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 freshness-tracked knowledge domains · ✅ 112 credential-free tools · 💼 56 business advisor tools · 🤖 2 agent skills

Quick Start · Tool Catalogue · Knowledge Freshness · Audit 2026-08-14 · Architecture · Roadmap · Contributing

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

by Mahdi Salmanzade, Software Developer, Dubai 📧 [email protected] · 📅 April 2026

⚠️ Knowledge Date: not uniform. Check per domain.

Freshness is per domain, not project-wide. As of 14 August 2026:

Latest recorded update	Packs
2026-08-14	banking, cost_of_living, createapps, dcde, founder_essentials, free_zones, funding, ip_trademark, setup_advisor, tax_compliance
2026-07-25	compliance, tenancy, visas
2026-07-02	events, parkin
2026-04-13	arabic_writer, data_analyst, gov_portals, halal

The August audit was targeted, not a claim that every field was re-verified. Every knowledge response distinguishes the latest knowledge_date from full_review_date and exposes last_refresh_scope and previous_knowledge_date where relevant. The checker covers all 19 domains and applies each alerting budget to the last full review, so a targeted update cannot hide stale untouched content.

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 its latest recorded update and full-review date, and get_knowledge_status() reports the prior date and targeted scope where declared.

📋 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

🌟 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, 10 common founder mistakes, and a 14-bank matrix with a dated DUL bank-integration snapshot.

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 structured, freshness-stamped answers and source or verification links where available.

💡 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.

• Ships 43 Tier 0 tools that require no credentials, backed by anonymous upstreams, bundled snapshots, and local reference data. Authentication status is separate from upstream health: the four FCSC CKAN tools and the CBUAE base-rate endpoint are recorded as blocked, while two WAQI reading tools require a free token.
• Layered with 16 curated JSON knowledge packs plus a setup advisor that composes them. Each pack carries freshness metadata and a top-level verification URL; individual records include additional source URLs where available.
• Uses the same KnowledgeMetadata envelope on every business response so the LLM (and you) can see the latest recorded update, prior date, and targeted scope where declared.
• 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. No API credentials are needed to invoke 112 of 120 tools in the current source tree. This is an authentication count, not a live-availability guarantee; five of those tools currently report blocked upstreams.

Release status (14 August 2026): this repository is version 0.4.0 with 120 tools, but PyPI still serves version 0.2.0 with 91 tools. The uvx mcp-dubai and pip install mcp-dubai examples below therefore install the older public release until the maintainers publish 0.4.0. To run the current code, clone this repository and use make dev && make run.

The recommended published-package runner is uvx (ships with uv); plain pip install mcp-dubai also works.

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

The repository includes a validated MCP Registry manifest for io.github.mahdi-salmanzade/mcp-dubai, but no public registry record exists as of 14 August 2026. Until the maintainers complete that publication, use a manual stdio configuration:

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

🧰 Tool Catalogue

120 tools across 37 features. Of 45 Tier 0 tools, 43 require no credentials; two WAQI reading tools require a free token. Credential requirements do not guarantee upstream availability: the CBUAE base-rate tool and four FCSC tools are currently recorded as blocked. Tier 2 business knowledge and agent-skill tools also ship, while the six Tier 1 live-query tools require data.dubai OAuth. Use recommend_tools(query) to find the right tool for any natural-language question.

✅ Tier 0: public-data tools

💼 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 the credential guide 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 the disclaimer): 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 selected table below is a recorded snapshot. get_upstream_status() does not run active probes; it starts from the 16-source bootstrap registry and incorporates observations made by tools during the current process.

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

No API credentials are required for 112 of 120 tools in the current source tree. That describes authentication only: the CBUAE base-rate tool and four FCSC tools are currently recorded as blocked upstream. For the full walkthrough of every environment variable, where to get each credential, and step-by-step setup for data.dubai, WAQI, and Calendarific, see the credential guide.

Every variable is optional. The server starts and registers all 15 Tier 0 features, all 17 Tier 2 business features, and both agent skills without any of them. Individual calls can still depend on a token, OAuth entitlement, or live upstream availability.

📅 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. Two freshness timestamps on every curated JSON file: knowledge_date for the latest material update and full_review_date for the last complete domain review. Targeted refreshes also record previous_knowledge_date and last_refresh_scope without advancing full_review_date.
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, full_review_date, optional previous_knowledge_date and last_refresh_scope, 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 tied to full-review budgets: 🟢 stable (365 days), 🟡 medium (190 days), 🔴 high (100 days). The checker covers the 16 JSON packs plus setup_advisor, data_analyst, and arabic_writer. Monthly snapshots and event dates should still be reviewed monthly inside the high-volatility ceiling.
7. Verification queue of open items tracked by maintainers.

Volatility map (current):

Recent rule changes captured (latest targeted refresh 2026-08-14; check each pack's last_refresh_scope):

• Dubai Executive Council Resolution 11 of 2025 took effect on publication in Official Gazette issue 707 on 21 March 2025. Its one-year regularisation period therefore ended on 21 March 2026, not 3 March. The Director General may grant one same-length extension where necessary; the pack does not assume an automatic extension.
• DUL is issued across Dubai mainland and free-zone businesses. The official 12 November 2025 update named seven integrated banks and reported a 5-day average account-opening time; a bank missing from that announcement is not proven non-integrated, and the average is not an individual guarantee.
• Dubai Chamber membership fees currently span AED 50 to AED 2,200 across official categories. The applicable category depends on legal form, owner nationality, and activity; statutory exemptions and a separate free-zone approval route apply.
• 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. As of 14 August, the official MoF page listed 42 pre-approved providers, 38 accredited providers, and 9 providers under final assessment; these overlapping lists must not be added together.
• 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