Dubai Islamic Bank fixes its profit rate for 3 years and charges no arrangement fee. Set the property value, deposit and term below and the monthly figure moves with them.
Rank the ten products this site can price end to end by headline rate and Dubai Islamic Bank comes second. Rank them by what leaves your account in the first 5 years and it comes first. Two things do that, and neither is printed in the headline.
The first is the fee. DIB charges 0% to arrange the finance. Emirates NBD charges 0.26%, which is AED 3,900 on an AED 1.5M loan, due before you have made a single instalment.
The second is bigger. Every fixed rate in the UAE ends, and the rate it ends into decides the decade after it. DIB reverts to 3-month EIBOR plus 1.00%. Emirates NBD reverts to 1-month EIBOR plus 1.99%. At the EIBOR values published on 22 September 2026 (3-month 4.37%, 1-month 4.02%) that is 5.37% against 6.01%. A gap of 0.84 percentage points, running for as long as you hold the finance. DIB also holds its fix for 3 years rather than 2, so you arrive at the reversion a year later.
So the DIB route costs AED 37,375 less over those 5 years and leaves AED 14,264 less on the balance. Both at once. The usual objection to a cost comparison is that the cheaper column simply paid off less principal, and here it runs the other way: DIB pays less and owes less.
DIB's advantage is at its narrowest in month 24, at AED 2,713, and it never turns negative. The AED 3,900 Emirates NBD takes up front is larger than the AED 49 a month DIB costs more while both rates are still fixed. From month 25, when the Emirates NBD fix expires and DIB's has another year to run, the gap widens by about AED 1,451 every month.
Both columns are priced at today's EIBOR, which will move, on the same 25-year term with no overpayment and no early settlement. Change the reversion and the ranking can change with it. That is the point of checking the margin rather than the headline. Confirm the live figures on the UAE mortgage rates table.
The fixed period is the row people skim past. DIB fixes for 3 years where FAB fixes for 1 and Emirates NBD for 2, and it will write 5 if you want it. ADIB matches the 3-year lock and goes further, out to 20. Longer is not automatically better. You are buying certainty, and if EIBOR falls you stay put while everyone on a shorter fix reprices down. What makes DIB's version worth having is the rate waiting at the other end of it, only 1.00% over the benchmark.
Salary transfer is a condition, not a discount you can decline. Read our Dubai Islamic Bank home finance guide for the rest of the product detail.
DIB's home finance is written as Ijara or diminishing Musharaka. Ijara is a lease: the bank holds the asset and you pay for the use of it plus your share of the price, until ownership transfers. Diminishing Musharaka is co-ownership: the bank's share shrinks with every instalment until the whole of it is yours. Either way the bank earns a profit rate and there is no interest in the contract.
The payment maths does not change. Both are settled on a reducing balance over a fixed term, which is the same formula behind a conventional mortgage, so the calculator above is accurate for Islamic finance without any adjustment. Read the third slider as a profit rate. The result panel labels one row total interest; on an Ijara that figure is the total profit paid to DIB across the term, and the number is identical either way.
Dubai Islamic Bank quotes 3.95% to a UAE national and 3.95% to a resident expat. The rate card does not split by nationality, which is unusual enough to be worth stating plainly. So on a DIB deal the citizenship question shows up in exactly one place, the CBUAE deposit floor, and it reaches your monthly payment through the finance amount rather than through the rate.
Take an AED 1,500,000 first home. A UAE national puts down 15%, AED 225,000, finances AED 1,275,000 and pays AED 6,695 a month at 3.95% over 25 years. A resident expat puts down 20%, AED 300,000, finances AED 1,200,000 and pays AED 6,301. The expat's smaller instalment is not the better deal. It is AED 75,000 more cash gone on completion day, and a smaller share of a rising asset.
Above AED 5 million the caps tighten to 75% loan to value for nationals and 70% for expats. A second or investment property is capped at 65% for nationals and 60% for expats. Off-plan is 50% for both. Affordability is read the same way for either buyer: a 50% debt burden ratio, with an income ceiling of 8 times annual income for a national and 7 times for an expat. Those are CBUAE limits, so they follow you to whichever lender you pick. The 3.95% does not.
Put DIB's 3.95%, its 0% fee and its 1.00% reversion margin beside the same three numbers from every other lender we track.