BrewMaps Price Index · 4 August 2026
What matcha actually costs in the UAE
We read the menus of every specialty café in our catalogue. 189 of them serve matcha — here is what they charge, by emirate, by area, and by variant.
How to read the coverage. 189 cafés list matcha on their menu.
137 of those publish a price we could read — every price figure on this page uses
those 137, and no other number. The remaining 52 list it
without a readable price.
Separately, the supplier file covers 283 cafés with a
substantial drinks menu (8+ items) — 171 that list matcha, 127 of those with a
readable price, and 112 that don't list it. It counts 10 fewer priced cafés than
this index because cafés with very short menus don't meet that threshold.
345 priced listings collected 4 August 2026. Prices are a point-in-time snapshot.
For suppliers: see which cafés already sell matcha, what they charge, and which comparable cafés don't list it yet — the café-level file →
What stands out
Ajman records the lowest median at AED 25, about 17% below the AED 30 shared by Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah — though that figure rests on only 5 priced cafés. The more solid finding is that Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah land on the same AED 30 median, on much larger samples.
Khalifa City is the priciest area we measured (AED 35), while Downtown is the cheapest (AED 24) — a difference of AED 11 in median listed price. Both figures come from 4 and 4 cafés respectively — small samples, so read them as indicative.
Flavoured variants list higher. strawberry matcha at AED 32, coco matcha at AED 35, against AED 28 for a plain matcha latte — on 5 and 5 listings respectively, so read it as a signal rather than a rate.
Matcha is no longer a niche order. It appears on the menu of 189 cafés — and the single most common listing, matcha latte, appears 81 times.
Price distribution
137 café-level median prices, AED
12-19
4
20-24
16
25-29
45
30-34
41
35-39
23
40-60
8
By emirate
| Emirate | Cafés | Median | Typical |
|---|
| Dubai | 62 |
30 | 26.3–34.9 |
| Abu Dhabi | 50 |
30 | 27.3–34 |
| Sharjah | 14 |
30 | 24–32.3 |
| Ajman | 5 |
25 | 24–28 |
| Fujairah | 3 |
28 | 26.5–29 |
| Ras Al Khaimah | 3 |
28.4 | 25.2–31.7 |
By area
Areas with at least 4 priced cafés. Café counts are shown because the samples are small.
| Area | Cafés | Median |
|---|
| Khalifa City | 4 | 35 |
| Muwaileh Commercial | 4 | 30.8 |
| Jumeirah | 5 | 30 |
| Al Reem Island | 4 | 30 |
| Saadiyat Island | 4 | 28.5 |
| Al Bateen | 5 | 28 |
| Al Quoz | 4 | 28 |
| JLT | 4 | 26.5 |
| Downtown | 4 | 24 |
Most common variants
| Menu item | Listings | Median |
|---|
| Matcha Latte | 81 | 28 |
| Iced Matcha Latte | 36 | 27 |
| Matcha | 26 | 26.5 |
| Iced Matcha | 23 | 28 |
| Strawberry Matcha | 5 | 32 |
| Coco Matcha | 5 | 35 |
| Dirty Matcha | 4 | 29 |
| Cloudy Matcha | 4 | 35 |
What you would otherwise have to assemble
None of this is impossible to find. The information exists in fragments — the work is locating it, structuring it, validating it, and keeping it current.
| Work required | On your own | Here |
|---|
| Build the café universe | Search maps, social media and individual sites | 505-café UAE catalogue |
| Find published menus | Check websites, PDFs, images and delivery listings one by one | 9,780 structured items |
| Compare prices | Read and standardise inconsistent formats by hand | Comparable listed prices |
| Identify prospects | Review and filter every café individually | 283 qualified records |
| Keep it current | Repeat the research periodically | Quarterly refresh and change tracking |
At five minutes a café, checking all 505 is roughly 42 hours — before any cleaning, standardising or analysis, and five minutes assumes you find the menu on the first try. Your own hourly cost decides what that is worth; we won't presume it.
97 cafés (19%) publish no findable menu at all. No site, no delivery listing, no legible photograph. That is a natural ceiling on any desk-based research, however much time you spend.
And it doesn't hold. Menus change and venues open or close, so the work repeats — which is what the quarterly refresh is for.
Methodology
- Source: published café menus in the BrewMaps catalogue, collected through image extraction, vision transcription and manual entry. Not delivery-platform prices.
- Coverage: 189 cafés list matcha; 137 publish at least one readable price.
- Which figure uses what: the headline median, the middle 50%, and every emirate and area comparison use one median price per café, across those 137 cafés. The variant table is the exception — it uses the 345 underlying priced listings, because a variant is a property of the listing, not the café.
- Exclusions: 21 items across 5 cafés fell outside a plausibility band of AED 12–60 and were excluded pending verification. They are held back rather than corrected by guesswork.
- One price per café, not per listing. A café's median matcha price is computed first, then emirate and area figures are the median of those café-level prices — so a café with a long menu doesn't outweigh one with a short menu.
- Medians are used throughout rather than averages, so a single mispriced listing cannot move a figure.
- Variant names are normalised before ranking: "Hot Matcha Latte" and "Matcha Latte (Hot)" count as Matcha Latte. Iced is kept separate, as it is priced differently.
- The supplier file is limited to cafés with a drinks menu of 8 or more items, so a café with a stub menu isn't wrongly listed as "doesn't serve it".
- Al Ain is included within Abu Dhabi, of which it is part.
- Prices are a point-in-time snapshot from 4 August 2026 and change without notice. Sizes and grades vary between venues.
For suppliers
The café-level file behind this index — for brands and distributors deciding who to sell to.
Snapshot
AED 750
Today's data, one-off. Non-exclusive.
- 283 cafés with a real drinks menu, each flagged serves matcha: yes / no
- 171 that list matcha, with the menu item as written
- 127 of those publish a readable price — the rest list it without one
- 112 cafés whose published menus don't list matcha, with a menu-fit score
- Accounts can be supplied as verified briefs — observable menu evidence, prices, verified locations, public contacts, source links and verification dates.
- Or as a flat CSV: café name, area, emirate, menu depth, matcha items and listed prices, menu-fit score.
- Menu-fit score (0–5) counts how many adjacent premium categories a café already sells: Spanish latte, pistachio drinks, a manual brew method (V60, Chemex, Aeropress), cold brew, cortado. It is derived only from the café's own menu — no ratings, no review counts, no popularity signal, because those measure consumer traffic rather than whether a café would stock a category.
Quarterly Market Monitor
AED 15,000/year
The same file, maintained — so your team is working from current menus, not a photograph.
- Four full refreshes a year — not four copies of the same file
- Item-level change detection: which cafés added matcha since last quarter, which dropped it, which moved price and by how much
- Newly identified venues included in each quarterly refresh, with opening menu prices where available
- Prospect scoring recalculated each quarter, so cafés that converted leave the list and new ones enter it
- A short written summary of what moved in the category and where
The snapshot is a point in time. This tracks which cafés add or remove matcha between quarters, so outreach is prioritised on current menu signals rather than a stale list.
Request the AED 750 Snapshot