Degree attestation for the UAE

Degree attestation price and documents

UAE MoFA charges AED 150 per educational document. A degree certificate and its transcript count as two documents, so submitting both creates AED 300 in document fees. The transaction charge is AED 3 plus 2% per transaction. Home-country, mission, courier and translation charges are separate. MoFA’s service page allows up to five documents per application, so a degree and transcript can go in one application.

Degree, diploma or transcript?

A diploma follows the educational-certificate route; it is not another name for a transcript. If the recipient asks for both the certificate and transcript, confirm that in writing before paying for two documents.

Attest the transcript only when the employer, regulator, university or recognition process asks for it. UAE MoFA treats it as a separate document; adding it automatically doubles the educational-document fee from AED 150 to AED 300 before transaction and courier charges. Ask the recipient to confirm its checklist in writing before paying.

Attestation is not degree equivalency

Attestation confirms signatures and seals. UAE degree equivalency, now described by MoHESR as qualification recognition, is a separate process. An attested degree is not automatically recognised, and recognition does not replace an attestation requested by the recipient.

Where an attested degree is required

The attested degree is a labour requirement, not an immigration one. ICP’s published document list for an employment entry permit does not mention an educational certificate at all. The only attested document ICP names there is a certificate of good conduct, “duly attested as required, according to the announced categories”.

The degree requirement sits with MOHRE instead, through the work-permit skill levels: a bachelor’s degree or higher for skill levels 1 and 2, a diploma or higher for levels 3 and 4, a high-school certificate for level 5, and no certificate at all for levels 6 to 9. MOHRE publishes the skill thresholds but does not itself name UAE MoFA as the attesting authority; that pairing is widely reported rather than stated by MOHRE.

One application, two attestations

For supported missions, UAE MoFA’s Digital Attestation service now covers the embassy and UAE MoFA stages in one application. The mission pages describe this as “one service, two attestations.”

As at 27 September 2026, MoFA mission pages publish this combined service for New Delhi (which also handles Bhutan-issued documents), Mumbai, Islamabad, London (which also handles Iceland-issued documents), Dhaka, Canberra, Colombo, Kathmandu, Pretoria and Beirut, among others. We found no current MoFA page for Karachi or Cairo; confirm with the mission. The home-country foreign ministry stage is still required and is not part of the combined service. For documents submitted through a UAE mission, MoFA’s service page says processing may take up to 15 business days.

Two practical points. First, the original physical document is still required for foreign-issued degrees even under Digital Attestation — a scan will not do, and a courier collects the original. Second, we found no current mission attestation page on mofa.gov.ae for the UAE Embassy Manila as of 27 September 2026, so confirm with the embassy whether the UAE MoFA stage inside the UAE is separate for Philippine documents.

On price, be careful of one thing this site cannot resolve for you. UAE MoFA publishes an AED 150 plus AED 150 structure for UAE-issued documents going abroad, but does not publish the equivalent figure for the embassy leg on inbound foreign documents. Read the total the portal quotes you before you pay, rather than trusting any figure, including ours, for that particular leg.

How the route differs by the country that issued the degree

The UAE half of the chain is nearly identical everywhere. The home-country half is what actually decides your cost and your timeline.

Send the document to the mission covering the country of issue, not the country you live in. The UAE Embassy in New Delhi states that documents not issued in India must be attested by the UAE mission in their country of issuance, and the London mission states it will not legalise non-UK, Irish or Icelandic academic certificates at all.

Why degree attestations get rejected

UAE MoFA does not allow a rejected application to be amended or reopened. You submit a new one, and the refund of the attestation fee takes up to 14 working days, while delivery fees are not refunded at all. MoFA’s service page now says refund eligibility follows its refund procedures. That makes each of these worth ten minutes of checking.

India: HRD or SDM

Many private guides state that the UAE rejects SDM-attested educational documents and that state HRD attestation is compulsory. That claim cannot be traced to any government source, on either side.

Here is what is actually published. The MEA authorises the SDM of Delhi as pre-authenticating authority “for all kind of documents (except commercial documents)… on behalf of all states”, which makes SDM a legitimate route on paper. The same MEA document makes it “subject to acceptance by the concerned Foreign Mission”, which is the MEA declining to guarantee it. The UAE Embassy in New Delhi publishes one requirement for Indian documents — that they be attested by the MEA — and says nothing about HRD. And Kerala’s state agency NORKA Roots states the opposite of the agency consensus: that HRD attestation is mandatory for Saudi Arabia, and that the SDM route may be used for the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman.

Treat this as a risk-weighted choice rather than a rule. HRD is slower and involves the state that awarded the degree, but it is the route no one disputes. SDM is faster and is authorised by the MEA, with the residual risk that a mission or an employer asks for the state stage anyway. If your employer has stated a preference, follow it. If a rejection would cost you a start date, take the route no one argues about.

Worth doing before you start

• Ask the employer or regulator, in writing, whether they need the certificate, the transcript, or both
• Ask whether they also require MoHESR recognition, and start that track in parallel if they do
• Check the spelling of your name on the certificate against your passport, character for character
• Remove lamination and get a clean, unfolded original
• Order a police clearance certificate last, not first — it expires while the degree does not

Two additional checks

Attested documents never expire. UAE MoFA states that “there is no expiry date to an attested document”. If your degree was attested for an earlier UAE job, changing employer does not require re-attestation. The confusion comes from police clearance certificates, which are usually accepted only for a limited period set by the recipient.

Translate after attestation, not before. UAE MoFA accepts documents in English or Arabic, so an English degree needs no translation for the chain itself. Arabic translation becomes necessary at the point of use — courts, notaries, land departments, banks — and must be done by a Ministry of Justice-registered legal translator. Translating first means the stamps added later are not in the translation, so the work has to be redone. Egypt is the one real exception: the Egyptian MFA attests the translation itself, in-country, and charges its EGP 115 fee on both the original and the translation.