Dubai vs Abu Dhabi Broker Licence Compared: An Exam at AED 700, a Compulsory Course, and One Question Neither Regulator Has Answered

The UAE does not have one real estate broker licence. Dubai and Abu Dhabi regulate separately, and in October 2026 they do it in opposite ways:

• Dubai runs an exam. The Dubai Land Department prices it at AED 700 plus AED 10 knowledge and AED 10 innovation fees, with the broker card at AED 500 and an ERES fee of AED 50 plus VAT. Certified training is required first and is sold separately by approved institutes, at roughly AED 2,000-4,000.
• Abu Dhabi has just made a taught course compulsory. ADREC launched it on 8 October 2026 with Mawaheb, ThinkProp and the Abu Dhabi School of Management; it ends in a transaction simulation and a final assessment, and the credential is renewed every year. ADREC has not published a fee.

Neither transfers to the other. And one of ADREC's own delivery partners states that only UAE nationals may hold an individual broker licence in Abu Dhabi - which, if correct, is the most important sentence on this page for most readers. ADREC has not confirmed or denied it in anything we could read.

If you are heading for Dubai, the full fee breakdown, the exemptions and the step list are in our Dubai RERA broker exam guide. If Abu Dhabi is the plan, read the ADREC broker course guide first, and settle the nationality question before you pay anyone.

The comparison below uses the regulator's figure wherever one exists and names the source wherever it does not. Where a cell says "per a provider", the number comes from a training company, not from DLD or ADREC.

The pattern in that table is the real comparison. Dubai's column is mostly the regulator's numbers; Abu Dhabi's is mostly providers' numbers, because the programme is days old and ADREC has published little beyond the launch announcement.

The Dubai Land Department's own service page for the real estate professional practice card prices the broker exam at AED 700 plus AED 10 knowledge and AED 10 innovation fees, the broker card at AED 500, and an ERES fee of AED 50 plus VAT. That is a government bill of roughly AED 1,270 plus VAT.

The figures circulating as the exam fee - AED 3,200 for a degree holder, AED 6,300 with a high school diploma, as much as AED 15,750 with no formal qualification - appear nowhere on DLD's schedule. Our reading is that they are training packages with the exam and card bundled in, quoted as though the whole number were the exam. We could not confirm that with DLD and we are not asserting it as fact. Odd-looking totals such as AED 784.67 also circulate; they look like the exam plus the small fees with VAT added, but we could not reconstruct the exact number from DLD's schedule.

The practical move is simple: when a provider quotes one number, ask which part is the DLD fee and which part is theirs. The DLD part is published and does not vary with your education.

One more number that causes expensive confusion: DLD lists the real estate evaluator card at AED 5,000. That is a different role, with two years' valuation experience required of citizens and five of expatriates. If a quote for "the broker licence" lands near AED 5,000 in government fees, somebody has priced the wrong card.

On the same page as the fees, DLD lists exemptions from the broker exam: people over 55, brokers with five consecutive years in the same office, and start-up licence holders.

That is unsurprising when you look at what ranks for this subject - mostly pages selling the training an exempt person would not need. DLD does not define how the five years are evidenced, whether they must sit on one trade licence, or what counts as a start-up licence, so if you think one applies to you, that is a question for DLD before it is a question for a training provider. Its service channels are listed on our Dubai Land Department portal page.

Note what the exemptions are from: the exam. Nothing on DLD's page suggests an exempt broker escapes the card itself, the good conduct certificate or the link to the trade licence.

DLD publishes the fees and the card conditions; the training institutes fill in the sequence. Put together, the route for an individual agent runs in this order:

1. Check the exemptions. Over 55, five consecutive years in one office, or a start-up licence. If one fits, confirm it with DLD before buying training.
2. Start the good conduct certificate now, not later. DLD lists a Dubai Police certificate of good conduct among the card requirements. It is a separate application with its own timeline, made through Dubai Police's app or site, and it is the step most likely to hold you up at the end. Background on why these certificates now matter across UAE licensing is in our police clearance guide.
3. Book the Certified Training for Real Estate Brokers with an approved institute - typically about four days, AED 2,000-4,000. Check the institute's current approval: at least one provider says it took over after the Dubai Real Estate Institute was dissolved, while other 2026 guides still name DREI.
4. Sit the exam. AED 700 plus the two AED 10 fees. Computer-based multiple choice; DLD publishes no question count or pass mark.
5. Apply for the card. AED 500 plus the ERES fee, with a personal photo and a copy of your Emirates ID. DLD gives the service time as five minutes once the conditions are met. DLD's e-services accept UAE Pass sign-in, so set that up before you need it.

Document checklist for the Dubai card

• Dubai Police certificate of good conduct
• Personal photo
• Copy of your Emirates ID - if yours is new or still printing, see the first Emirates ID application
• Evidence of passing the broker exam (or of the exemption that applies)
• A brokerage with a valid trade licence, because the card's validity is linked to it

If the good conduct certificate is the piece you would rather not chase yourself, the UAE police clearance service covers it.

ADREC announced its new curriculum on 8 October 2026, named in the launch coverage as the Abu Dhabi Real Estate Broker Transformation Course. It replaces the previous broker course, is mandatory for brokers seeking a professional licence in the emirate, and covers legal, operational, market and ethics content before a property transaction simulation and a final assessment. It is delivered with three named partners: Mawaheb (part of Abu Dhabi's Department of Government Enablement), ThinkProp and the Abu Dhabi School of Management.

A provider states 40 hours and a 70% pass mark, with one free retake and AED 500 plus VAT for a third attempt. ADREC has published neither figure, so both are the provider's.

The context ADREC gave with the launch explains why it is tightening: Zawya and GDN both report AED 117 billion of Abu Dhabi real estate transactions in the first half of 2026, up 112% year on year, with ADREC issuing 2,040 licences to real estate professionals in the period (up 34%) and the number of licensed brokers reaching 3,302.

The feature worth planning around is the annual renewal. The launch coverage says the ADREC Certified Broker credential must be renewed every year to reflect changes in the emirate's real estate laws. Dubai's card runs with the brokerage's trade licence; most professional credentials in the Gulf run two or three years. An annual cycle means a recurring cost and a recurring diary entry - and for a brokerage with twenty agents, twenty course places every year.

Abu Dhabi has run broker training before: the emirate's media office reported in November 2022 that the Department of Municipalities and Transport and ThinkProp had licensed a first batch of 400 brokers, valuers and surveyors through an earlier programme. What happens to people holding that older certification under the new course has not been published.

Because ADREC has published so little, the Abu Dhabi route can only be mapped from provider pages and one pre-launch listing. Treat every step below as provisional.

1. Settle eligibility first. See the next section. This is not a formality.
2. Book the course with one of the three named partners. Older providers may still be advertising the previous course; the approved list is what matters now.
3. Complete the course, the simulation and the final assessment. 40 hours and 70% to pass, per ThinkProp.
4. Apply through TAMM. A Bayut guide updated on 19 September 2026 - before the new curriculum launched - names the service as "Request or Renew a Licence for a Real Estate Broker (Individual)" on TAMM, and lists a good conduct certificate, a training completion certificate, academic qualifications and an experience certificate. The same guide gives no individual fee and puts the company broker licence at AED 9,000.
5. Renew every year, with the renewal course.

The good conduct certificate for an Abu Dhabi application comes from Abu Dhabi Police if you live there.

If the TAMM listing is right about academic qualifications, a degree issued abroad will need the full attestation chain first - an apostille alone is not enough for the UAE, as apostille vs attestation explains, and our UAE attestation service handles that leg.

Bayut points readers to TAMM's chatbot or a service centre for the fee, and a centre such as TAMM Al Wahda is also a sensible place to put the eligibility question to a person.

One of ADREC's three delivery partners states on its own course page that only UAE nationals can obtain an individual broker licence in Abu Dhabi. Other pages give a minimum age of 25, and others 21, with a valid Emirates ID and police clearance.

These cannot all be right, and the difference is not a detail. If the nationality restriction holds, an expatriate agent in Abu Dhabi works under a brokerage's licence rather than holding one personally, and the course means something quite different to them than to an Emirati broker setting up alone.

The launch coverage adds a clue without settling anything. Zawya reports that the Mawaheb strand is a programme to prepare 60 Emirati nationals to obtain brokerage licences, starting with an open day, then a one-week course and three months of practical training with nine real estate organisations, and the launch coverage framed the programme partly as Emiratisation. That tells you one track is explicitly built for Emiratis. It does not tell you whether the other two are closed to everyone else, and the 3,302 licensed brokers reported for the first half of 2026 are not broken down by nationality.

ADREC has not published an eligibility statement we could read. Ask ADREC directly, get the answer in writing, and do not let a training provider's booking page answer it for you. Our ADREC course guide will change the moment ADREC publishes one - and it is the reason we have not built an Abu Dhabi practice bank: a bank written before the audience and the assessment format are known would be guessing at both.

Nothing carries across. A Dubai broker card does not authorise work in Abu Dhabi and an ADREC credential does not authorise work in Dubai. An agent working both markets needs both, with two regulators, two renewal cycles and - in Abu Dhabi - possibly a nationality rule that decides whether the second one is available at all.

The paperwork around them is shared, though. Both rest on the brokerage's trade licence - and a lapsed licence is a bigger problem than most agents expect, covered in what happens when a trade licence expires, with costs in the trade licence cost guide. Both need a good conduct certificate and an Emirates ID.

And the tenancy systems differ too: Dubai registers through Ejari, Abu Dhabi through Tawtheeq. An agent quoting Dubai's rental index rules in Abu Dhabi is quoting the wrong emirate.

The two registration processes are walked through in Ejari registration and the Tawtheeq guide.

If you are moving your own residence from one emirate to the other as well as your work, that is a separate visa question from the licence; the UAE residence visa service covers the transfer side.

DLD publishes no syllabus, but the legislation is public, and what the certified training covers is consistent across providers: Dubai's property law and the practice built on it.

• Registration and title - Law No. 7 of 2006, the conclusiveness of the register, the 4% registration fee on a sale, registration trustee offices, and the designated areas in which non-GCC nationals may own. Jointly owned buildings now sit under Law No. 6 of 2019, which replaced Law No. 27 of 2007, with service charge budgets approved by RERA and collected through Mollak.
• Off-plan and escrow - Law No. 8 of 2007 on project escrow accounts and Law No. 13 of 2008 on the interim register, under which an unregistered off-plan disposition is void, not merely unenforceable. Oqood registers the off-plan purchase; the title deed comes on completion.
• Brokerage practice - the RERA Forms A (owner to broker), B (buyer to broker), F (buyer and seller) and I (broker to broker), commission, disclosure and the Code of Ethics.
• Tenancy - Law No. 26 of 2007 as amended, the 90-day notice to change terms against the 12-month possession notice served by notary, and the rent increase bands under Decree No. 43 of 2013.
• Advertising and compliance - Trakheesi permits, anti-money-laundering duties under Federal Decree-Law No. 20 of 2018, and the VAT treatment that catches most brokers: commission is standard-rated even where the residential supply is exempt.

The questions that trip people are rarely the definitions. They are the applied ones: a buyer who pays an off-plan deposit into the developer's company account rather than the project escrow account (the protection is lost, and the broker who allowed it has failed the client); a co-broke recorded on a WhatsApp message instead of Form I; a commission dispute taken to RERA, which regulates conduct but does not enforce fees.

Preparing without overpaying

The certified training is compulsory, so you will pay for it whatever else you do. What it does not always give you is volume of practice in the exam's format. There are 15 free practice questions written to those instruments by name. The full Dubai RERA bank is AED 199 for 180 original questions - 46 on brokerage practice, 36 each on registration and off-plan, 35 on tenancy and 27 on advertising and compliance - with three full timed mocks of 50 questions in two hours, no question repeated between them, and the law behind every answer. Access runs 180 days from one payment.

Two honest limits. The 50-question, two-hour format is what providers report, not something DLD publishes. And because DLD publishes no pass mark, the bank shows a target score, not an official threshold - there is no official one to show.

The single most common and most expensive error in UAE brokerage is telling a buyer that a tenanted property can be delivered vacant on completion.

It cannot, not automatically. A sale does not end a tenancy: the buyer steps into the landlord's position and takes the property subject to the lease for its remaining term. To recover possession they must rely on the statutory grounds, with twelve months' notice served through a notary public or by registered mail - and if the stated ground is then not carried out, the former tenant can seek compensation.

Rent is capped too. Any increase at renewal is banded by how far the current rent sits below the RERA index average, and any change of terms needs at least 90 days' notice before expiry. An investor told they can "put it to market rent next year" has been misled.

Check the registration as well as the lease. In Dubai the tenancy should be on Ejari; an unregistered lease is a warning sign about the rest of the file, and a buyer inheriting one inherits the problem.

Getting this wrong is not just a lost deal. It is a misrepresentation by the broker who said it.

The individual credential is one layer. The firm underneath it is another, and in both emirates the firm's licence is what the individual's authority actually hangs from.

In Dubai, DLD states that the broker card's validity is linked to the validity of the trade licence. If the company lets its licence lapse, every agent's card goes with it, through no act of theirs. A lapsed trade licence also blocks visa transactions for the staff on it, which is where it stops being an administrative problem - see an expired trade licence and blocked visas. Mainland licences in Dubai are issued and renewed through Invest in Dubai, which also offers free public licence verification - worth using on a brokerage before you join it.

Budget for the firm as well as the people: UAE trade licence costs puts a mainland licence at roughly AED 25,000-35,000, and what an employee visa costs an employer covers each agent you sponsor. For a single hire, model the visa in the UAE residence visa cost calculator. In Abu Dhabi, add an annual course place per agent, every year, because the credential expires yearly, and - per Bayut's pre-launch listing - an AED 9,000 company broker licence.

Advertising sits with the firm too. In Dubai, listings need Trakheesi permits from DLD, and a brokerage that lets agents advertise without them is exposing the people whose cards hang from its licence. If you would rather hand the company side to someone else, the UAE trade licence service covers issue and renewal.

Most of what goes wrong in UAE broker licensing is avoidable, and almost all of it comes from treating the two emirates as one system or treating a provider's number as the regulator's.

1. Paying a "licence package" without asking which part is DLD's. The government part is about AED 1,270 plus VAT. Everything above that is training and margin.
2. Pricing the evaluator card. AED 5,000, a different role, with experience requirements a new broker does not meet.
3. Leaving the good conduct certificate until after the exam. It is a card requirement with its own timeline.
4. Booking an institute without checking its approval. DREI's status is unclear in public sources.
5. Paying for the ADREC course before the nationality question is answered. One delivery partner says individual licences are for UAE nationals.
6. Treating 40 hours and 70% as ADREC's figures. They are ThinkProp's.
7. Assuming a Dubai card works in Abu Dhabi. It does not.
8. Promising a buyer a golden visa. Brokers hear the question constantly. Our golden visa requirements guide sets the property route at AED 2 million of property value, with mortgaged property eligible since February 2026 - but eligibility is decided on the buyer's whole situation, not by the broker. Point them to the golden visa eligibility checker rather than giving an answer you will be held to.

If you can only do one first, the deciding factors are not the fees.

Dubai is the known quantity. The fee is published, the exemptions are published, the exam has existed for years and the legislation behind it is public. You can find out what you are buying before you buy it.

Abu Dhabi is new and unresolved. The programme launched in October 2026, almost every figure in circulation is a training provider's, and the eligibility question - whether an expatriate may hold an individual licence at all - has not been answered by the regulator. That is not a reason to avoid it; it is a reason to ask ADREC before paying anybody.

For most expatriate agents the practical sequence is Dubai first, Abu Dhabi when ADREC publishes its own rules. If your employer is pushing you into the Abu Dhabi course, the eligibility question is the one to put to them in writing.

• Abu Dhabi eligibility. Whether an expatriate may hold an individual broker licence at all. One delivery partner says no; ADREC has published nothing we could read, and the launch coverage mentions only a dedicated Emirati cohort.
• The ADREC course fee, individual licence fee and any government charges, none of which appear in the launch coverage. The AED 9,000 company figure is from a September 2026 Bayut guide, not ADREC.
• Whether the AED 3,200 / 6,300 / 15,750 figures quoted in Dubai are training packages. That is our reading, not a confirmed fact.
• Dubai's pass mark, question count, duration and exam languages, which DLD does not publish - providers say 70%, 75% or 85%, 50 or 50-70 questions, and about two hours.
• Whether DREI still runs the certified training, or was dissolved as one provider states.
• How Dubai's five-year and start-up exemptions are evidenced.
• What happens to brokers holding the previous Abu Dhabi certification - whether it is recognised, converted or lapses.
• Whether TAMM is the only Abu Dhabi application route under the new curriculum.

If you have been through either route recently and can settle one of these, we would rather print a correction than leave the gap.

Broker licensing in the UAE is two systems with one job title. Dubai's is published and predictable; Abu Dhabi's is new, mostly described by the people selling it, and hinges on an eligibility question the regulator has not answered. Most of the money lost on it is lost by paying before asking.

Related reading: UAE police clearance certificates, and the Dubai RERA guide and ADREC course guide linked at the top of this page.

Try the free RERA mock to see where you stand, or go straight to the 180-question bank.

Every other UAE service we cover is on the UAE hub.

Want this handled for you? Wathim runs the paperwork around a broker card - good conduct certificates, attestation, the brokerage's trade licence and agent visas - end to end. Brief the desk and we will take the filing, the follow-ups and the portal chasing off your plate, or contact us with a question about your own case.