure you need, the UAE gratuity calculator does that on its own, and gratuity after dismissal in the UAE covers what happens when the employer ends it. You can also see how we work and why these tools are free and privacy-first, or message us on WhatsApp to sanity-check your numbers.