Equivalency Certificate in the UAE

An equivalency certificate is the UAE confirming that a qualification earned somewhere else matches a UAE level. Search for it and you will find hundreds of agencies quoting fees; almost all of them are describing a service that no longer carries that name. For university degrees the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research now issues a recognition report, and it publishes exactly what that costs. For a Grade 12 school certificate the Ministry of Education still issues an equivalency certificate, and that is a separate service with a separate fee. Every figure below comes from the two ministries’ own service pages, read on 8 August 2026.

The name changed, and so did the ministry

On 22 June 2023 the Ministry of Education announced the University Certificates Recognition system to replace the University Qualification Equivalency system for degrees issued by foreign higher education institutions. The service later moved to the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, which runs it today. The ministry has not renamed its own web address: the service card still sits on a URL containing the word equalization, which is a fair sign of how recent the change is.

The rename was not cosmetic. The announcement lists conditions that were dropped outright:

• the need for attesting previous degrees;
• a minimum physical presence of 30 days for master’s graduates and 168 days for bachelor’s graduates;
• credit transfer limits and distance learning credit caps.

Degrees obtained entirely through distance learning or e-learning are now permitted. All programmes are covered by these updates except certificates tied to specialised professions such as engineering, medicine and law. The announcement also ties the conditions to the ranking of the awarding institution: for universities ranked 1 to 200 it is enough to verify that the certificate is valid, again excluding the specialised professions. The current service card does not restate the ranking bands, so treat that detail as the 2023 announcement rather than as today’s published rule.

Which of the three services you need

People arrive at this topic with three different documents and are pushed toward one search term. The three services are run by two ministries and priced separately.

The in-country degree service returns a QR code as the outcome, which is the proof of recognition status rather than a paper stamp. Recognition is automatic where the UAE institution appears on the ministry’s list of institutions with active cooperation agreements, and automatic for foreign degrees where the applicant was sponsored by a UAE scholarship entity on the ministry’s list.

What the foreign degree route costs

The fee splits in two. A ministry approved partner charges for verifying the qualification, then the ministry charges for the recognition report itself, and that second fee depends on the level of the degree.

The ministry sums this up on the same page as from AED 450 to AED 550: AED 450 for a bachelor’s degree, AED 500 for a master’s, AED 550 for a doctorate. Payment is by credit or debit card or bank transfer, and the fees are not refundable. If the ministry asks for more documents and does not receive them within 30 working days it may return or discontinue the application, with the fee already spent.

Why other pages quote a different number. An applicant welcome kit still hosted on the Ministry of Education e-services domain, copyright 2021, prices primary source verification at AED 300 plus 5 per cent VAT for the first degree and AED 280 plus VAT for each additional one, under the ministry that ran the service then. That document is where the older figures in circulation come from. The live MOHESR service page read on 8 August 2026 says AED 350, and there is no VAT line beside it.

The two steps, end to end

The ministry locks step two until step one is finished, so the order is not optional.

Step one, verification. Choose one of the ministry’s approved partners and log in with UAE Pass, or register with an Emirates ID. Two partners are listed as active: DataFlow, described as partnered with the ministry since 2020, and Quadrabay. A third, VFS, is shown as temporarily unavailable due to technical updates, with existing applications still being processed. The partner contacts the awarding institution directly to confirm the qualification, and may ask for more documents. The partner can instead validate a letter from the embassy of the country you studied in, and the ministry is careful to note that this is not an embassy attestation.

Step two, the report. When verification is done you get an e-mail with a link back to the ministry platform. Log in with UAE Pass, or with passport details if you have no UAE Pass, enter the reference number of the verification application and your date of birth, check the details that appear, and pay the report fee. The decision arrives by e-mail as Recognised or Not Recognised, and the report downloads from your ministry account.

Only two documents are listed as required: the original graduation certificate or its equivalent, and a clear copy of your passport. More may be requested.

On timing, the ministry publishes two numbers. The service card gives a service time of 18 working days. The step page gives a delivery time of up to 18 days for the verification stage and says the recognition report is issued within two working days once the requirements are met. Plan on roughly three to four weeks and treat 18 working days as the figure the ministry will be held to.

Attestation is a different thing entirely

This is the confusion worth clearing up, because it decides which counter you queue at. Attestation is a chain of authorities certifying that the signatures and seals on a piece of paper are genuine. It ends with MOFA attestation inside the UAE, it says nothing about what the qualification is worth, and the chain is set out in our certificate attestation guide. Recognition is an academic judgement by MOHESR that your qualification meets UAE standards, and it produces a report, not a stamp.

They are not sequential any more, and this is the part most guides still get wrong: attesting the previous degree was removed as a condition of the university recognition system in 2023, and attestation does not appear in the required documents on the current service card. You may still need attestation for other reasons, an employer or a licensing body may demand it, but the recognition report itself does not.

The school route goes the other way. For a Grade 12 equivalency the Ministry of Education requires that transcripts and certificates are attested first, by the education regulator of the emirate where the school sits: the Department of Education and Knowledge in Abu Dhabi, the Knowledge and Human Development Authority in Dubai, the Sharjah Private Education Authority, the Department of Knowledge in Ras Al Khaimah, and the Ministry of Education elsewhere. Anything issued in a language other than Arabic or English needs a legal translation.

When a qualification is not recognised

MOHESR publishes four cases in which it will not recognise a qualification.

A refusal is not necessarily the end: MOHESR runs a separate service for requesting reconsideration of a non-recognition decision, or an exception. Emirati graduates have one extra condition. If the qualification came from an institution outside the ministry’s approved list and the graduation was after 30 August 2025, an approved exception decision from the relevant committee is required.

The Grade 12 route has its own hard exclusion, and it is the one that catches people out: a General Education certificate from a school following distance learning or the open school mode of study will not be equalised. That is the opposite of the university rule, where distance learning was explicitly allowed in 2023.

Doing it yourself versus paying someone

For one degree from a university that is clearly accredited, do it yourself. It is a UAE Pass login, two payments and a wait, and the ministry runs a toll free line on 800511 for the recognition service and 80051115 for the school one. There is nothing an agency can do to make a partner verification move faster.

The case for paying someone is different: a qualification from an institution you are not sure is accredited, a refusal you want reconsidered, a set of documents that also needs translation and attestation for an employer, or a deadline where a non-refundable fee spent on the wrong service is the expensive mistake. The thresholds for each Golden Visa category are set out in our Golden Visa guide, so this page does not repeat them.

To be straight about what our directory holds: 27 firms cover PRO services and 20 are recorded for translation and document support, which is the work that sits around this. 0 firms are recorded specifically under notary and attestation support, so name the qualification, the country it came from and what you need it for, rather than assuming any firm on the list handles ministry recognition files.