The studio · Dubai
Studio apartments in Dubai
The cheapest way into the city, to rent and to own, and close to one home in five let here. What one costs is not a matter of opinion: 99,156 studio tenancies were registered through Ejari in the year, and 7,963 completed studios changed hands at the Land Department. Here is what they went for, area by area, and how far a small budget really goes.
Read this first
Two prices, and neither of them is an asking price
Every other page about Dubai studios is a wall of adverts. An advert is what someone hopes to get. These are the figures the Land Department recorded after the deal was done.
A studio let for a median AED 40,000 a year in the twelve months to 10 Sept 2026, against AED 38,000 in the twelve months before — up 5%. The busiest studio districts in the city were Al Warsan First (10,477 tenancies), Jabal Ali First (9,004 tenancies), Al Barsha South Fourth (7,975 tenancies) and Al Barshaa South Third (4,664 tenancies), which between them let more studios in a year than most communities hold homes.
The single most useful number on this page is the gap between a new let and a renewal. A new studio lease was signed at a median AED 45,000; a renewal at AED 36,780. A sitting tenant is 18% below the market because what a landlord may add at renewal is capped by the RERA rental index — so the rent you are quoted moving in is the higher of the two figures, and the rent increase calculator says what can lawfully be added to it next year.
Rents and prices are kept on separate tables below because the two registers count differently. Ejari files a tenancy under its Land Department area, and one area can serve several communities, so the rent table names the area and lists the communities inside it. The sales register names the building, so the price table is one row per community. Nothing here divides one by the other to make a yield per row: that would be two different populations of home wearing one number.
The question everyone asks
Can you rent a studio in Dubai for AED 1,000 a month?
It is the first thing Google itself puts in the results for this search. The register can answer it exactly, because it holds every tenancy that was actually signed.
AED 1,000 a month is AED 12,000 a year. Of the 99,156 studio tenancies registered in the twelve months to 10 Sept 2026, 35 came in at or below it — under a tenth of one per cent. Raise the budget to AED 2,000 a month and 4,028 tenancies qualify; to AED 2,500 a month and 17,303 do. At the other end, 589 studios let for AED 100,000 a year or more.
| Where a studio sits in the year | AED a year | AED a month |
|---|---|---|
| The cheapest 5%let at or below | 25,000 | 2,100 |
| The cheapest 10%let at or below | 27,999 | 2,300 |
| The cheapest quarterlet at or below | 33,000 | 2,800 |
| The middlelet at or below | 40,000 | 3,300 |
| The dearest quarter startslet at or below | 49,000 | 4,100 |
| The dearest 10% startlet at or below | 60,000 | 5,000 |
| The dearest 1% startlet at or below | 90,000 | 7,500 |
Every Ejari contract for a studio registered in the twelve months to 10 Sept 2026, new leases and renewals together, read as percentiles: the cheapest 5% of them were let at AED 25,000 a year or less, and so on. Monthly figures are the annual rent divided by twelve and rounded to the nearest hundred — Dubai rent is conventionally quoted and paid by the year, in one to four cheques, so a monthly figure here is arithmetic rather than a payment plan on offer. A room in a shared flat or a partitioned space is not a tenancy the register holds, which is why advertisements exist below this floor and registered contracts almost do not.
To rent
What a studio rents for, area by area
Median annual rent for a studio across every Ejari contract registered in the twelve months to 10 Sept 2026, for each Land Department area with 150 or more of them. Cheapest first. Each community name opens its area guide.
The cheapest studios in the city were in Al Rowaiyah First, at a median AED 19,000 a year — about AED 1,600 a month. The dearest were on Palm Jumeirah, at AED 95,000, which is 5 times as much for the same layout. The middle-half column is worth as much as the median: an area where the middle half spans AED 20,000 holds two different markets under one name.
| Land Department area | Median AED/year | A month | The middle half | Median sq ft | Tenancies, 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Al Rowaiyah FirstAcademic City | 19,000 | 1,600 | 18,000–26,250 | 265 | 155 |
| Al Baraha | 25,000 | 2,100 | 22,000–27,500 | 352 | 1,398 |
| Al Mararr | 28,000 | 2,300 | 24,000–32,000 | 323 | 3,150 |
| AL QUSAIS | 28,000 | 2,300 | 21,252–33,000 | 360 | 417 |
| Muhaisanah Fourth | 28,500 | 2,400 | 21,000–32,692 | 357 | 690 |
| Naif | 29,000 | 2,400 | 25,000–34,000 | 300 | 2,527 |
| Al Qusais Industrial Fifth | 29,500 | 2,500 | 28,500–31,000 | 417 | 343 |
| Al Warsan FirstInternational City | 30,000 | 2,500 | 27,000–32,000 | 479 | 10,477 |
| Hor Al Anz | 30,800 | 2,600 | 25,000–37,239 | 323 | 472 |
| Eyal Nasser | 31,500 | 2,600 | 28,000–35,000 | 291 | 788 |
| Al Goze Industrial Second | 31,763 | 2,600 | 29,762–33,033 | 394 | 1,266 |
| AL TWAR FIFTH | 32,000 | 2,700 | 30,000–33,000 | 301 | 167 |
| Jabal Ali Industrial First | 32,544 | 2,700 | 25,050–37,030 | 413 | 526 |
| Al Rashidiya | 32,549 | 2,700 | 30,030–36,999 | 357 | 217 |
| Al Goze Third | 33,000 | 2,800 | 30,000–39,500 | 442 | 231 |
| Al Dhagaya | 33,500 | 2,800 | 30,000–42,000 | 323 | 287 |
| Al Suq Al Kabeer | 34,000 | 2,800 | 30,000–38,000 | 360 | 1,763 |
| Al Warqa First | 34,000 | 2,800 | 31,000–39,950 | 409 | 195 |
| Al Nahda First | 34,650 | 2,900 | 32,652–37,138 | 376 | 523 |
| Al Nahda Second | 35,000 | 2,900 | 30,000–40,000 | 391 | 178 |
| Hor Al Anz East | 35,700 | 3,000 | 30,610–42,000 | 366 | 305 |
| Al Hamriya | 36,000 | 3,000 | 32,000–40,000 | 400 | 533 |
| Dubai Investment Park SecondDubai Investment Park (DIP) | 36,000 | 3,000 | 33,000–40,000 | 453 | 1,120 |
| Al Muteena | 36,500 | 3,000 | 32,000–40,076 | 406 | 999 |
| Al Qusais Industrial First | 37,000 | 3,100 | 33,000–39,000 | 471 | 323 |
| Dubai Investment Park FirstDubai Investment Park (DIP) | 37,400 | 3,100 | 33,000–42,372 | 460 | 801 |
| Warsan FourthAl Warsan | 37,440 | 3,100 | 33,000–41,000 | 421 | 2,877 |
| Madinat Hind 4Damac Hills 2 | 37,783 | 3,100 | 33,000–40,000 | 426 | 215 |
| Al Rega | 38,000 | 3,200 | 34,200–42,000 | 330 | 454 |
| Me'Aisem FirstDubai Production City (IMPZ) and Jumeirah Golf Estates | 38,000 | 3,200 | 33,000–44,000 | 433 | 3,061 |
| Saih Shuaib 2Dubai Industrial City | 38,000 | 3,200 | 35,500–40,000 | 418 | 472 |
| Wadi Al Safa 5Arabian Ranches 3, Athlon by Aldar, Dubai Land, Dubai Land Residence Complex and Villanova | 38,000 | 3,200 | 33,605–42,000 | 449 | 1,922 |
| Al Raffa | 38,115 | 3,200 | 35,000–45,000 | 441 | 836 |
| Al Murqabat | 39,051 | 3,300 | 35,000–45,000 | 420 | 687 |
| Al Hebiah FifthDamac Lagoons and Remraam | 40,000 | 3,300 | 36,000–44,250 | 468 | 279 |
| Al Hebiah FourthDubai Sports City and Tilal Al Ghaf | 40,000 | 3,300 | 36,750–45,000 | 445 | 3,671 |
| Nadd HessaDubai Silicon Oasis | 40,000 | 3,300 | 36,282–45,000 | 467 | 3,607 |
| Port Saeed | 40,000 | 3,300 | 34,000–50,000 | 355 | 231 |
| Wadi Al Safa 2Falcon City of Wonders, Liwan and Wadi Al Safa 2 | 40,000 | 3,300 | 36,000–43,000 | 407 | 697 |
| Wadi Al Safa 3Al Barari, Living Legends, Majan and Mohammed Bin Rashid City | 40,000 | 3,300 | 33,450–45,000 | 483 | 797 |
| Madinat Al MataarDubai South (Dubai World Central) and Expo City | 41,000 | 3,400 | 38,000–45,000 | 436 | 1,431 |
| Al Goze FourthAl Quoz | 41,500 | 3,500 | 35,000–50,000 | 522 | 731 |
| Oud Metha | 41,675 | 3,500 | 37,950–45,000 | 400 | 265 |
| Al Yelayiss 2Town Square | 42,000 | 3,500 | 38,000–48,000 | 344 | 331 |
| Jabal Ali FirstAl Furjan, Discovery Gardens, Jebel Ali and Wasl Gate | 42,494 | 3,500 | 37,429–48,000 | 484 | 9,004 |
| Um Hurair First | 43,500 | 3,600 | 36,312–48,000 | 517 | 180 |
| Al Karama | 44,000 | 3,700 | 39,000–48,000 | 312 | 1,390 |
| MirdifMirdif | 44,000 | 3,700 | 38,952–50,000 | 572 | 283 |
| Wadi Al Safa 7Arabian Ranches 2, Dubai Land, Reportage Village, Rukan and Serena | 44,000 | 3,700 | 40,000–50,000 | 419 | 227 |
| Al Barsha FirstAl Barsha | 44,528 | 3,700 | 40,000–50,000 | 400 | 601 |
| Al Bada | 44,640 | 3,700 | 37,800–50,000 | 409 | 415 |
| Al Barsha South FifthJumeirah Village Triangle | 45,000 | 3,800 | 40,000–53,000 | 436 | 1,070 |
| Al Hebiah ThirdDamac Hills and Mudon | 45,000 | 3,800 | 40,000–49,500 | 407 | 1,377 |
| Jabal Ali Industrial SecondDowntown Jebel Ali and Jebel Ali | 45,000 | 3,800 | 42,000–48,000 | 361 | 444 |
| Mankhool | 45,000 | 3,800 | 40,481–52,000 | 418 | 772 |
| Al Barshaa South ThirdArjan | 46,000 | 3,800 | 41,500–51,600 | 429 | 4,664 |
| Al Barshaa South SecondAl Barsha and Dubai Science Park | 47,000 | 3,900 | 42,000–50,000 | 417 | 392 |
| Al Hebiah SecondArabian Ranches and Dubai Studio City | 47,000 | 3,900 | 44,000–50,000 | 363 | 871 |
| Al Barsha South FourthJumeirah Village Circle | 48,000 | 4,000 | 42,000–55,000 | 438 | 7,975 |
| Al Hebiah FirstMotor City | 50,000 | 4,200 | 44,564–55,000 | 641 | 226 |
| Al MerkadhMeydan and Mohammed Bin Rashid City | 50,000 | 4,200 | 45,000–55,000 | 350 | 4,307 |
| Al JadafAl Jaddaf and Culture Village | 53,000 | 4,400 | 47,000–60,000 | 417 | 1,221 |
| Al SatwaAl Satwa | 54,000 | 4,500 | 46,000–66,000 | 458 | 446 |
| Hadaeq Sheikh Mohammed Bin RashidDubai Hills Estate and Mohammed Bin Rashid City | 57,000 | 4,800 | 53,000–62,000 | 413 | 486 |
| Al Thanyah FifthJumeirah Islands, Jumeirah Lake Towers and Jumeirah Park | 59,000 | 4,900 | 52,224–65,000 | 447 | 1,624 |
| Al Thanyah FirstBarsha Heights (Tecom) | 60,000 | 5,000 | 55,000–65,000 | 509 | 433 |
| Al Thanyah ThirdGreens, The Lakes and The Views | 60,000 | 5,000 | 55,000–66,075 | 438 | 283 |
| Business BayBusiness Bay | 65,000 | 5,400 | 55,142–79,143 | 459 | 4,144 |
| Marsa DubaiBluewaters, Dubai Harbour, Dubai Marina and Jumeirah Beach Residence | 65,000 | 5,400 | 55,000–75,000 | 460 | 1,180 |
| Burj KhalifaDowntown Dubai | 73,000 | 6,100 | 65,000–85,000 | 514 | 618 |
| Palm JumeirahEmirates Golf Club and Palm Jumeirah | 95,000 | 7,900 | 80,000–110,000 | 524 | 251 |
AED a year, the median of every Ejari studio contract registered in the twelve months to 10 Sept 2026 — new leases and renewals together, so a new let signed today usually costs more than the median beside it. The row is the Land Department area, because that is the unit the register files a tenancy under; where we publish a guide for a community the area serves, it is named beneath, and an area serving several communities is one reading shared between them rather than one figure per name. 40 of the 71 areas here hold a community we publish; the rest are mostly the older districts around the creek, which the register prices and we do not write guides for. “The middle half” is the 25th to the 75th percentile. Sizes are the register’s unit areas, medianed over the contracts carrying a plausible one.
To buy
What a studio costs to own, by community
Median price of completed studios resold and registered in the twelve months to 9 Sept 2026, for every community with 20 or more. Cheapest first. Off-plan sales are left out.
International City resold studios at a median AED 335,000, the lowest of any community here, and Palm Jumeirah at AED 1,517,500. The whole city’s median was AED 560,000, on AED 1,313 a square foot. Read price and rate together: a community can look dear per square foot and cheap per cheque, because its studios are small.
| Community | Median price AED | AED/sq ft | Median sq ft | Resales, 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| International City | 335,000 | 702 | 479 | 577 |
| Al Warsan | 375,000 | 882 | 374 | 160 |
| Dubai Investment Park (DIP) | 401,183 | 890 | 451 | 92 |
| Dubai Production City (IMPZ) | 415,000 | 1,036 | 394 | 292 |
| Dubai Land Residence Complex | 420,000 | 907 | 458 | 170 |
| Dubai Industrial City | 425,000 | 1,013 | 420 | 36 |
| Damac Hills 2 | 450,000 | 1,055 | 426 | 32 |
| Dubai Silicon Oasis | 463,750 | 1,091 | 453 | 202 |
| Dubai Sports City | 470,000 | 1,027 | 442 | 456 |
| Remraam | 480,000 | 993 | 468 | 37 |
| Dubai South (Dubai World Central) | 480,000 | 1,142 | 407 | 232 |
| Dubai Studio City | 507,355 | 1,424 | 356 | 294 |
| Rukan | 510,000 | 1,228 | 436 | 34 |
| Majan | 512,282 | 998 | 525 | 264 |
| Liwan | 512,500 | 1,265 | 407 | 26 |
| Discovery Gardens | 520,000 | 1,070 | 484 | 431 |
| Downtown Jebel Ali | 530,000 | 1,519 | 361 | 71 |
| Town Square | 552,500 | 1,601 | 347 | 68 |
| Jumeirah Village Triangle | 560,000 | 1,301 | 408 | 177 |
| Al Furjan | 565,000 | 1,392 | 408 | 137 |
| Damac Hills | 570,000 | 1,353 | 407 | 180 |
| Arjan | 590,000 | 1,422 | 412 | 560 |
| Al Barsha | 597,500 | 1,403 | 417 | 38 |
| Al Quoz | 600,000 | 1,010 | 625 | 37 |
| Motor City | 600,000 | 984 | 611 | 109 |
| Jumeirah Village Circle | 610,000 | 1,425 | 430 | 1,080 |
| Dubai Science Park | 650,000 | 1,486 | 429 | 22 |
| Meydan | 685,000 | 2,001 | 347 | 605 |
| Jumeirah Lake Towers | 760,000 | 1,675 | 448 | 138 |
| Mohammed Bin Rashid City | 800,000 | 1,855 | 433 | 77 |
| Al Jaddaf | 850,239 | 1,985 | 433 | 129 |
| Greens | 857,500 | 1,901 | 438 | 24 |
| Dubai Hills Estate | 964,000 | 2,086 | 434 | 42 |
| Business Bay | 1,014,258 | 2,107 | 470 | 584 |
| Dubai Marina | 1,050,000 | 2,342 | 481 | 160 |
| Downtown Dubai | 1,150,000 | 2,324 | 514 | 69 |
| Palm Jumeirah | 1,517,500 | 3,701 | 524 | 72 |
Completed homes only, resold and registered in the twelve months to 9 Sept 2026, for every community clearing 20 studio resales in the year. A further 35,568 studios sold off-plan in the same period and are left out: an off-plan price is set to a developer’s launch and payment schedule and would measure that rather than the market. The transfer fee, the agency fee and the rest of the bill on top of these prices are in the cost of buying, below.
Questions people ask
Studios in Dubai, answered
How much does it cost to rent a studio in Dubai?
A median AED 40,000 a year — about AED 3,300 a month — across the 99,156 studio tenancies registered through Ejari in the twelve months to 10 Sept 2026. Half were let for less and half for more; the middle half fell between AED 33,000 and AED 49,000. That is what tenants signed, not what landlords asked.
Can you rent a studio in Dubai for AED 1,000 a month?
Effectively no. AED 1,000 a month is AED 12,000 a year, and 35 of the year's 99,156 registered studio tenancies were at or below it — under a tenth of one per cent of them. At AED 2,000 a month the count is 4,028, and at AED 2,500 it is 17,303. The realistic floor for a studio of your own, on a registered tenancy contract, is around AED 2,100 a month. Advertisements below that are usually a partitioned room or a bed space, which is not a tenancy the register recognises.
Where are the cheapest studios in Dubai?
Of the Land Department areas with 150 or more studio tenancies in the year, the lowest medians were Al Rowaiyah First (AED 19,000), Al Baraha (AED 25,000), Al Mararr (AED 28,000) and AL QUSAIS (AED 28,000). Most of the cheapest rows are older districts either side of the creek rather than the freehold communities, so a cheap studio in Dubai is more often an old building in Deira than a new one on the edge of town — though the single lowest median of all, Al Rowaiyah First, is neither.
How big is a studio in Dubai?
A median 441 square feet on the rental register and 439 on the sales register — two separate registers, two square feet apart. Eight in ten fall between 313 and 549 square feet. It varies by where: the median studio resold in Town Square was 347 square feet and in Al Quoz 625.
Why is a new lease dearer than a renewal?
Because a sitting tenant's increase is capped and a new tenant's is not. The median new studio lease in the year was AED 45,000 and the median renewal AED 36,780 — a renewal is 18% below a new let, on 50,949 renewals against 48,207 new leases. What a landlord may add at renewal is governed by the RERA rental index, so the gap is the rule working, not a bargain you can ask for.
How much does a studio cost to buy in Dubai?
A median AED 560,000, at AED 1,313 a square foot, across the 7,963 completed studios resold and registered in the twelve months to 9 Sept 2026. By community the median ran from AED 335,000 in International City to AED 1,517,500 on Palm Jumeirah. Those are completed homes only: another 35,568 studios sold off-plan in the same year, priced to a developer's payment plan rather than to the resale market.
Are studios a good investment in Dubai?
The city's median studio rent of AED 40,000 against its median studio resale price of AED 560,000 is a gross ratio of about 7.1% — before service charges, agency fees and the weeks a flat sits empty, and it is a ratio of two city medians rather than a yield on any one property. Work out the figure for a specific flat with the rental yield calculator, and read the community's own page for what its studios do.
Where this leads
The studios we are letting and selling
To see what is on the market rather than what the register recorded, the studios we have to rent and the studios we have for sale are the same search filtered to this layout, with a real asking price on each.
Every community on this page has an area guide carrying its whole register, layout by layout. If the studio is a budget decision rather than a preference, the cheapest areas in Dubai ranks every community by what larger homes cost too, 1 bedroom apartments in Dubai does this page’s sum one size up — the layout the city rents most, and what the bedroom itself costs over a studio — 2 bedroom apartments in Dubai does it for the family flat, 3 bedroom apartments in Dubai for the size at which the house becomes the other choice, and the metro map says which of them you can live in without a car. Buying one to let? The rental yield calculator turns a price and a rent into a return, and the cost of buying adds the 4% transfer fee and the rest of the bill. Renting one? Your contract has to be registered — Ejari explains how, and the DEWA move-in covers the deposit and the bill that follow it.