Makani numbers

A Makani number is a ten-digit code that Dubai Municipality assigns to every building entrance in Dubai, fixing its position on the map to within a metre. It is printed on the Makani plate at the entrance, shown in the Makani app and on the Makani website, written on the Ejari tenancy contract, and carried on a DEWA bill beside the premise number. Give the ten digits to a courier, a taxi, a friend or an ambulance and they arrive at the door, not the district. In a city that named its streets late and numbers its buildings by plot, it is the one address that always works.

What does Makani mean?

Makani is Arabic for “my location”, and the number is exactly that: a position, not a label. The ten digits are two coordinates on a metre grid laid over the emirate, the first five running east and the last five north, so each number describes a spot a metre square and no two entrances share one. That is why a building with three entrances has three Makani numbers, why a villa's is its gate, and why the number cannot go out of date: it is not looked up in a register somebody has to maintain, it is the place itself. Type it into the Makani app, or into a map that understands it, and the pin lands on the door.

How do I find my Makani number?

• On the plate at the entrance. Every numbered building carries a Makani plate by its main door, a villa on the gate post: the ten digits, and a QR code the Makani app reads to open that entrance on the map
• In the Makani app, free from Dubai Municipality on the App Store and Google Play. Search the building name, drop a pin, or stand at the door with location on, and it returns the number for that entrance
• On the Makani website, which is the same map in a browser
• In the Dubai Now app, which carries it for any address you have on file
• On the Ejari tenancy contract, in the property block, and on a DEWA bill for the home, alongside the premise number, which is the number Makani is most often confused with
• Failing all of those, the building's reception or security desk will have it; a courier has asked them before

Is the Makani number on the DEWA bill?

Yes. DEWA prints the Makani number of the building on its bills, next to the premise number, and the two sit close enough on the page to be swapped by mistake. The premise number is DEWA's own: an account of nine or ten digits that belongs to the meter in your unit, and it is what DEWA asks for when you move in and what Ejari matches the registration against. The Makani number is a place, and neither DEWA nor Ejari can use it in the premise number's field. If a form asks for a Makani and you are holding a premise number, or the reverse, you have the wrong one; the bill has both, labelled.

Where is the Makani number in Ejari?

On the contract. The Land Department's unified tenancy contract, the form every registered lease in Dubai is written on, has a Makani No. field in its Property Information block, between the plot number and the building name, with the DEWA premises number a few lines below it; we read the department's own template on 15 September 2026. The two answer different questions on the same form: the Makani number says which building, and the premise number says which unit in it, which is why an Ejari registration is matched on the premise number and the Makani rides along as the address. If the field is blank on a contract you are handed, the plate at the entrance or the app fills it in a minute, and the number must be the building's own: a Makani from a neighbouring tower describes a different door and will not match the premise number's building.

The four numbers a Dubai home has

The confusion that costs people time is Makani against the DEWA premise number, and the test is what the number points at: if it names a door anyone can walk up to, it is the Makani; if it names a meter, it is the premise number.

Does Makani work in Abu Dhabi and the other emirates?

Not in Abu Dhabi, which runs its own scheme, Onwani, with street names and building numbers in the older style; an Abu Dhabi address is a street and a number, not a ten-digit code. Elsewhere the system has spread: Dubai Municipality's own listing for the app, read on 15 September 2026, names it as the official addressing system of Dubai, Ajman, Umm Al Quwain, Fujairah and Ras Al Khaimah, with the same plates and the same app, so a Makani number in Ajman works the way one in Dubai does. Sharjah is not on that list. Ask for a street address anywhere the plates are not on the doors.

Why it exists

Dubai grew faster than its street names, and for most of the city's life an address was a description: behind the mall, opposite the mosque, the tower with the blue top. Dubai Municipality launched Makani in 2015 to replace the description with a number any system could read, and the emergency services adopted it first, because a caller who can read the plate can be reached. Delivery apps followed, then the ride-hailing services, and today most of the forms in the city that want to know where you live will take it.

What it is not

It is not proof of address; that is your Ejari, or a DEWA bill. It does not identify a unit, only the door to the building the unit is in, so a delivery still needs the floor and the apartment number. And it is not the number on your title deed, which is the plot. It is simply the fastest way to tell someone where the door is, and once you have used it you will notice how little else does that.