UAE Free Zone Total Setup Cost Breakdown: The Seven Line Items Behind the Licence Price

An honest UAE free zone total setup cost breakdown has seven line items, and the headline price you were quoted usually covers one of them. The licence fee is the number on the packages page. The establishment card, e-channel registration, residence visa, medical test, Emirates ID and any security deposit or share capital sit behind it.

This is the companion to our piece on the 19 zones that publish no price at all. This one is about the opposite problem: zones that do publish a number, where the number is not what you will pay.

We are going to be strict about the limits of what we know. Across all 40 zones in our dataset, three published fee schedules give you an add-on visa price, covering seven records between them. We are not going to fill the remaining gaps with estimates.

What is not included in a UAE free zone licence price?

Seven things, in the order you will encounter them:

Licence fee
Establishment (immigration) card
E-channel registration
Residence visa
Medical fitness test
Emirates ID
Security deposit or paid-up share capital

Some zones bundle several of these. Most bundle the first and price the rest separately, or do not say either way.

The seven line items

1. Licence fee

The advertised number. It buys the trade licence, the legal existence of the company, and usually a defined set of activities and a registered address — a flexi-desk, a shared desk, or co-working access. It is the only item that appears reliably on a packages page.

2. Establishment (immigration) card

It registers the company with the immigration authority and is the prerequisite for sponsoring anyone. You cannot apply for a residence visa without it, and it renews on its own cycle. On a zero-visa package you may not need one yet; the moment you want your first visa, you do.

3. E-channel registration

The immigration portal account through which visa applications are filed. A second registration and a second fee, filed alongside the establishment card.

4. Residence visa

The main cost driver and the item most likely to be excluded. Note the distinction between "visa eligible" and "visa included": a package can permit you to apply for visas while charging for every one. Both phrases appear on official pages and mean very different things to your budget.

5. Medical fitness test

Mandatory for a residence visa. Blood test and chest X-ray at an approved centre, priced by the health authority rather than the free zone, though a zone can bundle it.

6. Emirates ID

Issued alongside the residence permit. A separate application and a separate fee from the visa, even though the two are processed in one sequence.

7. Security deposit or paid-up share capital

Often not disclosed until quotation. In our dataset, minimum capital is not stated on most records, and we record that as unknown rather than defaulting it to zero — asserting "no capital required" without a source is the kind of claim that costs someone money. SPC Free Zone is one of the few that states a position: zero paid-up share capital required.

What does each zone actually bundle?

The eleven zones below publish an official AED price for a company licence. Five zones whose only figure was consultant-sourced used to sit alongside them; a second research pass refuted all five and they are now blank, because a bundling table built on unverified prices is worse than no table.

| Zone | Headline price (AED) | Visa included? | Establishment card? | Medical and Emirates ID? | |---|---:|---|---|---| | Ajman Media City | 4,999 | No — Business Club is a zero-visa package | Not published | Not published | | SRTIP | 5,500 | No — Zero Visa licence package | Not published | Not published | | SPC Free Zone | 5,750 | Package states UAE residency issued in 5 working days | Not published | Not published | | RAKEZ | 6,000 | Not stated — Biz Starter lists no visa | Not published | Not published | | Shams | 6,500 | Not stated | Not published | Not published | | Innovation City (RAK DAO) | 6,600 | No — Idea package carries no visas | Not published | Not published | | Masdar City | 7,000 | Yes — Start-Lite includes 1 visa | Not published | Not published | | JAFZA | 10,000 | No — zero visas at the cheapest route | Not published | Not published | | Meydan Free Zone | 12,500 | Eligibility referenced, no quota published; add-ons priced separately | Not published | Not published | | UAQ FTZ | 12,500 | Yes — UAQ Start includes 1 residence visa | Yes | Yes — medical test and basic insurance, plus Emirates ID | | DMCC | 29,205 | No — JLT Resident Package is licence plus flexi-desk option | Not published | Not published |

All eleven prices are taken from the zone's own published material, with the observation date recorded against that zone in the directory.

"Not published" means the zone states no position on its public pages. It does not mean the item is free, and it does not mean it is charged. It means you have to ask.

Seven further zones publish an official figure that is not a company licence price, and putting them in this table would be the exact error it exists to prevent. KEZAD and Khalifa Port FTZ publish AED 1,000 — an establishment card, with the licence itself at AED 0 and the mandatory land lease unpublished. DAFZA's AED 7,500 is a Talent Pass for individuals; DAFZ publishes no corporate licence price and says so. And AED 7,500–7,520 is TECOM's GoFreelance permit in four Dubai districts — Dubai Internet City, Dubai Media City, Dubai Knowledge Park and d3 — a permit for one freelancer, not an FZ-LLC.

ADGM and DIFC sit outside for a different reason: both publish genuine official schedules, in USD. ADGM's lowest minimum initial registration total is USD 1,000 for a DLT Foundation; DIFC's Innovation Licence is USD 100 plus USD 1,500 a year. We do not convert — the conversion would be our number, not theirs.

Which zones publish their visa add-on prices?

Three schedules, covering seven of the 40 records.

Meydan Free Zone publishes an investor visa from AED 4,000 and an employee visa from AED 3,500, on top of its AED 12,500 Standard Digital Trade License. Its expedited Fawri instant licence is AED 15,000.

TECOM's GoFreelance tariff, covering Dubai Internet City, Dubai Media City, Dubai Knowledge Park and d3, prices the Establishment Card at AED 2,000 and the employment visa at AED 4,600 for one year or AED 5,042 for two. A freelancer who needs residency therefore pays roughly AED 7,500 + 2,000 + 4,600 — not the AED 7,500 headline.

KEZAD's tariff, which also covers Khalifa Port FTZ, is the most itemised: employment residence visa AED 1,500, in-country visa AED 800, Emirates ID AED 300, most renewals AED 0.

Read Meydan's "from" as the zone wrote it. It is a floor, not a total, and it does not say whether the medical test and Emirates ID sit inside or outside.

Which packages genuinely bundle the whole stack?

Two stand out.

UAQ FTZ, AED 12,500 (UAQ Start). The most completely itemised package we hold: up to 10 activities, a residence visa plus Emirates ID, co-working space, medical test and basic insurance, bank account opening assistance, and establishment card and e-channel access. Six of the seven line items, named on the page. As disclosure it is the best in the country.

Masdar City, AED 7,000 (Start-Lite). An annual licensing fee including two business activities and one visa, activities subject to approval. The cheapest package in our dataset that explicitly includes a visa.

Two more worth naming. SPC Free Zone at AED 5,750 states UAE residency issued in five working days, and a second official SPC package at AED 6,875 adds unlimited visas on a flexi-desk model. RAKEZ at AED 6,000 includes co-working membership and bank account eligibility support — but states no visa.

A warning about the top of the range. DMCC's AED 29,205 JLT Resident Package is a licence plus a flexi-desk option. The visa-eligible DMCC packages are Basic Biz at AED 35,484 and Jump Start at AED 43,780. Assume the cheapest published DMCC number comes with a visa and you are AED 6,279 short.

If a zero-visa licence is genuinely what you want — a holding structure, or a UAE licence for a business you run from elsewhere — Ajman Media City at AED 4,999, SRTIP at AED 5,500 and Innovation City at AED 6,600 are honest about carrying no visas, and our breakdown of what AED 5,000–7,000 actually buys goes through each package line by line.

What we cannot tell you yet, and why

We cannot give you a per-zone price for the establishment card, e-channel registration, medical test or Emirates ID at most zones. Only three schedules in the dataset itemise any of it — Meydan's covers visas only, TECOM's covers the establishment card and visa for four Dubai districts, and KEZAD's covers visas and Emirates ID. That is seven records out of forty.

We could produce a table of plausible-looking averages in ten minutes. Every competitor cost article has. We are not going to: those numbers would not be traceable to anything, and a reader who budgeted from them and came up short would have been better served by a blank. As we obtain written quotes, we will publish them — dated, attributed, and with the exact configuration they cover.

The question to ask before you pay

One sentence, in writing, before any deposit:

"What is the all-in first-year figure for one visa, itemised — licence, establishment card, e-channel, visa, medical, Emirates ID, and any deposit — and what is the renewal figure in year two?"

An organisation that will answer that in an email is one you can budget against. An organisation that answers it on a call, in a range, or only after you pay a reservation fee, has told you something useful about how the rest of the relationship will go.