- ISO 3166
AE- Main language + region
ar-AE- Currency
- AED · United Arab Emirates Dirham
- Region
- EMEA · MENA · MENAP
United Arab Emirates
United Arab Emirates has 10M people, and 10M of them are online. Arabic is the most widely spoken language at 78%, one of 6 languages CLDR lists here. Arabic is official nationally. A product shipping here defaults to ar-AE.
Market summary
Each figure carries its own world scale, so it reads without a second market beside it.
People online
10M
0%world median 81%100%
100% of 10M people use the internet, per the World Bank's 2024 figure. Estimated by multiplying CLDR population by that share.
Income per person
$50,274
Higher than 85% of 213 territories
GDP per capita in current US dollars, World Bank Open Data, most recent reported year. A rough guide to spending power, not revenue.
Can pay online
86%
0%world median 71%100%
Adults aged 15 and over holding a bank or mobile-money account, World Bank Global Findex 2021. Below half means a card-only checkout excludes most of the market.
Languages
6
Arabic 78% · English 50% · Malayalam 7%
Languages CLDR records here with a share of 0.1% or more. 1 of them is official nationally.
English proficiency
487
Very lowVery high
Low proficiency on the EF EPI 2025 scale. The sample is self-selected online test takers. It never enters any score on this site.
Adult literacy
90%
0%world median 95%100%
Share of adults who can read, as recorded in CLDR territory data. Low literacy shifts a product toward icons, audio, and video before another language.
What people speak
Shares include second languages, so totals can exceed 100%.
CLDR records Arabic in 34 territories and 378.6M speakers in total; United Arab Emirates holds 2% of them, and the rest come with the same translation. The Arabic profile maps the whole footprint.
Day-one requirements
What the interface needs for the main language spoken here (ar-AE).
Plural categories
6
Word-forms a translator writes for counted text ("1 item", "5 items"). More than English's two, so counted strings carry extra variants.
Script family
Arabic
Bundle a Noto-class webfont that covers this script. OS defaults vary.
Reading direction
Right-to-left
Use logical CSS properties (padding-inline-start, etc.). Wrap interpolated LTR with <bdi> or FSI/PDI.
Date
21 أبريل 2026
Short: 21/4/2026
Time
6:30 م
Week starts Mon
Currency
1,234.56 د.إ.
1,234.56 in AED · United Arab Emirates Dirham
The engineering behind the flags: Bidirectional text: why the dollar sign wanders in an RTL string · RTL layouts: what flips and what doesn't · Font fallback: why the OS picks the wrong glyphs for this script · Plural rules: why each category needs its own translation