Dubai driverless taxis now have a fare. Here’s how much a ride costs

Fare applies to Apollo Go driverless rides in Jumeirah and Umm Suqeim

Last updated:
Nivetha Dayanand, Assistant Business Editor
RTA launches commercial operations involving autonomous taxis, with services offered to the public via the Uber and Apollo Go apps
RTA launches commercial operations involving autonomous taxis, with services offered to the public via the Uber and Apollo Go apps
RTA

Dubai: Dubai residents and visitors can now book an autonomous taxi ride in Umm Suqeim and Jumeirah for Dh5, following an update from the Roads and Transport Authority on Wednesday.

The service, operated in partnership with Apollo Go, can be booked through the Apollo Go mobile application. Rides had initially been offered free to allow members of the public to experience the driverless vehicles.

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“RTA offers the autonomous taxi service for public use in Umm Suqeim and Jumeirah, in partnership with Apollo Go, for a fare of Dh5,” the authority said in a social media post.

How to book a ride

Passengers must download the Apollo Go app from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store before requesting a journey within the available service areas.

The autonomous taxi programme is being operated by Dubai Taxi Company in partnership with Baidu through its Apollo Go ride-hailing platform. The Dubai launch is also the first international deployment of the Apollo Go app.

Booking access is expected to be extended to Bolt and other electronic ride-hailing providers as the service expands.

Dubai Taxi Company plans to introduce 50 autonomous vehicles during the first year before gradually increasing the fleet to more than 1,000 vehicles over the coming years.

Fully driverless operations

The commercial launch followed several months of trials covering vehicle safety, reliability and operational performance.

Apollo Go received Dubai’s first permit for fully autonomous vehicle testing without a safety driver in January 2026. Baidu also opened Apollo Go Park in Dubai during the same month to support the operation and management of its local fleet.

Dubai Taxi Company operates more than 6,000 taxis and limousines and will use its monitoring systems and local operating network to manage the autonomous fleet.

The rollout supports the Dubai Self-Driving Transport Strategy, which aims to convert 25% of all journeys in the emirate into smart and driverless trips by 2030.

Apollo Go had completed more than 20 million rides worldwide by February 2026. Its vehicles have covered over 300 million autonomous kilometres, including more than 190 million kilometres without a safety driver.

Nivetha Dayanand
Nivetha DayanandAssistant Business Editor
Nivetha Dayanand is Assistant Business Editor at Gulf News, covering aviation, financial markets and commodities. A business and financial journalist with a strong interest in multimedia storytelling, she regularly takes complex financial and economic subjects beyond the written word, producing explainer videos that make them easier for a wider audience to understand. Nivetha has interviewed senior policymakers, business leaders and global financial figures both on and off camera. Her past guests include UAE Minister of Economy and Tourism Abdulla bin Touq Al Marri, Khaled bin Alwaleed Al Saud, a member of the House of Saud and the founder and CEO of KBW Ventures, Jihad Azour, Director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department at the International Monetary Fund and Indian ministers Hardeep Singh Puri and N. Chandrababu Naidu. She has also hosted and moderated panels, conferences and awards shows, bringing her newsroom experience to live conversations on business, finance and the economy. An Erasmus Mundus journalism alum, Nivetha is drawn to stories that affect people directly and to reporting that gives a platform to voices that might otherwise go unheard. She was among the first journalists to speak to Petrofac employees in the UAE about unpaid salaries, broke the news of the planned demolition of Dubai’s well-known “Toyota Building”, and helped set the record straight on widely circulated claims that a giant replica of the Moon was coming to Dubai. More recently, her exclusive interview with EDGE Group CEO Hamad Al Marar revealed how the UAE-based defence group deployed its systems along the country’s shore border and established a geofence around the UAE within 48 hours of the February 28 escalation. Prior to joining Gulf News, Nivetha worked at ITP Media, where she helped launch Finance Middle East, a new publication covering the region’s financial sector. Her role spanned reporting and editing, video production, interviews and events. Across print, digital, and video, she focuses on finding the people behind business stories and explaining why those stories matter to the audience reading or watching them.
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