What does a car really cost in Dubai each month?

A new Toyota Corolla hybrid costs AED 113,220 to own for five years in our cost engine¹³. Spread month by month, that is AED 1,887¹³. The showroom price is only where that number starts. What you lose when you sell, and what you spend while you own the car, make up the rest.

This study puts popular new cars through the same engine that runs our running-costs page, with one set of rules for all of them: bought new, paid in cash, kept five years, then sold. The monthly figure is the five-year total divided by the months in those five years. It is the number to hold against your salary.

What the monthly figure counts

The engine adds up everything an owner pays or loses between the day of purchase and the day of sale:

• Loss of value. What you pay at the dealer minus what you get back when you sell. The resale side starts from Dubizzle asking prices for the same model, by model year, with a discount because a buyer rarely pays the asking price.
• Fuel or electricity, at current pump and grid prices and the running-costs page’s default monthly mileage.
• Insurance, as a share of the car’s value each year, plus agency repair cover while the car is young and a small yearly allowance for claims.
• Servicing: either the dealer’s prepaid service plan when one is sold, or the service schedule priced at the dealer under warranty and at an independent garage afterwards.
• Wear and repairs: tyres, brake pads, the battery, a repair reserve that grows once the warranty ends, and the days the car spends in a workshop.
• Registration, the first one and the yearly renewals.
• The return on your cash. Money sitting in a car is money not earning anything elsewhere, so the engine charges a modest return on the car’s value each year.

It leaves out loan interest (this study assumes cash), Salik tolls, parking and fines. Those come on top, and we come back to them below.

The cars the engine could price, and the ones it could not

Each row is the cheapest version of the model that passed the engine’s checks. For the Corolla and the RAV4 that turned out to be the hybrid. For the Camry it is the petrol version, because the Camry hybrid’s resale prices rest on too few model years for the engine to trust them.

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The n/a rows are explained further down. They are not zero, and we did not guess them.

Every row is a new car bought today and kept five years. The budget tool and the home page also price used routes (a car a few years old), so they can show a lower monthly figure for the same model: same engine, a different car.

Small cars and compact crossovers

The Mitsubishi Attrage is the cheapest car to own in the table, at AED 1,435 a month¹⁰. It is also the only one where fuel, not loss of value, is the biggest line in the engine’s breakdown. The car is cheap enough that there is not much value left to lose, so the petrol you put in it ends up mattering more than anything else.

The Toyota Yaris comes next at AED 1,744¹¹, then the Corolla hybrid at AED 1,887¹³. Toyota’s prepaid service plan keeps the servicing line small on both. If you are curious how the Corolla’s asking prices step down by model year, the Corolla model page shows the medians.

The Nissan Kicks is a small crossover, and its figure is higher than its size suggests. In our engine it costs AED 2,358 a month¹², which is AED 471 a month more than the Corolla hybrid^12,13, or AED 28,260 over five years^12,13. Fuel is the largest part of that gap, because the Kicks runs on petrol and the Corolla is a hybrid. Servicing and loss of value add most of the rest: in our inputs the Kicks has no prepaid service plan, so every visit is priced separately, and it loses more value over five years than the Corolla does. The Kicks page has the asking prices by model year if you want to see the resale side yourself.

The MG ZS sits between the Corolla hybrid and the Kicks at AED 2,038 a month¹⁵. Its servicing line is heavier than the Toyotas’, and its resale estimate for the fifth year runs slightly beyond the model years we have listings for, which the engine accepts but marks as an estimate.

Family SUVs, saloons and the Tesla

The Toyota RAV4 hybrid costs AED 2,175 a month to own¹⁷. The Camry petrol saloon costs AED 2,677¹⁴. That is AED 502 a month more for the saloon^14,17. Most of it is loss of value: in our engine the Camry loses more over five years than the RAV4, and the hybrid RAV4 also spends less on fuel than the petrol Camry. You can put them side by side in the comparison tool.

The Hyundai Tucson lands at AED 2,388 a month¹⁶. That happens to be exactly the median of the Korean models in the engine⁷, so it is a fair stand-in for the brand group. Fuel is where it stands out: the petrol Tucson in our inputs costs far more to run than the RAV4 hybrid, and only loss of value is a bigger line.

The Jetour X70 Plus costs AED 2,526 a month¹⁸, which is AED 351 a month more than the RAV4 hybrid^17,18. Jetour has a lower showroom price than the RAV4 hybrid, so on the showroom floor it looks like the cheaper car. Over five years, fuel and a steeper loss of value reverse that. Its fifth-year resale value is also an estimate, because our listings do not yet include enough five-year-old examples. We cover the newer Chinese brands in more detail on the Chinese cars page.

The Tesla Model 3 is the most expensive car to own in the priced part of the table, at AED 2,771 a month²⁰. Its electricity line is small. Insurance is the line that stands out, along with the loss of value and the return on the cash tied up in a car with a higher price. The engine also flags the Model 3’s list price as possibly out of date, because one-year-old cars are listed above the list price we hold, so read its figure with more caution than the others.

The median by size and by origin

The engine holds many more models than the ones named above. Grouping all the new cars it can price gives these medians:

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Moving from a city car to a mid-size car adds AED 712 a month at the median^1,3. Between Japanese and Korean brands the gap is AED 87 a month^6,7, small enough that the specific model matters far more than the badge. The “other brands” group mixes American, European and other makes, so read it as a rough marker only.

The large-car, Chinese and German groups show n/a. We publish a median only when it rests on at least ten models^4,5,9, and these groups do not reach that among the cars the engine can price under its default settings: large cars have 3⁴, Chinese brands 8⁵ and German brands 5⁹. The Chinese count is low mostly because many Chinese models are too new for a reliable five-year resale estimate. The German and large-car counts are low for the reason below.

Why the Patrol, the Land Cruiser, the Prado and the X3 show n/a

The engine prices a car only if it fits the running-costs page’s default budget, and the new Nissan Patrol, Toyota Land Cruiser, Toyota Prado and BMW X3 all cost more than that ceiling at the dealer^21,22,23,24. That is a limit of our default settings. It says nothing about whether these cars are cheap or expensive to run.

The BYD Song Plus is excluded for a different reason¹⁹. Its five-year resale value would have to be stretched well beyond the model years that appear in the listings, and the engine refuses to rank a car on a number it would mostly be inventing.

What the figure does not count

Financing. If you take a loan, interest and the bank’s processing fee come on top of every figure here, and the down payment is cash you no longer have. The budget tool is the place to start if a loan is part of the plan.

Salik, parking and fines. These depend on where you live and work far more than on the car. Someone commuting from Sharjah through the gates every day and someone working from home in JLT will pay very different amounts with the same car. We left them out instead of picking a commute for you.

A different mileage. The figures use the running-costs page’s default monthly distance. If you drive much more, you spend more on fuel and tyres and the car is worth less when you sell, and the gap widens faster on a thirsty petrol SUV than on a hybrid. The calculator lets you type in your own mileage.

The price you negotiate. The engine starts from dealer list prices and resale asking prices. A good discount at purchase lowers the loss of value, and our Check a seller’s price page shows the asking-price band for a used example of the same model. Listings are asking prices, not sale prices, and a listing that disappears is not necessarily sold.

What this means if you are buying

Budget the monthly cost, not only the instalment. The instalment covers the car. The monthly figure here covers the car and keeping it on the road.

The decision rule we would use: shortlist two cars of the same body type, and pick the one with the lower monthly cost unless you can name something the dearer one gives you that you will use every week. A third row of seats you will use every week counts; a bigger screen is harder to justify. Take the Camry and the RAV4 hybrid: the RAV4 is cheaper to own by AED 502 a month^14,17, so the Camry has to win on something you value at that price.

Watch the cars whose story is “cheap to buy”. In this table the Jetour X70 Plus and the Nissan Kicks both cost more to own than cars that look more expensive in the showroom^12,13,17,18. Loss of value and fuel are usually the reason.

Before you sign, run your shortlist through the running-costs page with your own mileage, and check today’s deals in case a nearly new example of the same model is listed below the market median. That page’s starting settings are not the same five-year, new-car case as this study, so its first figure will not match the table here exactly. Change the mileage to yours and the comparison between models is what counts.

How we measured

The figures come from the factsheet for this article, generated on 8 October 2026 from listings data as of 7 October 2026. Each five-year cost is the output of the engine behind our running-costs page, run for a new car bought in cash and kept five years, using the cheapest version of each model that passed the engine’s checks. A version is set aside when its price is above that page’s default budget, when its fuel use is unknown, or when its resale value would have to be stretched far beyond the model years we have listings for.

Resale values start from the median asking price of GCC-spec Dubizzle listings of the same model, by model year, in the index we have kept since 19 June 2026. Where a version has few listings of its own, as with the Corolla and RAV4 hybrids, the engine blends them with the model’s wider listings. The fifth-year resale value of the Corolla hybrid, the MG ZS and the Jetour X70 Plus lies beyond the model years we have listings for, so the engine marks those three figures as estimates. The segment and origin medians rest on the number of models shown in the second table, from 10⁸ to 30². A median built on fewer than ten models is shown as n/a. The monthly figures are the five-year totals divided by the number of months, with the two medians that fall between two whole dirhams marked “about”.

The full rules, including how we treat asking prices and thin data, are on the methodology page.