MCP-Dubai

خادم MCP للبيانات العامة في دبي والإمارات وللمعرفة العملية لتأسيس الأعمال An MCP server for Dubai and UAE public data plus curated business setup knowledge

Connect AI agents (Claude, GPT, Cursor, Copilot) to Dubai and UAE public APIs and curated business setup knowledge.

🔧 120 tools · 🏛️ 37 features · 📚 19 verified knowledge domains · ✅ 14 keyless APIs · 💼 56 business advisor tools · 🤖 2 agent skills

Quick Start · Tool Catalogue · Knowledge Freshness · Architecture · Roadmap · Contributing

Dubai gave me a life. I promised myself I'd give something back.

by Mahdi Salmanzade, Software Developer, Dubai 📧 mahdi@clrtstudio.com · 📅 April 2026

⚠️ Knowledge Date: July 2026

Most recently verified 2 July 2026: a full quarterly refresh of the tax, visas, free zones, banking, tenancy, parkin, cost-of-living, events, and compliance packs (e-invoicing pilot launch, VAT law amendments, the new AML law, Salik/Parkin VAT, the 2026-27 school fee freeze, and more), plus corrected 2026 holiday observances and a provisional 2027 calendar. Business rules in the UAE (corporate tax, visas, free zone pricing, accelerator cycles, API migrations) change frequently. Always verify with the official source before making real decisions. Every biz/* tool returns a knowledge_date field with its own per-domain freshness stamp, and you can call get_knowledge_status() at any time to see which domains were verified when.

📋 Table of Contents

1. What is this?

2. Why MCP-Dubai exists

3. Quick Start

4. Tool Catalogue

5. Data Sources

6. Configuration

7. Knowledge Freshness

8. Architecture

9. Example Queries

10. Roadmap

11. Contributing

12. Disclaimer

13. Acknowledgments

14. License

Related MCP server: Frostbyte MCP

🌟 What is this?

MCP-Dubai is a Model Context Protocol server that gives AI agents a single, well-typed interface to two distinct kinds of knowledge about Dubai and the UAE:

1. Public Dubai and UAE government data, like prayer times, exchange rates, school ratings, real estate transactions, transport networks, and more.

2. Curated business setup knowledge that no other MCP server has, like which free zone to choose for a SaaS startup, which visa to apply for as a freelance developer, how to estimate corporate tax under the QFZP rules, the full Hague-not-an-option attestation chain, the 11 most common founder mistakes, and a 14-bank matrix with DUL fast-track eligibility.

Drop it into Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, or any MCP-compatible client and your AI assistant can answer questions like "what time is Fajr tomorrow in Dubai Marina?" or "where should I set up my SaaS company in Dubai with a 25K AED budget?" with grounded, source-cited answers instead of SEO spam.

💡 Why MCP-Dubai exists

Dubai's public data lives across at least a dozen platforms (data.dubai and its apis.data.dubai gateway, opendata.fcsc.gov.ae, bayanat.ae, centralbank.ae, aladhan.com, web.khda.gov.ae, aviationweather.gov, and more) each with its own auth, format, and rate limits. Most agencies do not expose self-serve APIs. The few that do are gated behind email-issued OAuth credentials or paywalled at AED 31,500/year per product.

On top of that, founders coming to Dubai face the same questions over and over: which license, which visa, which bank, how much, how long. The web answers are SEO-spam from agency setup firms.

MCP-Dubai is the honest, code-first answer.

• Built around 14 keyless APIs that work today (Al-Adhan, Quran Cloud, CBUAE Umbraco, KHDA XLSX, aviationweather.gov, Open-Meteo, ExchangeRate-API, OSM Overpass, DFM market data, Makani geo-addressing, Dubai City of Gold, the data.dubai catalog, FCSC CKAN when unblocked, and a curated UAE holiday calendar), plus WAQI air quality with a free token.

• Layered with curated business knowledge domains that compress 8,600+ lines of source-cited research into structured tools.

• Uses the same KnowledgeMetadata envelope on every business response so the LLM (and you) can always see when each domain was last verified.

• Inspired by mcp-brasil. Aligned with Dubai Data Law (Law 26 of 2015). Run as a community contribution.

🚀 Quick Start

Works in any MCP client. Zero API keys needed for 112 of 120 tools. The recommended runner is uvx (ships with uv); plain pip install mcp-dubai works too.

Claude Code

claude mcp add dubai -- uvx mcp-dubai

Or commit a project-scoped .mcp.json at your repo root so your whole team gets it:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "dubai": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["mcp-dubai"]
    }
  }
}

Claude Desktop

Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "dubai": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["mcp-dubai"]
    }
  }
}

Claude Desktop with Dubai Pulse credentials (unlocks Tier 1 tools)

Tier 1 (Dubai Pulse OAuth) dld and rta tools ship today and return structured setup instructions until you set these credentials:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "dubai": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["mcp-dubai"],
      "env": {
        "MCP_DUBAI_PULSE_CLIENT_ID": "your-client-id",
        "MCP_DUBAI_PULSE_CLIENT_SECRET": "your-client-secret",
        "MCP_DUBAI_WAQI_TOKEN": "optional-waqi-token"
      }
    }
  }
}

Get Dubai Pulse credentials by requesting dataset access at data.dubai. Get a WAQI token (free) at aqicn.org/data-platform/token.

Cursor

Click the install badge above, or add to ~/.cursor/mcp.json (global) or .cursor/mcp.json (per project):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "dubai": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["mcp-dubai"]
    }
  }
}

VS Code (GitHub Copilot)

Click the install badge above, or run:

code --add-mcp '{"name":"dubai","command":"uvx","args":["mcp-dubai"]}'

Or create .vscode/mcp.json in your project root:

{
  "servers": {
    "dubai": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["mcp-dubai"]
    }
  }
}

Windsurf

Add the same mcpServers block as Cursor to ~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json.

Codex CLI

codex mcp add dubai -- uvx mcp-dubai

Gemini CLI

gemini mcp add dubai uvx mcp-dubai

Any other MCP client

Every release is published to the official MCP Registry as io.github.mahdi-salmanzade/mcp-dubai, so registry-aware clients can discover and install it by name. For manual setups, any client that speaks stdio MCP only needs:

{
  "command": "uvx",
  "args": ["mcp-dubai"]
}

🧰 Tool Catalogue

120 tools across 37 features. All Tier 0 features ship today; every one except air_quality (free WAQI token) works with zero credentials. Tier 2 business knowledge and agent-skill tools are also live. Tier 1 (Dubai Pulse OAuth) DLD and RTA feature wrappers ship with graceful credential-missing fallbacks. Use recommend_tools(query) to find the right tool for any natural-language question.

✅ Tier 0: anonymous APIs (no auth, ship today)

💼 Tier 2: curated business knowledge (no external API, ship today)

🤖 Tier 2 agent skills

🧠 Tier 3: meta-tools

🔐 Tier 1: Dubai Pulse OAuth

Feature wrappers for dld (real estate) and rta (transport) ship today with the graceful credential-missing pattern: tools return a structured success: false with setup instructions until you set MCP_DUBAI_PULSE_CLIENT_ID and MCP_DUBAI_PULSE_CLIENT_SECRET. See CREDENTIALS.md for the full walkthrough.

More Dubai Pulse feature wrappers (DHA health, DEWA, DTCM, DET, Dubai Municipality, Dubai Customs, Dubai Airports) are on the roadmap once specific datasets are requested.

📊 Data Sources

Things we will NOT build (full list in DISCLAIMER.md): Salik account/balance/trips (private app), NABIDH clinical data (vendor-only PHI), DMCC public-search scraping (ToS-banned), NCM weather wrapper (no public API), DM zoning/parcels (request-only paid), CBUAE Open Finance regulated TPP framework. We also explicitly do not promise A-to-F food grades from the open feed (the consumer app shows them but the open dataset schema is unconfirmed).

Upstream Status

Some government endpoints have deployed bot protection (Cloudflare) since v0.1.0 released. These tools return a structured success: false with error.status of upstream_blocked instead of crashing. The rest of the package is unaffected.

Portal migration note (2026): the Dubai Pulse portal (www.dubaipulse.gov.ae) was decommissioned between December 2025 and January 2026 and now redirects to data.dubai, run by the Dubai Data and Statistics Establishment. The API gateway moved to apis.data.dubai (same endpoint pattern, still OAuth); the legacy api.dubaipulse.gov.ae host still resolves. The new data_dubai feature searches the portal's credential-free catalog API.

cbuae_exchange_rates rows now include currency (English), currency_ar (Arabic as returned by CBUAE), iso_code (ISO 4217), and rate_aed. Unknown currencies pass through with iso_code: null and currency: null so new CBUAE entries are never silently dropped.

Clients should check result["success"] and read result["error"]["status"] / result["error"]["reason"] for a user-facing message. We track these endpoints and will restore data access when the upstream blocks are lifted or alternative sources are wired up.

⚙️ Configuration

Zero keys required to run 112 of 120 tools. For the full walkthrough of every environment variable, where to get each credential, and step-by-step setup for Dubai Pulse, WAQI, and Calendarific, see CREDENTIALS.md.

Every variable is optional. The server starts and runs all 15 Tier 0 features, all 17 Tier 2 business features, and both agent skills without any of them.

📅 Knowledge Freshness

The hardest thing about a Dubai business-knowledge MCP is that the rules move. Tax thresholds, visa criteria, free zone pricing, and even API base URLs all change inside a single quarter. This project handles that with seven mechanisms:

1. Top-of-file timestamp on every curated JSON file (knowledge_date: 2026-04-13).

2. Per-domain KNOWLEDGE constant in every biz/* module, registered with the shared KnowledgeRegistry at import time.

3. knowledge block on every business tool response with knowledge_date, volatility, verify_at URL, and disclaimer.

4. get_knowledge_status() meta-tool that reads from the registry, so a single update flows through automatically.

5. README badge + ⚠️ callout under the maintainer's note.

6. Volatility tags by domain: 🟢 stable (yearly re-verify), 🟡 medium (quarterly), 🔴 high (quarterly or monthly).

7. Verification queue of open items tracked by maintainers.

Volatility map (current):

Recent rule changes captured (as of 2026-07-02):

• UAE e-invoicing pilot is LIVE: the MoF/FTA launched the pilot phase on 1 July 2026 with a Taxpayer Working Group, voluntary adoption open from the same date. The ASP appointment deadline for AED 50M+ revenue businesses was extended to 30 October 2026 (Ministerial Resolution 66 of 2026); go-live stays 1 January 2027. The official MoF register lists 41 pre-approved service providers.

• VAT Law amended by Federal Decree-Law 16 of 2025 (effective 1 January 2026): reverse-charge self-invoicing removed, excess recoverable VAT capped at 5 years, evasion-linked input VAT denial.

• Tax Procedures and Excise laws amended by Federal Decree-Law 17 of 2025 (effective 1 January 2026): audit window extendable to 15 years for evasion, 5-year refund claim limit with a 31 December 2026 transition for older balances.

• New AML/CFT/CPF framework: Federal Decree-Law 10 of 2025 (in force 14 October 2025) raises fines for legal persons to AED 5M-100M, adds tax evasion as a predicate offence, and explicitly covers virtual assets. Executive regulations in Cabinet Resolution 134 of 2025.

• Emiratisation: the H1 2026 deadline for 50+ employee private firms passed 30 June 2026; AED 10,000/month per unachieved position is charged from 1 July 2026.

• 5% VAT applies to Salik tolls (AED 4.00 to 4.20 standard, AED 6.00 to 6.30 peak) and Parkin parking tariffs from 1 June 2026; cash phased out at Dubai parking meters the same day.

• KHDA froze all Dubai private school fees for the 2026-27 academic year (announced 22 May 2026): no ECI increase.

• Dubai Law 4 of 2026 regulates shared housing / co-living (operator permits, registry, fines up to AED 1M). The DLD launched Flexi Rent (monthly/quarterly instalments) in June 2026.

• Dubai 2-year property investor visa: the AED 750,000 minimum was removed for sole owners (April 2026); co-owners need an AED 400,000 registered share each.

• The Dubai Pulse portal was decommissioned (December 2025 to January 2026) and redirects to data.dubai; the API gateway moved to apis.data.dubai. The RTA GTFS feed remains anonymously downloadable as a direct 7z file.

• UAE Capital Market Authority (CMA) replaced the SCA effective 1 January 2026 (FDL 32 and 33 of 2025). CBUAE Open Finance (Al Tareq) went live at CBD, FAB, and ADIB; the FDL 6/2025 compliance deadline is 16 September 2026.

• 2026 holiday observances confirmed through Hijri New Year: Eid Al Fitr ran 19-22 March (30-day Ramadan), Eid Al Adha 27-29 May with Arafat Day 26 May, and the Hijri New Year day off was moved to Monday 15 June under the transferable-holiday rule. Commemoration Day (1 December) is a remembrance, not a day off.

• UAE e-invoicing legislated by Ministerial Decisions 243 and 244 of 2025 (PINT AE on a DCTCE model). Phased rollout: mandatory for revenue at or above AED 50M from 1 January 2027, below AED 50M from 1 July 2027, government entities from 1 October 2027. Penalties under Cabinet Decision 106 of 2025. Verify dates with the FTA/MoF.

• Unified late-payment penalty: flat 14% per year on unpaid tax (Cabinet Decision 129 of 2025, effective 14 April 2026), replacing the previous escalating monthly model across VAT, Excise, and Corporate Tax.

• Small Business Relief: as of June 2026 no extension announced; relief ends for tax periods ending 31 December 2026, standard Corporate Tax applies thereafter.

• QFZP Qualifying Activities updated by Ministerial Decision 229/2025 (SaaS still excluded).

• CT late-registration penalty waived if first return filed within 7 months (FTA, April 2025).

• Golden Visa specialized talent salary tightened to AED 30,000 basic monthly verified over 24 months (early 2026).

• ESR repealed for periods after 31 December 2022 (Cabinet Resolution 98/2024).

• VARA V2.0 Rulebook compliance deadline 19 June 2025.

• Dubai parking spun out of RTA into Parkin Company PJSC, December 2023, with variable tariffs live since 4 April 2025. Note: "Mawaqif" is Abu Dhabi, not Dubai.

• Ministry of Economy rebranded to Ministry of Economy and Tourism (MOET) in 2025.

• Federal health insurance mandate kicked in January 2025 (UAE-wide).

🏗️ Architecture

src/mcp_dubai/
├── __init__.py
├── __main__.py                 # python -m mcp_dubai entry point
├── server.py                   # FastMCP root + meta-tools + explicit feature mounts
├── _shared/
│   ├── auth.py                 # Dubai Pulse OAuth + availability() pattern
│   ├── constants.py            # All base URLs env-overridable
│   ├── discovery.py            # BM25 ToolDiscovery + ToolMeta + tier constants
│   ├── http_client.py          # async httpx + tenacity retry + typed errors
│   ├── knowledge.py            # KnowledgeRegistry singleton
│   └── schemas.py              # ToolResponse envelope, KnowledgeMetadata, etc.
├── agents/                     # Tier 2 agent skills
│   ├── arabic_writer/
│   └── data_analyst/
├── data/                       # Tier 0 + Tier 1 API integrations
│   ├── al_adhan/
│   ├── aviation_weather/
│   ├── air_quality/
│   ├── cbuae/
│   ├── currency/
│   ├── data_dubai/
│   ├── dfm/
│   ├── dld/
│   ├── dubai_pulse/
│   ├── fcsc_ckan/
│   ├── gold_rate/
│   ├── holidays/
│   ├── khda/
│   ├── makani/
│   ├── open_meteo/
│   ├── osm_overpass/
│   ├── quran_cloud/
│   └── rta/
└── biz/                        # Tier 2 curated business knowledge
    ├── _data/                  # Curated JSON files (loaded via importlib.resources)
    │   ├── free_zones.json
    │   ├── visas.json
    │   ├── banks.json
    │   ├── tax_compliance.json
    │   ├── ... (16 packs total)
    │   └── loader.py
    ├── banking/
    ├── free_zones/
    ├── setup_advisor/
    ├── tax_compliance/
    ├── visas/
    └── ... (17 features total)

Conventions every feature follows:

• __init__.py exports a FEATURE_META dict with name, description, tier, requires_auth, source URL.

• tools.py holds pure async functions with no FastMCP imports, so unit tests hit the real logic without going through the MCP wrapping layer.

• server.py defines a FastMCP("feature_name") instance, decorates wrappers, and registers ToolMeta records with the shared discovery on import.

• biz/* features additionally expose a per-domain KNOWLEDGE = KnowledgeMetadata(...) constant and call register_domain_knowledge(domain, KNOWLEDGE) so get_knowledge_status() reflects current freshness automatically.

• data/* features that need OAuth or a free API key use the graceful credential degradation pattern: tools never crash when env vars are missing. They call availability() and return a structured ToolResponse.fail({status, reason, docs}) so the MCP client renders a help message instead of a stack trace. This is what lets python -m mcp_dubai start cleanly on a fresh machine with no env file.

• Curated JSON files use the Pattern 3 envelope: top-level domain, knowledge_date, volatility, verify_at, source_brief_section, disclaimer. The shared loader's extract_knowledge() builds the KnowledgeMetadata directly from these fields, so a single update in a JSON file flows through to every tool that uses it.

💬 Example Queries

Ask your AI assistant any of these. The agent will route to the right tool via recommend_tools and return a grounded answer:

Daily life:

• "What time is Fajr prayer tomorrow in Dubai Marina?"

• "Convert 10 Ramadan 1447 to Gregorian."

• "What's the current AED to USD exchange rate?"

• "Find restaurants within 500m of these coordinates."

• "Is 2 December 2026 a UAE public holiday?"

• "What's today's air quality in Karama?"

• "What's today's 22K gold rate in Dubai?"

• "How much is petrol in the UAE this month?"

• "What building is at Makani 30032 95320?"

• "How did the DFM index close today?"

• "Find open datasets about traffic on data.dubai."

Schools:

• "Find Outstanding rated schools in Jumeirah with British curriculum."

• "Which Indian / CBSE schools are under AED 20,000/year?"

Founder questions (the headline value):

• "Where should I set up my SaaS company in Dubai with a 25K AED budget?"

• "Compare DMCC and IFZA for a 2-visa consultancy."

• "What visa should I get if I'm a freelance developer earning AED 400,000/year?"

• "Estimate my corporate tax if my free zone SaaS makes AED 1.5M revenue."

• "Do I qualify for the Golden Visa with a 32K monthly basic salary?"

• "Open a UAE business bank account fast for a solo founder."

• "Am I eligible for the Dubai Unified Licence fast-track with Emirates NBD and DMCC?"

• "How do I attest my degree certificate from India for use in Dubai?"

• "How much do PRO services cost per year for 3 visas?"

• "What are the most common mistakes founders make in Dubai?"

🗺️ Roadmap

🤝 Contributing

We welcome contributions. Priority areas right now:

1. Wire up the Phase 8 Tier 1 features (dha, dewa, det, dtcm, dubai_customs, dubai_airports) once Dubai Pulse credentials land; the base client and the dld/rta examples are the template. The KHDA full-XLSX refresh script is another good starter.

2. Wire up Tier 1 Dubai Pulse features once credentials are obtained. Auth and base client are already in _shared/auth.py and the DubaiPulseAuth graceful-degradation contract is the canonical pattern.

3. Refresh business knowledge quarterly. Each curated JSON file has a knowledge_date and verify_at URL. Tax rules, visa thresholds, and free zone pricing change frequently.

4. Improve recommend_tools BM25 quality by tuning tags. Current quirk: in small sub-corpora, BM25 length normalization can favour shorter tools when queries collide on common tokens.

Read CONTRIBUTING.md for the dev setup, test/lint commands, and PR checklist.

git clone https://github.com/mahdi-salmanzade/MCP-Dubai.git
cd MCP-Dubai
make dev      # editable install with dev + data extras
make check    # ruff + mypy + pytest

⚠️ Disclaimer

This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Government of Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, or any specific authority (DLD, RTA, KHDA, DSC, DHA, DET, DEWA, CBUAE, Dubai Pulse, MOET, MOIAT, or any other). All data is the property of its respective publisher. We provide a unified interface, nothing more.

Upstream APIs change without warning. If a tool returns wrong, empty, or error results, please open a GitHub issue instead of assuming malice. We rely on the community to keep integrations fresh.

Read the full DISCLAIMER.md for nature of project, trademarks, compliance responsibilities, removal requests, and personal data handling.

🌟 Acknowledgments

• Inspired by mcp-brasil, which proved the pattern for a country-specific public-data MCP server.

• Built on FastMCP 3.x, the standalone Pythonic MCP framework maintained by Prefect.

• Thanks to the UAE government agencies that publish open data, especially the Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Centre (FCSC) for the truly anonymous CKAN portal.

• Built for the Dubai developer community.

📬 Contact

• Maintainer: Mahdi Salmanzade, Software Developer, Dubai

• Email: mahdi@clrtstudio.com

• Issues: https://github.com/mahdi-salmanzade/MCP-Dubai/issues

• Pull requests welcome: see CONTRIBUTING.md

📜 License

MIT. Use it, fork it, ship it. Just keep the attribution and the disclaimer.

Made with ❤️ in Dubai by Mahdi Salmanzade

Built at CLRT Studio

📧 mahdi@clrtstudio.com · 📅 April 2026

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