Free Zone Licence Without a Visa: The Zero-Visa Packages, Priced

Yes, you can hold a UAE free zone licence without a visa, and four zones publish a route to do it. Three of those attach an official price to it: Ajman Media City at AED 4,999, SRTIP at AED 5,500 and Innovation City at AED 6,600 — all figures taken from the zones' own package pages and verified as of 19 August 2026.

That is not a footnote. Three of the four cheapest headline prices in the UAE are zero-visa prices. If you already hold residency, or you are structuring from abroad, that is exactly the product you want. If you assumed the headline price included a residence visa, it is a trap you will discover after you have paid.

Can you get a UAE free zone licence without a visa?

You can. A free zone licence and a residence visa are separate products bought from the same authority. Some zones bundle them, most do not, and a few sell a package built specifically for founders who want the company and nothing else.

Nothing in the federal framework requires a shareholder or director of a free zone company to be a UAE resident. What you lose by not taking a visa is access to the things residency unlocks — an Emirates ID, easier banking, and any personal tax residency argument.

The zero-visa packages, priced

Every price below is the zone's own published figure, taken from its official package pages, with a cost_as_of date of 19 August 2026.

| Zone | Package | Price (AED/yr) | Included | Visas | |---|---|---:|---|---| | Ajman Media City | Business Club | 4,999 | Co-working access, "run your business virtually" model, up to 10 activities | 0 | | SRTIP | Zero Visa | 5,500 | 100% ownership, 5 activities (trading, services, e-commerce), free business consultation, free lease agreement, multiple shareholders | 0 | | Innovation City (RAK DAO) | Idea | 6,600 | Shared desk access, refreshments, event space access | 0 | | Meydan Free Zone | Non-Resident License | Not published separately | A named licence type for non-resident founders | 0 |

Two notes on that table, because the caveats matter as much as the numbers.

Meydan publishes a Non-Resident License as one of its three named licence types, alongside the Standard Digital Trade License and the Fawri instant licence. It does not publish a separate price for it. Meydan's published headline of AED 12,500 is the Standard Digital Trade License, and AED 15,000 is Fawri. Do not assume either figure applies to the non-resident route — ask for it in writing.

Ajman Media City is also the only one of the four that publishes a renewal price: AED 4,999, the same as year one. The other three publish no renewal figure at all.

UAQ FTZ deserves a mention here but does not belong in the table. Its UAQ Start package supports a fully remote, no-physical-visit setup, which is what most people mean when they search for this — but at AED 12,500 it explicitly includes a residence visa and Emirates ID. It is a remote-setup product, not a zero-visa one.

Who a zero-visa licence is right for

You already hold UAE residency. A visa through a golden visa, a spouse, or another employer means the visa allocation on a second licence is dead weight. Paying AED 4,999 instead of AED 12,999 for the identical licence at Ajman Media City is the entire decision.

You are building a holding or IP vehicle. An entity that owns shares or intellectual property and employs nobody has no use for a visa quota. Read the corporate tax section below before you assume this is straightforward.

You are testing a market from abroad. A licence lets you contract, invoice and open the conversation with a bank without committing to a move. Adding the visa later is a package upgrade, and the cost of that upgrade is published — see the step-up figures below.

What breaks without a residence visa

Emirates ID. You do not get one. It is issued against a residence visa, not a licence.

Banking. This is the honest gap. No UAE government source publishes corporate account-opening timelines, rejection rates or minimum balances, and we will not rank zones on data we cannot source. What is consistently reported in the market — and reported, not confirmed — is that traditional banks are more comfortable with a resident signatory and a physical address than with a non-resident on a shared desk. Treat that as market practice, not regulation, and ask your target bank directly before you buy a licence.

Personal tax residency. A company licence is not a personal tax residency certificate and never has been. If your plan depends on being tax resident somewhere, that is a separate application with its own criteria.

Corporate tax substance. This is the one people miss. The 0% rate for a free zone company is not automatic and it is not unconditional. It applies to Qualifying Income earned by a Qualifying Free Zone Person, and one of the conditions is adequate substance — core income-generating activities carried out in the zone, with adequate assets, an adequate number of qualified full-time employees and adequate operating expenditure there (Cabinet Decision No. 100 of 2023, Article 8). A shared desk with nobody at it is a weak substance position. That does not make a zero-visa licence wrong; it makes it something to plan around. See our full QFZP checklist.

What it costs to add the first visa later

Three of the four zones publish the next tier up, so the price of the first visa is a subtraction rather than a guess.

| Zone | Zero-visa tier | Next tier with 1 visa | Step-up | |---|---:|---:|---:| | Innovation City | Idea, AED 6,600 | Seed, AED 13,200 | AED 6,600 | | Ajman Media City | Business Club, AED 4,999 | Visionary, AED 12,999 | AED 8,000 | | SRTIP | Zero Visa, AED 5,500 | 1 Visa All-Inclusive, AED 13,990 | AED 8,490 |

Two things fall out of that. First, the ordering shuffles: on the zero-visa tier the sequence is Ajman Media City, SRTIP, Innovation City, but on the one-visa tier SRTIP drops to last, because Innovation City's step-up is AED 1,890 smaller. Ajman Media City is cheapest either way, at AED 4,999 and AED 12,999. Second, the visa roughly doubles the bill in every case, which is why comparing headline prices across zones without a visa column is close to meaningless.

Beyond one visa, Ajman Media City publishes Pioneer at AED 17,999 (2 visas) and Innovator at AED 22,999 (3 visas). Innovation City publishes Startup at AED 15,400 and Growth at AED 22,550, both capped at 4 visas — and Seed is capped at 1, so you cannot add a second person without changing tier. Our visa quota table covers what every zone publishes on allocation.

Zero-visa free zone licence vs an offshore registry

These are not the same thing and they are routinely confused.

RAK ICC is an offshore company registry, not a free zone. Its own rules state that registration confers no UAE residence visa eligibility and that no employee or investor visas are issued through it at all. There is no zero-visa package, because there is no visa product to opt out of. It registers holding companies, foundations, IP vehicles and cross-border structures. What it publishes is a registry fee schedule in one-, two- and three-year tiers rather than a licence package price, and incorporation runs through licensed registered agents.

The distinction that matters: a zero-visa free zone licence is a real UAE trading licence that you have chosen not to attach a visa to, and you can attach one later for a published price. An offshore registration is a structuring vehicle with no UAE trading rights and no route to residency. If someone offers you the two interchangeably because one is cheaper, that is a reason to end the conversation.

What to do next

Work out whether you need a visa in the next twelve months before you compare any prices. If the answer is no, the zero-visa tier at Ajman Media City, SRTIP or Innovation City is genuinely cheaper and you should take it. If the answer is yes but not immediately, compare the one-visa tier prices rather than the headline prices, because the ordering changes.

Start with Innovation City's published tiers — it is the clearest ladder in the dataset, with a price and a visa cap on every rung. Then read what the AED 5,000–7,000 packages actually include, because at this end of the market the inclusions differ far more than the prices do.