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Fatima Al-Nouri

  • 4 min read

Make us preferred on Google

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PUBLISHED BY ICN PRESS

  • Meta One in the UAE brings paid tiers from Dh5.99 to Dh1,199 a month across WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and Meta AI.
  • Core versions of all four apps stay free, with subscriptions adding features and heavier AI usage on top.
  • Entry plans start at Dh5.99 for WhatsApp Plus, while creator and business bundles climb into the hundreds.
  • Meta reports more than 15 million subscriptions and trials worldwide, with Edits and AI glasses features still to come.

Meta One in the UAE is now live, and it turns your everyday apps into a paid menu of upgrades. Behind it is Meta, owner of WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook, offering upgrades to individuals, creators and businesses. The core apps stay free. You pay only if you want more.

Prices run from Dh5.99 to Dh1,199 a month. That spread tells you who the company is chasing. Casual users sit at the bottom. Teams running accounts at scale sit at the top.

The free apps stay free

Meta says the main experience across its apps and Meta AI stays free for UAE residents. A Meta One subscription adds extra features and heavier AI usage on top. So you can keep using WhatsApp as before without paying a dirham.

The company launched with more than 50 features across Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Meta AI. Edits and AI glasses come next. More than 15 million subscriptions and trials have been recorded worldwide so far.

What Meta One in the UAE costs you

Single app plans are the entry point. WhatsApp Plus costs Dh5.99 a month. Instagram Plus and Facebook Plus each cost Dh7.99. The Meta One price for UAE users climbs from there.

WhatsApp Plus brings backups for your chats and media files, plus Focus Schedules that mute or hide chats on a timetable. Instagram Plus adds custom fonts for messages and Stories, alerts when specific people view your Story, and message previews. Facebook Plus layers in Messenger options, more Reels insights, and super reactions across Reels and the Feed.

Two bundles target individuals and AI power users. Core runs Dh22.99 a month. Premium runs Dh76.99.

Each folds the single-app perks into one plan, then adds compute-heavy tools. Picture image creation and editing, video generation on Meta’s Muse models, and Restyle on Instagram. Anyone who wants a proper Meta AI subscription lands here. Early testing showed more than half of bundle subscribers used both the AI and the expression features.

What creators and businesses pay

Four plans sit above the consumer bundles. The Meta One in the UAE rollout reaches into daily operations for this group. Essential starts at Dh46.99 a month, with a verified badge, impersonation protection, and round-the-clock access to Meta Business Agent on WhatsApp.

Advanced starts at Dh119. You get story scheduling up to 30 days ahead, links in organic posts and reels, exportable analytics, and team access without shared passwords. Expert starts at Dh359. Max tops the range at Dh1,199, built for teams handling accounts at scale.

Meta says the goal is to help creators “spend more time creating and less time guessing,” and to grow small businesses. An enhanced profile now shows a business website, locations, and customer reviews. A bold follow button sits on reels, and follow invitations go out automatically to people who engage with a creator.

Meta One features still on the way

Edits Plus will join the lineup soon. It adds cloud storage for syncing projects across devices, plus early access to an Edits assistant that reads Instagram insights and suggests content ideas. The full set of Meta One features keeps growing, with agent skills for marketing, operations, and content aimed at small teams.

My read on the launch

Here is my take. Meta is done growing these apps by adding users, so it is growing revenue per user instead. The pitch is not pay to remove ads. It is pay for more AI. Meta One in the UAE is a bet on how much you lean on these tools. Use them enough to hit the free ceiling, and Dh5.99 is an easy yes. Skip them, and the free tier already did the job.

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  • Business, META, UAE

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Meta One in the UAE
  • META
  • 4 min read
CBUAE base rate increase
  • UAE

The CBUAE base rate increase takes the UAE base rate to 3.9%, a quarter-point step up from 3.65% that landed on Thursday, September 17. It applies to the Overnight Deposit Facility, the tool the Central Bank uses to set a floor for short-term money in the country. The Central Bank also kept the cost of borrowing short-term liquidity at 50 basis points above the base rate across all standing credit facilities. For most people, the mechanics matter less than the direction. Rates went up. For anyone with a loan or savings account, that direction is what counts.

Why the Fed decides the UAE’s rate

Behind the CBUAE base rate increase sits a US Federal Reserve rate hike of the same size. The Fed lifted its Interest Rate on Reserve Balances by 25 basis points and moved its target range to 3.75% to 4%. Because the dirham-dollar peg fixes the currency at 3.6725 to the dollar, the Central Bank tracks US policy closely to hold that line steady. When Washington moves, Abu Dhabi tends to follow within a day or two. This was the first increase in the UAE rate cycle since 2023, and it reversed a cut made late last year that had taken the rate down to 3.65%. Markets had largely expected the shift, so the reaction at home was calm.

What it means for your home loan

Here is where the numbers reach the kitchen table. Changes in the base rate feed into EIBOR mortgage rates, the Emirates Interbank Offered Rate banks use to price home loans and other credit. If you hold a UAE variable-rate mortgage, your monthly payment could rise the next time your rate is reviewed. A homeowner carrying a large variable loan may pay several thousand dirhams more over a year. Fixed-rate borrowers sit in a calmer spot. Your rate stays put until the fixed term ends, so nothing shifts right away. When that term does end, the loan could be repriced at whatever rate applies then.

Who gains and who pays more

The CBUAE base rate increase does not land on every wallet the same way. Savers may see better returns if banks pass the increase into deposit products, which rewards anyone keeping cash aside. Businesses face the other side of the ledger. Firms carrying variable loans, especially in real estate, construction and SME financing, could see borrowing costs climb while energy and shipping bills already weigh on margins. The effect spreads slowly, through repricing dates and new credit rather than an overnight jump. Households and companies that planned ahead for tighter conditions will feel less of a jolt.

What to watch next

The Central Bank has little room to steer its own course while the peg holds. That keeps attention on the Fed and its next meeting, where policymakers will weigh inflation and jobs data before deciding whether more increases are coming. For UAE residents, the practical questions are close to home. Check whether your mortgage is fixed or variable. Ask your bank when your rate resets. If you are shopping for a loan, factor in that credit costs a little more than it did a week ago. Small steps, but they add up when rates are on the move.

  • 3 min read
New Mars images by NASA
  • NASA

New Mars images by NASA show the Curiosity rover reaching 5,000 Martian days on the Red Planet. The count, known as sols, passed 5,000 on August 29, 2026. That total is more than 5,137 Earth days, because a day on Mars runs about 24.6 hours. Curiosity landed in August 2012. The NASA Curiosity rover has now worked on Mars for more than 14 years. Its original mission was planned for a much shorter run.

What the new image shows

Curiosity’s Right Navigation Camera, or Navcam, captured the featured frame on August 28, 2026, two sols before the milestone. The image shows a long, sweeping sand ripple named Chocolatal. Its crest sits in sharp light against the darker ground. NASA scientists want to know whether Chocolatal counts as a transverse aeolian ridge, or TAR. A TAR is a wind-formed ridge of sand, smaller than a dune. These ridges appear across the Martian surface. Scientists track them to map how wind works on Mars. The new Mars images by NASA give the team a fresh view of the ripple.

The rover did more than photograph the ripple. Curiosity drove one wheel into Chocolatal and cut a small trench. That trench lets the rover’s instruments study the material below the surface. The trench is small, but it exposes sand that the cameras could not see from the surface. Scientists can compare the buried sand with the crest on top. Close study like this helps show how wind moves grains on Mars today.

NASA Mars Images

New Mars images by NASA map the climb

The milestone also tracks distance climbed. Curiosity has risen more than 1,000 meters above its first position on the floor of Gale Crater. Mount Sharp rises about 5 kilometers above the floor of Gale Crater. For years, the rover has worked up the slopes of Mount Sharp, the mountain at the center of the crater. New Mars images by NASA record each step of that ascent. The layers on Mount Sharp hold clues about the planet’s past, and lower layers formed in wetter conditions long ago. Passing 1,000 meters and 5,000 sols came within days of each other. The two milestones together show how far Curiosity has traveled since 2012.

The first mission plan covered about two Earth years. Curiosity has now passed that point many times over. The rover runs on nuclear power, which lets it work through long Martian seasons. It drives short distances, studies rocks and sand, and drills for samples along the way. Each stop adds data about how Mars changed over billions of years.

NASA Mars

Three cameras on one ripple

Navcam took the milestone photo, but it is not the only camera at work. NASA is using Mastcam to build high-resolution mosaics of Chocolatal and the ripples nearby. The Mars Hand Lens Imager, called MAHLI, is taking a much closer look at the material. These Mars rover images will help scientists see layering and changes in grain size within the ripple. Grain size and layering can point to how strong the wind was and which way it blew. Curiosity sends images like this one back to Earth on a regular basis. The new Mars images by NASA add detail to a long record of the Red Planet.

  • 3 min read
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