Dubai utility bills in 2026: the DEWA bill, the housing fee, and what it costs a month

Dubai has no separate bills for electricity, water and a municipal "housing charge" — once a month, through the app or the online account, a single bill arrives from DEWA (the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority) that bundles all of it together. Here is what makes up that bill, and why two neighbours in the same building can end up paying twice as much as each other.

What is inside one bill

The DEWA bill has four components. Electricity is billed on a rising slab: the first 2,000 kWh a month cost 23 fils per kWh, 2,001–4,000 kWh cost 28 fils, 4,001–6,000 kWh cost 32 fils, and anything above 6,000 kWh costs 38 fils — so the more you use, mainly on air conditioning in summer, the higher the rate on every additional kilowatt. Water is billed per imperial gallon: the first 6,000 gallons a month at 3.5 fils, and anything above that at 4.0 fils per gallon. Both lines carry a fuel surcharge on top — as of May 2026 it stood at AED 0.060 per kWh for electricity and AED 1.100 per m³ for water — plus 5% VAT.

The fourth line is the housing fee, a municipal levy that has nothing to do with actual consumption at all.

The housing fee: 5% of annual rent

The housing fee is 5% of the annual rental value, split into 12 equal monthly instalments and folded into the DEWA bill. For a tenant, the base is the amount stated in the registered Ejari contract: on AED 100,000 annual rent, the fee comes to AED 5,000 a year, or AED 417 a month. For an owner living in their own home, the base is the property's estimated annual rental value, which the municipality determines from its own data (Ejari, DEWA, the RERA rental index) rather than from an actual lease.

Who actually pays the housing fee — owner or tenant — comes down to whose name the DEWA account is in: if the account is registered to the tenant, which is standard practice when renting, they pay it, since it is billed alongside electricity and water to whoever holds the account.

What it costs a month

The total depends heavily on floor area, property type and season:

Property type	Monthly bill, AED	Main driver
Studio / 1BR, summer	300–500	AC + housing fee
2–3BR apartment, summer	500–900	Floor area, number of split units
Villa with central chiller, summer	900–1,500+	Cooling the whole house
Any home, winter	30–50% below summer	Minimal AC use

The summer and winter bill for the same apartment can differ by 50–100% — almost all of it driven by air conditioning. It is worth checking separately whether cooling runs through the building's centralised chiller system: in some projects it is billed by a separate district-cooling provider rather than through DEWA, a case we covered in Mismak Properties: district cooling, the bill nobody expects.

Connection and deposit

Opening a DEWA account requires Ejari (or a tenancy contract on first application), an Emirates ID and a passport with the visa; the application is filed online through the account portal or the app. A deposit is charged on connection — smaller for an apartment, larger for a villa — refundable when the account is closed, net of any outstanding balance.

How the DEWA bill and housing fee fit into the full monthly family budget is covered in our 2026 Dubai cost-of-living breakdown, and what actually reaches a landlord after all deductions from the rental stream is in Renting in Dubai: rates, deposits, Ejari — and what actually reaches the landlord.