SEWA bill calculator for Sharjah homes

What is on a SEWA bill

The Sharjah Electricity, Water and Gas Authority (SEWA) sets its residential tariff per month. For a home, the charges come down to five lines:

1. Electricity, in rising monthly slabs.
2. Water, in rising monthly slabs, measured in imperial gallons.
3. A surcharge on every kWh and every gallon. SEWA’s calculator labels it simply “surcharge”. On electricity it is the same 6 fils per kWh that Dubai charges as its fuel surcharge.
4. VAT at 5% on the three lines above.
5. The sewerage fee, for expatriate households only, per gallon of water, since 1 April 2025.

Gas is a separate SEWA service with no published residential tariff, so it is not covered here. Neither are security deposits or connection fees, which SEWA does not publish on its website.

How a SEWA bill is calculated, step by step

1. Take the month’s electricity in kWh (the current reading minus the previous one). Fill the slabs in order: the first 2,000 kWh at 23 fils, the next 2,000 at 28, the next 2,000 at 32, and anything over 6,000 at 38. Each rate applies only to the units inside its own slab, so going over a line does not reprice the whole bill.
2. Add the electricity surcharge: 6 fils on every kWh, whatever slab it fell in.
3. Take the month’s water in imperial gallons and fill the water slabs the same way: 3.5 fils up to 6,000 gallons, 4.0 fils from 6,001 to 12,000, and 4.6 fils above that.
4. Add the water surcharge: 0.5 fils on every gallon.
5. Add VAT at 5% on the total of steps 1 to 4. SEWA’s own calculator applies it to that total as one line.
6. Add the sewerage fee if the account holder is not a UAE citizen: 1.5 fils for every gallon of water on the bill.

The calculator above does exactly this. It opens with SEWA’s own test case, which we reproduce to the fils.

The SEWA tariff, slab by slab

These tables are built from our dataset of SEWA’s published figures, so they always match the calculator.

Electricity, residential, per month

Monthly use	Rate	Surcharge	Rate + surcharge
0 to 2,000 kWh	23 fils	6 fils	29 fils
2,001 to 4,000 kWh	28 fils	6 fils	34 fils
4,001 to 6,000 kWh	32 fils	6 fils	38 fils
Over 6,000 kWh	38 fils	6 fils	44 fils

Water, residential, per month (imperial gallons)

Monthly use	Rate per gallon	Surcharge per gallon	Rate per 1,000 gallons
0 to 6,000 gallons	3.5 fils	0.5 fils	AED 35.00
6,001 to 12,000 gallons	4 fils	0.5 fils	AED 40.00
Over 12,000 gallons	4.6 fils	0.5 fils	AED 46.00

Sewerage management fee

Account holder	Per gallon of water	Since
Expatriate	1.5 fils	1 April 2025
UAE citizen	0 fils	Exempt

The “rate + surcharge” column is what a kWh really costs before VAT: 29 fils in the first slab and 44 fils at the top. “Sharjah electricity unit price” questions usually want that number, not the bare slab rate.

Worked examples

Each example below comes from the same code as the calculator and is one of its test cases.

1. SEWA’s own example: 3,000 kWh and 8,000 gallons

We ran SEWA’s Energy Calculator with 3,000 kWh and 8,000 gallons on a residential account. It returned electricity of AED 740.00, water of AED 290.00, surcharge of AED 220.00, VAT of AED 62.50 and a total of AED 1,312.50. Our calculation for a UAE citizen, who pays no sewerage fee, matches line for line.

2. The same month for an expat household

SEWA’s calculator does not include the sewerage fee, because the fee is a municipal charge set by the Executive Council, not a SEWA tariff. For an expatriate account it adds 8,000 × 1.5 fils = AED 120.00.

3. A small flat in a mild month

An expat flat using 1,200 kWh and 4,000 gallons stays in the first slab for both. Electricity plus surcharge is 1,200 × 29 fils, water plus surcharge 4,000 × 4 fils.

4. A large villa in summer

Suppose a villa uses 6,500 kWh and 15,000 gallons in a summer month. That touches every electricity slab and all three water slabs.

The last 500 kWh cost 38 fils each plus the 6 fil surcharge. Cutting them would save AED 231.00 including VAT, more than the same cut would save in a winter month.

When a SEWA bill suddenly jumps

Because the slabs are monthly, the price of the next kWh changes at fixed points, and summer pushes most homes past at least one of them. With the surcharge included, the next kWh costs 29 fils up to 2,000 kWh, 34 fils up to 4,000, 38 fils up to 6,000 and 44 fils beyond. Water works the same way at 6,000 and 12,000 gallons.

So a month at 2,500 kWh costs AED 178.50 more than a month at 2,000 kWh, including VAT. That is 25% more electricity for 29% more money, because the extra 500 kWh are charged at 28 fils plus the surcharge instead of 23. If your bill has jumped and your use has not, check three things in this order: the two meter readings, the number of days the bill covers, and whether a sewerage line has appeared since your last comparable bill.

Gallons, not cubic metres

SEWA still measures water in imperial gallons. Dubai’s DEWA moved its water bills to cubic metres in March 2025, and Etihad Water and Electricity in the northern emirates shows both, so it is easy to mix units if you compare bills across emirates.

One imperial gallon is 4.54609 litres, so one cubic metre is about 219.97 gallons. If you only know your use in cubic metres, switch the calculator’s water unit and it converts before applying the gallon slabs. For example, 10 m³ is 2,199.69 gallons, which costs AED 76.99 before the surcharge and VAT, plus a sewerage fee of AED 33.00 for an expat.

Converting the other way, the sewerage fee of 1.5 fils a gallon works out at about AED 3.30 per m³. That is our conversion, not a figure SEWA or the Executive Council publishes.

The sewerage fee, explained

On 11 February 2025 the Sharjah Executive Council announced an amendment to its Decision No. 5 of 2013 on municipal fees. From 1 April 2025, a sewerage management fee of 1.5 fils per gallon is charged on water consumption, and all UAE citizens are exempt. Both the Executive Council’s own site and WAM, the national news agency, carry the announcement.

What this means in practice:

• It scales with water, not electricity. A household using 6,000 gallons pays AED 90 a month; one using 12,000 gallons pays AED 180.
• It is not a SEWA tariff, so SEWA’s Energy Calculator leaves it out. Any estimate built only on that calculator will be short by this amount for expat homes.
• Bills for periods before 1 April 2025 did not carry it. Old bills are not a good guide to today’s.

VAT on the fee is not stated. Neither the announcement nor SEWA’s calculator says whether 5% VAT applies to it. We add none, and the receipt tells you what 5% would add if your bill shows it.

Do UAE nationals pay a different SEWA tariff?

SEWA’s calculator has one residential option, labelled “Residential (Local/Expat)”. It shows no separate electricity or water rate for Emirati homes, and SEWA’s website publishes none. Search results surface older news suggesting nationals were treated differently in the past, but we have found no current official rate, so the calculator uses the published one for everyone.

The confirmed difference is the sewerage fee: citizens do not pay it. If you are an Emirati and your bill shows electricity or water rates lower than the table above, your bill is right and this page is incomplete. Please tell us at hello@hivly.net so we can check it against SEWA.

What SEWA does not publish

• When the current slabs took effect. News reports from 2008 describe SEWA introducing slab tariffs that April at 20, 24, 28 and 33 fils per kWh, with water at 3, 3.5 and 4 fils a gallon. Those were later raised to today’s rates, but SEWA’s calculator gives no effective date (its footer reads © 2024).
• Commercial and industrial rates. Choosing “Commercial” in SEWA’s calculator returned exactly the same result as “Residential” for the same inputs. Either the rates are the same or the selector does nothing, so we make no claim about commercial tariffs.
• A separate rate for nationals. See above.
• Deposits and connection fees. A 2015 news report described connection fees under Decree 1/A of 2015, but we could not confirm the amounts on an official page, so they are not here.
• Gas. SEWA supplies piped gas but publishes no residential gas tariff on the pages we checked.
• Billing-period length. The slabs are monthly. SEWA does not say how it adjusts them when a bill covers more or fewer days than a month, so the calculator treats every bill as one month.
• Freehold buildings. Expats in some freehold towers were reported in 2018 to pay a flat 45 fils per kWh, with a reduction reported in 2019. We found nothing on SEWA’s site confirming either, so the calculator does not model it. If you live in a freehold tower and your bill shows a single flat rate, use the bill.

Common mistakes in other guides

• Old slabs. The 2008 rates of 20, 24, 28 and 33 fils per kWh still circulate. The current residential slabs are 23, 28, 32 and 38 fils, plus the 6 fil surcharge.
• Water prices in AED per m³ presented as SEWA’s tariff. Figures such as 7.699, 8.799 and 10.118 per m³ with a 1.10 surcharge are conversions (and the surcharge is Dubai’s). SEWA’s tariff is in fils per gallon: 3.5, 4.0 and 4.6, plus 0.5.
• Separate “Local” and “Expat” options on SEWA’s calculator. There is one combined option, “Residential (Local/Expat)”.
• No sewerage fee. Pages written before April 2025 leave out the 1.5 fils a gallon that expatriate households now pay.
• VAT on everything, with certainty. VAT on the sewerage fee has not been confirmed either way.

Why Sharjah’s numbers look like Dubai’s

SEWA’s electricity slabs, the 6 fil surcharge and its gallon water slabs are numerically the same as DEWA’s, and DEWA’s water rates were the same in gallons before Dubai switched to cubic metres. Two things differ in practice. Dubai now bills water in m³ on slab breaks of 27 and 54 m³, and Dubai’s sewerage fee and housing fee are Dubai Municipality charges with their own rates. So a Dubai bill and a Sharjah bill for the same use will not match even though the electricity lines do. See the DEWA bill calculator for Dubai and the Abu Dhabi electricity and water bill calculator, where the tariff works on daily allowances instead of slabs.

Average electricity bill in Sharjah

SEWA publishes no average bill and no average consumption per home, and we will not invent one. The nearest official figure is from Dubai: DEWA’s 2025 statistics work out at about 1,599 kWh per residential account per month, across flats, villas and national homes together (our division of DEWA’s totals). On SEWA’s tariff, 1,600 kWh costs AED 368.00 plus AED 96.00 surcharge and AED 23.20 VAT, AED 487.20 for electricity alone.

Treat that as a reference point, not a typical Sharjah bill. A one-bedroom flat in winter can be a fraction of it; a villa in August can be several times more. The calculator with your own meter readings is a far better guide.

Reading your own bill

You need two numbers from the bill: electricity consumption in kWh and water consumption in gallons, each for the month. Check whether a sewerage line appears and whether VAT is applied to it. If your total and ours differ by a few fils, it is rounding. If they differ by more, check the billing period and whether the bill includes arrears, gas or other services. For anything that matters, SEWA’s bill is the authority; this page is an independent, unofficial estimate.