UAE Free Zone Setup Cost Comparison: What 21 of 40 Zones Actually Publish

Any honest UAE free zone setup cost comparison starts with two findings. Half the costs are not public. And several of the figures that are in circulation turn out, checked against the authority's own tariff, to be wrong.

How many UAE free zones publish their setup cost?

We checked the official website of all 40. Twenty-one publish a figure we could source to the authority itself.

| Pricing state | Zones | |---|---:| | Official source, AED figure recorded | 20 | | Official source, no AED figure (DIFC publishes in USD only) | 1 | | Nothing published that we could find | 18 | | Gated behind an estimate-only calculator (Ajman Free Zone) | 1 |

That is not the blackout it looks like from outside. But only eleven of those twenty-one figures are a price for an actual company licence — the rest are freelance permits, single tariff line items, or a schedule in dollars. The gap between "an official number exists" and "this is what setting up costs" is where the damage gets done.

The zones that publish a company licence price

| Zone | Emirate | From (AED) | Package | Visas | |---|---|---:|---|---| | Ajman Media City | Ajman | 4,999 | Business Club, co-working | 0 | | SRTIP | Sharjah | 5,500 | Zero Visa licence, 5 activities | 0 | | SPC Free Zone | Sharjah | 5,750 | Instant licence, 2,000+ activities | Not stated | | RAKEZ | Ras Al Khaimah | 6,000 | Biz Starter, co-working | Not stated | | Shams | Sharjah | 6,500 | Trader Package | Not stated | | Innovation City (RAK DAO) | Ras Al Khaimah | 6,600 | Idea, shared desk | 0 | | Masdar City | Abu Dhabi | 7,000 | Start-Lite, two activities | 1 | | JAFZA | Dubai | 10,000 | Registration 5,000 + licence from 5,000; excludes the mandatory lease | 0 | | Meydan Free Zone | Dubai | 12,500 | Standard Digital Trade License | Not stated | | UAQ FTZ | Umm Al Quwain | 12,500 | UAQ Start, visa and Emirates ID included | 1 | | DMCC | Dubai | 29,205 | JLT Resident Package | Not stated |

DMCC's AED 29,205 is the lowest published package on dmcc.ae; its standard startup tiers are Basic Biz at AED 35,484 and Jump Start at AED 43,780 a year.

The official figures that are not a company licence price

Seven more zones publish an official number that means something narrower than "cost to set up a company here". Presenting these as entry prices is the commonest error in this category.

| Zone | Emirate | AED | What the figure actually is | |---|---|---:|---| | KEZAD | Abu Dhabi | 1,000 | Establishment card. The licence itself is AED 0; the real cost is the mandatory lease | | Khalifa Port FTZ | Abu Dhabi | 1,000 | The same KEZAD Group tariff; no separate schedule | | DAFZA | Dubai | 7,500 | Talent Pass, a freelance-style licence for individuals | | Dubai Internet City | Dubai | 7,500–7,520 | TECOM GoFreelance permit for an individual, not an FZ-LLC | | Dubai Media City | Dubai | 7,500–7,520 | The same GoFreelance permit | | Dubai Knowledge Park | Dubai | 7,500–7,520 | The same GoFreelance permit | | d3 (Dubai Design District) | Dubai | 7,500–7,520 | The same GoFreelance permit |

The AED 7,500–7,520 spread is not our rounding: gofreelance.ae headlines AED 7,500 and dmc.ae's FAQ says AED 7,520. We record both bounds rather than pick one.

Two zones publish in dollars and appear in neither table: DIFC's Innovation Licence at USD 100 registration plus USD 1,500 a year, and ADGM's lowest minimum initial registration total of USD 1,000 for a DLT Foundation. We leave both in the currency the authority states, because a conversion would be our number rather than theirs.

Every figure above came from the authority's own domain, with the observation date recorded against that zone in the directory.

The five figures we checked and threw out

These numbers are still being quoted at you today. None of them survived.

• KEZAD, AED 9,350. All over consultancy listings; nowhere in KEZAD's own tariff. KEZAD charges AED 0 for a new industrial, trading or service licence and AED 0 for company and branch registration. The only unavoidable published setup fee is the AED 1,000 establishment card. AED 9,350 matches no line item in the schedule.
• Dubai Internet City, AED 15,000. Not sourceable to TECOM and not an entry price. TECOM's only published DIC figure is the GoFreelance permit at AED 7,500 — half the circulating number, and for a different product. DIC publishes no price at all for an FZ-LLC.
• twofour54, AED 15,000. Appears nowhere on twofour54's site: not for licences, freelance permits or facilities. The identical AED 15,000 attaching to two unrelated zones in different emirates, against DIC's real figure of half that, is recycled consultant boilerplate rather than two independent quotes. Removed.
• SAIF Zone, AED 10,800 setup and AED 13,350 renewal. Neither traces back to any SAIF source. SAIF publishes the structure — a 3-visa Office tier, an 8-visa Suite tier, a four-instalment plan — and gives the price on a call. Both figures removed.
• HFZA, AED 11,000. Not confirmed, and a second consultancy quotes AED 5,000 for a different product. hfza.ae serves a JavaScript redirect on its setup, FAQ and promotions pages, so whatever it publishes is unreadable without a browser session. A rendering wall, not a refusal — but until we get past it we carry no figure.

One more correction with real budget consequences: KEZAD renews every two years, not annually. Its tariff reads "licence renewal (after 2 years)" — AED 5,000 for industrial, trading and service, AED 15,000 for general trading. Comparing that against another zone's annual renewal without halving it makes KEZAD look twice as expensive as it is.

There is now not a single consultant-sourced price left in the dataset. Where we could not confirm a figure, the field is blank.

Why do 18 free zones not publish pricing?

Broken pages. IFZA — one of Dubai's most-searched zones — has no pricing on ifza.com and its /en/packages URL 404s. Fujairah Creative City's packages page also 404s.

Quote-only models. SAIF Zone publishes no package prices. RAK Maritime City says "pay for only what you need" and stops. DAFZA sends you to the sales team for a corporate licence.

Calculator-only. Ajman Free Zone's calculator is the only route to a number, and it labels its output estimates only — which is why we hold it as gated rather than official.

Blocked access. Dubai Maritime City's dmca.ae returns 403; HFZA and Fujairah Free Zone are JavaScript-rendered and yielded metadata only.

One structural pattern matters. TECOM operates seven Dubai districts and its GoFreelance permit covers exactly four — DIC, Dubai Media City, Dubai Knowledge Park and d3. Studio City, Production City and Science Park publish nothing. We have deliberately not copied AED 7,500 across to them: a number true of four districts is not true of seven.

Which emirate is most transparent on price?

Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah lead on ratio. Three of Sharjah's five publish officially — SPC Free Zone, Shams and SRTIP — all three real company licence prices. Three of RAK's four publish officially, though one is RAK ICC, an offshore registry rather than a free zone.

Dubai splits down the middle: 20 zones, 10 official records, 10 publishing nothing. The split flatters it. Four of the ten are freelance permits, one is DAFZA's Talent Pass and one is DIFC's dollar schedule — leaving JAFZA, Meydan and DMCC as the only Dubai zones publishing an AED company licence price. The northern emirates punch above their weight: Ajman Media City, RAKEZ, Innovation City and UAQ FTZ all publish, as does Masdar City.

What this means if you are choosing a zone

A comparison built from Google results will be mostly fiction. Eighteen of 40 zones publish nothing, and five of the most-quoted figures in the market do not survive a check against the authority's own tariff.

Absence of a price is itself information. A zone that will not publish a headline figure usually has a real cost driven by a lease you must negotiate. Fine if you need a warehouse. A warning sign if you are a two-person consultancy quoted a flat licence fee over the phone.

Budget for the gap between the licence and the company. Several published prices exclude visas entirely, with medicals, Emirates ID and establishment cards on top. We break that down in our visa quota guide and rank the published prices in the cheapest UAE free zone licences comparison.

Shortlist two or three zones on fit, then request a written quote from each. For the 18 zones with no published price, a written quote is the only number there is. Start from the full free zone directory.