Document attestation · Cost
What document attestation costs in the UAE
The honest version. MOFA publishes no flat attestation fee, the AED 150 everyone quotes belongs to a different service, and the largest line on a foreign document is usually charged by a government that is not the UAE.
Last checked against the MOFA service pages on 5 September 2026. Taw-Theeq prepares, translates and submits documents. Attestation itself is performed by the competent government authorities.
Cost
What attestation actually costs, and why one number was never possible
The most searched question in the category, and the one most often answered with a figure the ministry never published.
The attestation service page publishes no flat fee. It states that “the applicable fees depend on” four things —
the number of documents, the attestation completion option applied to the application,
the attestations included in the selected service, and whether the document is personal or
commercial — and that “the total amount payable will be displayed before payment”. Checked 5 September 2026 at mofa.gov.ae.
Four variables, resolved per application. A page that promises you a fixed government fee is
describing its own price list, not the ministry’s.
The AED 150 figure, and where it actually comes from
You will see AED 150 quoted as “the MOFA attestation fee” on a great many pages. The number is
real. It belongs to a different service. MOFA publishes it on the eDAS 2.0 service page — the Electronic Documents Attestation
System — as “150 per invoice/COO”, covering commercial invoices and certificates of origin, with a stated
completion of two minutes.
It is not the fee for attesting a degree, a birth certificate, a marriage certificate or a trade licence. Quoting
it as though it were is the most widespread factual error in this market, and it is the reason people arrive at the
ministry stage with a budget that does not survive contact with the actual application.
What moves the total
| Driver | Why it moves the number | What to do about it |
|---|---|---|
| Number of documents | Pricing is per document. A family of four applying together is four applications, not one discounted set. | Submit everything you will need in a single pass. A second round trip later repeats the whole chain, not just the ministry stage. |
| Personal or commercial | MOFA separates the two explicitly, and the distinction follows the document through every stage. | Establish the category before budgeting. A salary certificate and a trade licence are not the same errand. |
| Attestations included | One application can cover the ministry stage alone, or the ministry stage plus a UAE mission abroad. | Decide deliberately — see the destination options. Choosing the narrower option and needing the wider one means paying twice. |
| Completion option | Whether the finished attestation is returned digitally or physically through an approved courier changes what is payable. | Digital is available only where the document meets MOFA’s digital conditions. It is not a service level you can request for a paper certificate. |
The lines that sit outside MOFA entirely
For a document issued abroad, the ministry stage is usually the smallest line in the total. Ahead of it
sit the issuing institution’s own verification charge, the state or federal authentication in that country, and the
UAE mission’s legalisation fee there — three tariffs, set by three authorities, in currencies the UAE does not
control.
Two more are routinely forgotten until they arrive. Courier, because originals travel and cannot
be emailed. And legally certified translation, where the receiving authority requires Arabic.
Neither is optional where it applies, and both cost less to plan for than to discover.
How to read a quotation you have been given
A quotation that shows one figure is hiding the structure. A useful one separates what is payable to a government
authority from what is payable to the company handling it, names the authority for each line, and states which lines
are estimates because they are set abroad. If a quotation cannot be broken down that way, the number is not a price
— it is a guess with a margin on top.
By document
Where the money goes, by document family
The government stages are similar across families. What differs — often by an order of magnitude — is the verification that has to happen before them.
| Document family | The line that dominates the cost | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Degree and educational | The awarding institution’s verification charge | Universities set their own fee for confirming an award to an authenticating authority, and it is invisible on every published attestation price list because it is not a government fee. See educational attestation. |
| Birth, marriage, death | Obtaining a fresh certified copy | Many authorities decline to authenticate an old or handwritten original and require a newly issued copy first. See personal documents. |
| Commercial — invoices and COOs | Nothing dominates; eDAS 2.0 is a published flat figure | MOFA publishes “150 per invoice/COO” for this service specifically. See commercial documents. |
| Commercial — contracts, licences, corporate records | Chamber of commerce attestation | A separate stage to a separate body, before any ministry stage, with its own tariff. |
| Power of attorney and affidavits | Notarisation and drafting | The instrument usually has to be drawn and notarised correctly before it can enter the chain at all. |
The pattern across all five: the stage that dominates the bill is almost never the one
people budget for. They budget for the ministry stamp, which is the cheapest and fastest part of the job.
By origin country
The same document, two countries, two very different bills
Origin matters more than document type, because it decides how many authorities touch the file and what each of them charges.
A free national stage, priced stages either side
MEA states that Normal Attestation — the route that applies to UAE-bound documents, because the UAE is
not a Hague member — is “done free of cost”. The charges sit at the State authentication before it, at the UAE
mission stage after it, and with the outsourced service providers through whom submissions are made.
So the headline national stage costs nothing and the chain still is not free. The Indian route in full.
A published, tiered national stage
The FCDO Legalisation Office publishes standard, next-day, e-Apostille and urgent tiers at different
fees, and the UAE Embassy in London sets its own charge separately. Here, paying more genuinely buys time — the
one origin country in this section where that is reliably true.
Neither set of figures appears anywhere in what MOFA publishes, because neither is a UAE
charge. Any single published price for “attestation” that does not name the country of issue is describing
something other than your document.
Reading a quotation
How to tell a price from a guess
A useful test you can apply to any quotation, including ours.
| Ask | A good answer looks like | A weak answer looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Which lines are government fees? | Each one named, with the authority it is payable to. | A single total with no breakdown. |
| Which lines are estimates? | The foreign-authority lines flagged as set abroad and subject to change. | Everything presented as fixed. |
| What is not included? | Courier, translation and any destination-country mission stage stated explicitly. | Silence, and an invoice later. |
| What happens if it is rejected? | A stated position on who bears the cost of resubmission. | Not addressed. |
| When was the figure checked? | A date. | No date. |
The reason this matters is not that anyone is necessarily being dishonest. It is that a
chain assembled from three governments’ tariffs genuinely cannot be quoted to the dirham in advance, and a company
willing to say so is more likely to be right about the parts it does quote.
Going the other way
What it costs to send a UAE document abroad
The inbound and outbound journeys have different cost shapes, and conflating them is why budgets slip.
A document issued in the UAE and needed abroad has a shorter chain and a more predictable
bill, because more of it is under UAE authorities. The issuing body confirms the document, MOFA attests it, and
the destination country’s embassy or consulate in the UAE legalises it.
The cost variable that dominates here is not a fee at all — it is the choice made inside
the MOFA application about which attestations the service includes. Selecting ministry attestation only, then
discovering the destination required the UAE mission stage as well, means a second application and a second set
of charges. Selecting the fuller option where it is available folds both into one payment. That single screen is
worth more attention than any price comparison, and it is explained on
the MOFA attestation page.
The second variable is the destination country’s own mission in the UAE. Those fees are set
by that mission, not by any UAE authority, they vary widely between missions, and several run appointment-only
counters where the practical cost is weeks of lead time rather than dirhams. Where a deadline is fixed, that queue
is usually the binding constraint.
There is no apostille route out of the UAE. Because the UAE is not a Contracting Party to
the Apostille Convention, no authority here can issue one — including when the destination is itself a member
state. Anyone offering a UAE apostille is describing something that does not exist, which is a useful early signal
about the rest of their quotation. See apostille vs attestation.
The cost nobody quotes
What a rejection actually costs
Rejection is the largest single cost risk in the process, and it never appears on a price list.
A rejected application does not cost you the fee for that stage. It costs you the fee for
that stage plus every stage that has to be redone above it, plus the courier both ways, plus the time — and for a
foreign document, time is measured against an authority in another country that does not know your deadline
exists.
| If this fails | What has to be redone | Realistic impact |
|---|---|---|
| The document itself is ineligible — laminated, or a scan submitted as a digital original | Obtain a replacement document from the issuing authority, then the entire chain. | The worst case, because the fix starts in the country of issue and nothing already paid for is recoverable. |
| The UAE mission stage abroad was skipped | Send the document back to the issuing country for that stage, then MOFA again. | A full international round trip. This is the most common serious error in the section. |
| The wrong national department authenticated it | Redo the national stage and everything above it. | Common with Indian documents, where personal, educational and commercial each route through a different department. |
| A name does not match the passport | Usually nothing in the chain — but the receiving authority may require a supporting document or a corrected certificate. | Cheap to fix if caught before submission, expensive after, because the discovery happens at the counter. |
| Arabic translation missing where required | Translation and certification only; the attestation chain generally stands. | The least damaging failure, and the easiest to plan around. |
Read down the right-hand column and the economics become obvious: the checks that prevent
these cost almost nothing and happen before the document moves. That is the part of this work worth paying for —
not the submission, which anyone can do, but the review that stops the submission being wasted.
Questions
Cost, answered
Is the MOFA attestation fee really AED 150?
Why will nobody give me a fixed total upfront?
Is it cheaper to do it myself?
Do I pay per document or per application?
Does attestation cost more if it is urgent?
Is translation included in the attestation fee?
Why do quotes from different companies differ so much?
Does it cost more to attest an old certificate?
Do I have to pay again if a document is rejected?
Is there a cheaper option for several documents at once?
Why is the courier line so large on a foreign document?
Because originals travel and cannot be emailed, and on an inbound file they usually travel twice — out to the issuing country for the stages there, and back again. Add tracked, insured handling for a document that is difficult to replace and the shipping becomes a real line rather than a rounding error. It is also the line that doubles when a file is split into two rounds instead of one.
Do you charge if the document is rejected?
Government fees already paid are not recoverable by anyone, and any stage above the defective one generally has to be redone. What we can control is the likelihood: the pre-submission check exists precisely so that the avoidable causes — lamination, a missing prior seal, the wrong department, a name that does not reconcile — are found before money is spent rather than after.
Can I pay the government fees myself and only pay you for the work?
In many cases yes, and some clients prefer it for exactly the transparency reason. What matters is that the stages still run in order, because a stage completed out of sequence confirms nothing and is not counted. Tell us which parts you intend to handle and we will price only the remainder and tell you what the document must look like when it reaches us.
Is there a discount for a whole family?
Not in the government lines, which are charged per document — the ministry lists the number of documents as one of the four factors that set the fee. Where a family file genuinely costs less is in everything charged per shipment rather than per document, and in avoiding the second round trip that a split submission causes. The saving is in sequencing, not in a rate card.
Where to go next
The pages that answer what comes after cost
A worked example
What an itemised quotation should look like
Not our prices — the shape of an honest quotation, so you can test any quotation you receive, including ours.
Take the most common file in this category: one degree certificate issued abroad, needed by an employer in
Dubai. A useful quotation separates it into lines that each name an authority, and flags the ones nobody in the
UAE controls.
| Line | Who sets it | Fixed or estimated |
|---|---|---|
| Institution’s verification charge | The awarding university or college. | Estimated — set by the institution, and absent from every published attestation price list because it is not a government fee. |
| National authentication in the issuing country | That country’s designated authority. | Estimated — published there, in that currency, and subject to change without notice here. |
| UAE mission legalisation abroad | The UAE mission responsible for that country. | Estimated — and it is the mission accredited for the country, not necessarily the nearest. |
| International courier, both directions | The courier. | Estimated — and it doubles if the file is submitted in two rounds instead of one. |
| MOFA attestation | UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs. | Displayed before payment; the ministry names four factors that set it and publishes no flat fee. |
| Certified Arabic translation | The translation, where the receiving authority requires Arabic. | Quotable once the document length is known; produced after the final stamp. |
| Our service fee | Taw-Theeq. | Fixed, and stated separately from every line above. |
What the shape tells you
Five of the seven lines are set outside the UAE or by a non-government body. That is why a single fixed total
quoted before the country of issue is known cannot be a price — there is nothing for it to be a price of. It is
also why the largest line on a foreign document is usually not the ministry stamp that everybody budgets for.
The line that is not on the list
Rejection. It does not appear on any quotation and it is the largest cost risk in the process, because it
repeats the stages above the defect plus the shipping in both directions. Every check we do before submission is
aimed at that line rather than at shaving the ones above it.
Tell us the document and we will price the actual chain
Document type, country of issue, where it will be used. You get an itemised cost with the authority named against each line, and a note of which figures are estimates because they are set abroad.