Step-by-step guides for popular Dubai Metro trips, with the stops, line changes, fare and what to look for on arrival. New routes published each week.
More route guides go live each week. For any other pair of stations, use the fare calculator for the price or the route planner for the full step-by-step.
A route guide is a written page for one specific trip, with every stop, line change, walking direction at the interchange, what to look for on arrival, and a resident tip. The route planner is a tool that returns the same core information for any pair of stations on demand, but without the editorial detail. For a popular trip the guide is more useful; for a one-off, the planner is faster.
The published time is the in-vehicle time, not the wait for a train. At peak times (07:00 to 09:30 and 17:00 to 19:30 on weekdays), trains arrive every few minutes on the Red Line and a bit less often on the Green Line, so the wait adds two to five minutes to your trip. Outside peak, the wait is longer but the train is quieter. The journey time itself does not change with the time of day, since the Metro runs to a fixed timetable.
Because Union and BurJuman sit in the same paid area, with the Red Line platforms upstairs and the Green Line platforms below. You follow the coloured line signs from one platform to the other without going through a gate, and the fare is set by the total zones your trip crosses, not by the change. Tap in once at your start, tap out once at your end.
Use the Metro for the longest leg and a feeder for the last bit. Most malls and tower clusters have an RTA bus that loops between a Metro station and the destination, on the same Nol card. For beach areas, the Dubai Tram links to the Red Line on foot at DMCC and Sobha Realty. For specific addresses, the closest Metro station plus a taxi or Careem is usually cheaper than a taxi the whole way from your start point.
The Dubai Metro charges by zones, not distance. A trip that stays inside one zone is AED 3 on a Silver Nol card, no matter how many stops. A trip that crosses into a second zone jumps to AED 5, and crossing into a third or further zone puts the fare at AED 7.50. So a six-stop trip inside one zone can cost less than a two-stop trip across a zone boundary. Our fare calculator returns the exact zone count for any pair.
Not yet. We add new route guides each week, prioritising the trips travellers search for most: airport to hotel, hotel to beach, mall to mall, and the runs between the busiest interchanges. For any pair not yet covered, the route planner returns the stops, fare and time in seconds.