About this calculator

Built by someone who made the move, got the sums wrong the first time, and kept a spreadsheet about it for a decade.

Why it exists

A Gulf offer usually arrives as one big number, and the number is nearly always bigger than what you earn now. That is what makes the decision hard rather than easy: tax-free salary is genuinely attractive, but school fees, annual rent paid in a lump, a car you now need, and the mortgage still running at home all land on the other side of the ledger. Plenty of people move on the headline and discover the truth in month four.

This tool answers one question — would you actually keep more money than you keep today? — and shows its working, in your own currency, so you can take it into a negotiation.

Who built it

I'm Shiraz Hussein, a project manager based in Edinburgh. Between 2011 and 2016 I worked in Doha at the Qatar Mobility Innovations Center, a national research and development centre at Qatar Science & Technology Park, delivering Smart City, transport and IoT platforms for clients including Qatar Rail, Qatar Energy, Qatar Foundation and Qatar University.

The cost assumptions in this calculator started as my own relocation spreadsheet — rent, utilities, school fees, the flights home — and have been refined since. That is the tool's advantage over a generic cost-of-living index, and also its limit: it reflects lived experience and current research, not an audited dataset.

How the numbers are produced

Exchange rates refresh daily from a public rates service. If you are offline, the tool falls back to stored approximate rates and says so in the header.
Default living costs are typical mid-range figures for a professional family in the capital city of each country, scaled per currency. They are a starting point to edit, never a prediction.
Income tax defaults to zero because none of the six GCC states levies personal income tax on employment income at the time of writing. The field stays editable in case your circumstances or the rules differ.
Nothing is stored on a server. Your figures stay in your browser. See the privacy notice for the two clearly-marked exceptions.

This is a planning tool, not advice. Verify anything that matters — fees, visa rules, tax residency — with your employer, the relevant ministry, and a qualified adviser. See the terms.

Corrections welcome

If a default cost looks wrong for the city you know, or a step in the relocation checklist has changed, tell me and I will fix it. That feedback is the only realistic way a tool like this stays accurate. Send a correction.