It is the rental agreement between a landlord and a tenant, and in Dubai it must follow one specific format: the DLD Unified Tenancy Contract, version 1.4, issued by the Dubai Land Department. The form is bilingual, Arabic alongside English, and it is the only version the Ejari system will register. A lease drafted in Word or copied from a template site cannot be registered, which in practice means it cannot be used to connect DEWA, renew a residence visa, enrol a child in school, or bring a case to the Rental Dispute Settlement Centre.
Preparing the contract on this site is free. A typing centre will normally charge between AED 150 and AED 300 for the same document, because what you are paying for there is the data entry rather than the form itself, which the government publishes at no cost. The one unavoidable fee is Ejari registration at AED 220, made up of an AED 195 registration charge and an AED 25 knowledge and innovation fee. That is paid after both parties have signed.
You will need the property title deed, Emirates ID or passport for both the landlord and the tenant, and the terms you have already agreed between you: the annual rent, the start and end dates, the security deposit, and how many cheques the rent will be split into. A recent DEWA bill is worth having to hand as well, because Ejari checks the premises number printed on it against the property described in the contract.
Dubai law (Article 20 of Law No. 26 of 2007) allows a landlord to take a security deposit but does not set a fixed percentage. In practice the market norm is about five per cent of the annual rent for an unfurnished property and ten per cent for a furnished one. The amount agreed in your signed contract is what applies, so negotiate it before signing. The deposit must be refunded when the tenancy ends, less deductions for damage the landlord can justify.
Both parties sign every page of two printed originals in wet ink, and each keeps one. The tenancy is then registered on Ejari within thirty days, which takes fifteen to thirty minutes through the Dubai REST app. Once the certificate is issued, DEWA and district cooling can be connected against it, usually the same day, and the tenancy is on the government record for visa, schooling and banking purposes.