Tool · Calculator
Which UAE card pays you back the most on your spend?
Enter your monthly spend across seven categories. We rank every card on the site by AED-equivalent monthly reward at its published earn rate. Methodology is below the calculator, not behind an email wall.
How to read this
We do not promise these rewards. We show what each card's published earn rate works out to on the spend you enter, using the AED conversion benchmarks in the methodology section. Your actual redemption value will differ; rare sweet spots beat these rates, mass-market redemptions sit below them.
Top cards — gross reward
Ranked by AED-equivalent monthly reward at our conservative conversion benchmarks. We do not promise these rewards — we show what each card's published earn rate works out to on your stated spend.
- Monthly rewardAED 483paid in dirhamsAnnual feeAED 998
- Needs AED 10,000 of total monthly spend to earn at all — your profile is below it.
- Covers its fee at about AED 1,350/month of this mix, before caps and waivers.
Ranks here because groceries & supermarkets is your single biggest contributor — this card pays 10% on it.
- Monthly rewardAED 363paid in dirhamsAnnual feeAED 0
Ranks here because food & dining is your single biggest contributor — this card pays 20% on it.
- Monthly rewardAED 269paid in dirhamsAnnual feeAED 314
- Covers its fee at about AED 800/month of this mix, before caps and waivers.
Ranks here because groceries & supermarkets is your single biggest contributor — this card pays 4% on it.
Methodology
The calculator joins your stated monthly spend to each card's
typed earnRates in our cards data file,
category-by-category. The sliders cover seven categories so
the calculator hits feature parity with the dimensions a UAE
reader expects — dining, groceries, fuel, travel, online
shopping, utilities and entertainment.
The per-card formula
Each card's monthly reward is the sum of seven products — spend in each category multiplied by that card's earn rate for the category. Categories the card does not bonus fall through to its base "everything else" rate. Utilities and telecom bills use the card's own utilities rate where it publishes one — twelve cards do, and ten of them pay less there than their base rate — and fall through to the base rate otherwise.
Start from a profile
The six profile buttons set the seven lines to round-number modelling assumptions — a grocery-led household, someone who eats out most nights, a frequent flyer, and so on. They are starting points to edit, not claims about any real household, and a figure on this page always states the spend it was modelled on. The default profile is the "Balanced" one.
Caps
Where a card publishes its cashback caps in typed form
(earnRates._caps) — a monthly maximum, a
per-category ceiling, or both — the calculator applies them to
the month and the tile says the figure is the capped one.
Thirteen cards carry typed caps. Points and miles cards are not
clamped: their caps are stated in dirhams and their reward is
not, so there is no honest conversion. A card that needs a
minimum monthly spend before it earns anything is flagged when
your profile is below it; the figure is not zeroed, because
issuers apply the rule differently.
For the record: this section said from May 2026 that typed caps were applied. They were not, until 10 September 2026. The ADCB 365's AED 1,000 monthly cap and the ADIB Cashback's AED 300 grocery cap were both credited without limit. Corrected the day it was found.
Fee break-even
On a card with an annual fee, each tile states the monthly spend at your category mix at which the reward first covers the fee's monthly accrual. It uses the uncapped rate, before waivers, and rounds up to the nearest AED 50. Where the card's monthly cap sits below the fee accrual, the tile says the fee is never covered by earn alone rather than printing a number.
Cards you already hold
Tick the cards in your wallet and the ranking narrows to them, with a table of which one to use for each category — the routing question a reader with two or three cards actually has. The table prices one category at a time from the same earn rates and the same published baselines, before monthly caps; the ranking beneath it still applies the caps to each card's month. Your selection is kept in this browser only.
The AED conversion table
Two separate things decide the AED figure on each card, and mixing them up is what made an earlier version of this page publish figures that were wrong by a factor of a hundred.
How much you earn
Cards state their earn rate in different denominators. Some quote a percentage of spend, some points per AED 1, Etihad Guest co-brands miles per AED 10, and the Skywards and Bonvoy cards points per USD 1. Each card's rate is applied through its own denominator, read from the earn-unit wording published on the card's page. A card whose wording does not state one is left out of the ranking rather than guessed at.
What a unit is worth
Cashback cards pay dirhams, so no conversion applies. For the currencies below we use the baseline published on our valuations page — the same figure the card reviews use, not a separate number kept here.
| Currency | Fils per unit | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Emirates Skywards | 2.0 | Published on /valuations/ |
| Etihad Guest | 2.0 | Published on /valuations/ |
| Marriott Bonvoy | 2.5 | Published on /valuations/ |
| Every other currency | 1.0 | Placeholder — flagged on the card |
The placeholder row is not a valuation. Most cards here earn a bank or merchant currency — ENBD Plus Points, ADCB TouchPoints, LuLu Points, Darna, U by Emaar, FAB Rewards, SHARE, Voyager Miles — and we have not published a baseline for any of them. Those cards are ranked on a flat placeholder so they stay visible in the tool, and every one of them carries a label saying so. Do not read a placeholder card's AED figure against a published one; the two are not measured the same way.
Annual fee handling
The default view shows monthly reward AED and annual fee
separately. Toggle the "show net of annual fee" checkbox to
subtract the monthly fee accrual (annualFee / 12)
from the reward and re-rank. A fee-free card with a modest
earn rate often beats a premium card once the fee lands.
Verification dates
Every ranked card carries its lastVerified date.
Cards verified more than 90 days ago get a "data drift risk"
chip — we do not hide them, but we tell you the figures may
have moved.
What this calculator does not do
- We do not score welcome bonuses. A card's first-year value can dwarf its earn rate; check the review page.
- We do not factor in lounge access, cinema BOGO, golf, the Entertainer, or hotel discounts. Use the cards directory filters for those.
- We do not check your eligibility. Each result tile links to the full card review with salary band and salary-transfer requirements.