Abu Dhabi electricity and water bill calculator

What a unit of electricity costs in Abu Dhabi

If you rent in Abu Dhabi as an expat, a kilowatt-hour costs 26.8 fils until you pass your daily allowance and 30.5 fils after it. Water costs AED 7.84 per 1,000 litres within the allowance and AED 10.41 above it. UAE nationals pay 6.7 and 7.5 fils for electricity, and AED 2.09 and AED 2.60 for water. VAT at 5% goes on top. There is no fuel surcharge.

Those figures come from TAQA Distribution’s “Utility Tariff 2025”, the schedule that took effect on 1 January 2025. As of the date at the top of this page it is still the one TAQA publishes; there is no 2026 schedule. The residential rates in it are the same as in the 2023 guide, which said they had not changed since 2022.

The rate is the easy part. What decides your bill is the allowance: how much of your use falls in the cheaper green band. That depends on three things most bill estimates ignore: whether you are a national or an expat, whether you live in a flat or a villa, and how many days your bill covers.

How TAQA works out your bill, step by step

1. Your tariff category. UAE nationals get the national tariff on one residential property. Everyone else, including a national’s second home and diplomatic residences, pays the expat tariff. A separate social-card tariff applies to households registered for it.
2. Your property type. Flats and villas pay the same rates but get very different allowances. An expat villa’s daily electricity allowance is ten times a flat’s.
3. The days on the bill. The allowance is set per day. TAQA averages your use over the billing period, so in practice the green allowance on a bill is the daily limit multiplied by the number of days the bill covers.
4. Electricity. Use up to that allowance is charged at the green rate. Only the part above it is charged at the red rate. Crossing the line does not move your whole bill to the red rate.
5. Water. The same logic, with a daily allowance in litres and rates per 1,000 litres (the same as per cubic metre).
6. VAT. 5% is added to the consumption charges.
7. Municipality fee. If you are a tenant and not a UAE national, 5% of your annual rent (or the rental index value, if higher) is collected in monthly instalments on the same bill. It carries no VAT.

The calculator above follows exactly these steps. Each line on its receipt shows the quantity, the rate and the allowance it used, so you can hold it next to your own bill.

The 2025 residential tariff

These tables are built directly from our dataset of the TAQA schedule, so they always show the figures the calculator uses.

Electricity, homes

Customer	Green rate	Green allowance	Red rate (above)
UAE national, villa	6.7 fils	400 kWh a day	7.5 fils
UAE national, flat	6.7 fils	30 kWh a day	7.5 fils
Expat, villa	26.8 fils	200 kWh a day	30.5 fils
Expat, flat	26.8 fils	20 kWh a day	30.5 fils

Water, homes (per 1,000 litres, the same as per m³)

Customer	Green rate	Green allowance	Red rate (above)
UAE national, villa	AED 2.09	7,000 litres a day	AED 2.60
UAE national, flat	AED 2.09	700 litres a day	AED 2.60
Expat, villa	AED 7.84	5,000 litres a day	AED 10.41
Expat, flat	AED 7.84	700 litres a day	AED 10.41

Social-card tariff

Households on the social-card tariff get a free daily allowance and then pay a single rate, which for nationals is the national green rate and for expats the expat green rate.

Social-card holders

Customer	Free electricity	Then	Free water	Then, per m³
UAE national	333 kWh a day	6.7 fils	9,804 litres a day	AED 2.09
Expat	79 kWh a day	26.8 fils	2,801 litres a day	AED 7.84

The schedule does not split the social-card tariff by flat and villa, so the calculator hides that question when you choose it.

Other customers, for reference

People searching for “Abu Dhabi electricity price per kWh” are sometimes looking at a shop or a farm, not a home. These are flat rates with no daily allowance. Large industrial users over 1 MW pay 27 fils off-peak and 36.6 fils at peak (10:00-22:00, 1 June to 30 September). None of this applies to a household bill.

Non-residential rates

Customer	Electricity	Water, per m³
Commercial	20 fils	AED 7.84
Government	29.4 fils	AED 10.41
Agriculture	4.5 fils	AED 3.13
Industrial, below 1 MW	28.6 fils	AED 7.84
EV charger on its own meter	30 fils	–

Worked examples

All the examples below are produced by the same code as the calculator, and each one is also a test case in our code. If a rate in the dataset changes, these slips change with it.

1. An expat flat, a 30-day bill

A flat uses 900 kWh of electricity and 24 m³ of water over a 30-day billing period. The electricity allowance is 20 kWh × 30 days = 600 kWh, so 300 kWh are red. The water allowance is 700 litres × 30 days = 21 m³, so 3 m³ are red.

TAQA does not publish a numeric bill example, so this case is our own arithmetic on its published rates. It is the case we check our code against first.

2. The same flat, a longer and a shorter bill

Same flat, same 900 kWh and 24 m³, but the meter readings are 31 days apart. One more day adds 20 kWh and 700 litres to the green allowance, so the electricity falls to AED 251.56 and the water to AED 194.07.

On a 28-day bill the same use costs AED 475.90. Nothing about your consumption changed; the period did. This is why two months with near-identical meter readings can produce different bills, and why the calculator asks for the days.

3. An expat villa with the same use

Move the same household to a villa. The electricity allowance becomes 200 kWh a day and the water allowance 5,000 litres a day, so all 900 kWh and 24 m³ are green.

In practice villas use far more than this, especially in summer, but the comparison shows why the property type on your TAQA account matters. A villa wrongly registered as a flat crosses into the red band after 20 kWh a day instead of 200.

4. A UAE national renting a flat

A national’s main home, a rented flat, uses 1,200 kWh and 24 m³ in 30 days, with an annual rent of AED 90,000. The national flat allowance is 30 kWh a day, so 900 kWh are green and 300 are red. There is no municipality fee line, because nationals renting for their own residence are exempt.

5. Adding the municipality fee

Back to the expat flat in example 1, now with the rent included: AED 120,000 a year. The fee is 5% of that, AED 6,000 a year, collected as AED 500 a month. TAQA’s own FAQ uses this exact figure in its example for the ADGM authority fee, which is worked out on the same 5% basis.

In this example the fee is larger than the electricity and water charges put together, so leave it out and any estimate will look far too low.

Summer bills and the red band

The rates do not change with the season, but the daily average does. Suppose an expat flat uses 1,500 kWh over a 31-day summer billing period. That is an average of about 48 kWh a day against an allowance of 20. That month’s electricity would be AED 166.16 for the first 620 kWh and AED 268.40 for the remaining 880 kWh, before VAT.

So most expat flats are in the red band for part of the bill every summer. That is the tariff working as designed, not a billing error. If a winter bill is also mostly red, check the property type TAQA has on record before anything else.

The municipality fee and the ADGM authority fee

Abu Dhabi collects a municipality fee through the utility bill. Per TAQA Distribution’s FAQ and the UAE government portal:

• It is 5% of the annual rent in your tenancy contract or of the rental index value, whichever is higher.
• The minimum is AED 450 for the contract, which only matters for very low rents or short contracts. A six-month contract on AED 12,000 a year works out at AED 300, so AED 450 is charged instead, at AED 75 a month.
• It is billed monthly from the start of the contract and is due for the full contract term, even if the property is empty.
• The tenant named on the Tawtheeq-registered contract pays it, even when an employer pays the rent. Owners living in their own property do not pay it.
• UAE nationals are exempt for residential contracts for their own use.
• It carries no VAT.

For premises under ADGM (Abu Dhabi Global Market) jurisdiction, an “authority fee” of 5% of the rental contract value is charged instead, also monthly through the bill. TAQA’s worked example is AED 120,000 a year × 5% ÷ 12 = AED 500 a month.

Enter your annual rent in the calculator to add the fee. If the rental index value for your unit is higher than your rent, enter that figure instead; we cannot look it up for you.

VAT on an Abu Dhabi utility bill

TAQA’s VAT FAQ says consumption is subject to 5% VAT, and that municipality fees are not. The calculator therefore adds 5% to electricity and water and nothing to the fee.

There is one loose end. An older ADDC rates page carried the line “Effective 01/01/2018, charges will be inclusive of VAT at 5%”. The 2025 PDF does not mention VAT at all. We treat the tariff figures as excluding VAT, which matches the FAQ. If your own bill shows the consumption charge already including VAT, remove the VAT line from our estimate.

ADDC, AADC and TAQA Distribution

Abu Dhabi Distribution Company (ADDC) and Al Ain Distribution Company (AADC) now operate together as TAQA Distribution, and one tariff schedule covers both. If you are searching for “ADDC tariff”, “AADC electricity bill” or “TAQA tariff 2026”, it is the same schedule. The rates are set by the Abu Dhabi government on the advice of the Department of Energy; TAQA Distribution bills them.

The daily-allowance system itself started on 1 January 2015. News reports at the time gave an expat green rate of 21 fils per kWh, which is why that figure still turns up in old articles. It has since been raised to 26.8 fils.

How Abu Dhabi differs from Dubai and Sharjah

Three emirates, three tariff designs

	Abu Dhabi (TAQA)	Dubai (DEWA)	Sharjah (SEWA)
Structure	Two bands, by daily average	Four monthly slabs	Four monthly slabs
Fuel surcharge	None	Per kWh and per m³	Per kWh and per gallon
UAE nationals	Own tariff on one home	2011 resolution; not on DEWA’s pages	No separate rate published
Water unit	Per 1,000 litres (m³)	m³ since March 2025	Imperial gallons

If you have just moved from Dubai, two habits will mislead you. First, there is no slab ladder to climb: once you pass the allowance, every further kWh costs the same red rate. Second, the size of your home changes the allowance, not the rate. For the Dubai side, see the DEWA bill calculator; for Sharjah, the SEWA bill calculator.

What TAQA does not publish

We would rather tell you where the official information stops than fill the gaps with guesses.

• A worked bill. TAQA publishes the rates and the daily limits but no numeric example of a full bill. Our examples are our own arithmetic on its rates.
• The exact day count. We use the days between the two meter readings. TAQA does not state how it counts them (for example, whether both reading days are included). On a 30-day bill, one day either way moves 20 kWh of an expat flat’s electricity between bands, a difference of 74 fils before VAT.
• Whether the 2025 rates include VAT. See the VAT section above.
• Security deposits. We did not find residential deposit amounts on TAQA Distribution’s pages, so they are not in the calculator.
• A 2026 schedule. As of our last check, none exists. The calculator uses the 2025 rates.
• When the municipality fee rose from 3% to 5%. Both the current TAQA FAQ and the UAE government portal say 5%. We did not find the date of the change.

Common mistakes in other guides

When we checked the pages that rank for Abu Dhabi electricity tariffs, these errors came up repeatedly:

• Dubai’s slabs under an Abu Dhabi heading. The 23, 28, 32 and 38 fil steps are DEWA’s tariff. Abu Dhabi has never used them for homes.
• “Expats pay 21 to 32 fils”. 21 fils was the 2015 green rate. There is no 32 fil rate for homes in the current schedule; the expat rates are 26.8 and 30.5.
• “Up to 400 kWh per month” and “up to 200 kWh per month”. The limits are per day, not per month. 400 and 200 are the villa limits; flats get 30 (nationals) and 20 (expats) kWh a day.
• A 3% municipality fee. That figure comes from 2016 news coverage. TAQA and the UAE government portal now state 5% of the rent or rental index value.
• Leaving out the days. Any estimate that ignores the billing-period length will be wrong by a few dirhams on most bills, and by much more in summer.

Reading your own bill

To check a TAQA bill against the calculator, you need five things from it: the two meter-reading dates (for the days), the electricity consumption in kWh, the water consumption and its unit, your customer type, and the property type on the account. If the water is shown in gallons, switch the unit in the calculator; it converts at 4.54609 litres to the imperial gallon.

If our total and your bill differ by a few fils, it is almost always rounding or the day count. If they differ by a lot, check the property type and tariff category first. Those are the settings that change the allowance, and they are the ones TAQA can correct on your account. For anything else, your official bill and TAQA Distribution are the authority; this page is an independent estimate.