What a UAE Free Zone License Costs in October 2026.

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The headline: AED 8,169, and two price bands

The average published price for a one-year license is AED 8,169 this month. The median is AED 6,010, which tells you the average is being pulled up by a few expensive zones, and it is. Look at Fig. 1 and the zones fall into two clear bands with almost nothing between them.

The lower band is the northern emirates: SRTIP at AED 5,510, Ajman FZ at AED 5,565, SPC and Shams both at AED 5,760, RAKEZ at AED 6,010. All within a AED 500 spread. The upper band is Dubai: Meydan AED 12,500, Dubai South AED 12,520, IFZA AED 12,900, again all within AED 400 of each other. Masdar in Abu Dhabi, at AED 7,000, is the only zone priced between AED 7,000 and AED 12,500.

What that means in practice: the first decision is not which zone, it is which band. Once you have chosen Dubai or not-Dubai, the zones inside the band are close enough on price that visa room, activity lists and renewal behaviour decide it, not the license fee.

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The Dubai premium is AED 6,963 a year

Average the Dubai zones and you get AED 12,640. Average the Sharjah zones and you get AED 5,677. The gap, AED 6,963 a year, every year, buys a Dubai trade license number and a Dubai address on your paperwork. It does not buy different rights: 100% foreign ownership, eligibility for UAE residence visas, the ability to invoice clients anywhere in the world and the same corporate tax treatment all come with a Sharjah license too.

For some businesses the Dubai address is worth exactly that, a client-facing consultancy, a brand that will be googled, a founder who will live in Dubai and wants the company close. For an online business, a holding company or a freelancer whose clients never see the paperwork, the premium is AED 20,890 over three years for a line on a letterhead. We say so to every client; this index exists partly so you can see the figure before anyone sells you the address.

In one line

A Dubai address costs 2.2 times a Sharjah one. The license you get is the same.

04

The first visa is where the real price lives

The license fee is the number zones advertise, but almost nobody buys a license without at least one residence visa. So we also price year one with the first visa added, and it changes the picture. Adding one visa takes the average year-one cost from AED 7,892 to AED 16,441, before the government’s own visa charges (medical, Emirates ID, entry permit, roughly another AED 3,500 to 5,500).

The jump is not the visa itself; it is the package. Most zones sell the no-visa license on a cheaper tier and move you to a visa-eligible tier the moment you want to live here. Outside Dubai that roughly doubles the bill: SPC goes from AED 5,460 to AED 13,095, Shams from AED 5,760 to AED 13,225. In Dubai the step is proportionally smaller because the base is already high. Cheapest first visa this month is RAKEZ at +AED 6,300 (a zone we list but do not recommend); the most expensive is Meydan at +AED 10,545.

The lesson is simple and we repeat it on every page of this site: compare zones on the setup you will actually have, not on the license-only sticker. The jurisdictions page does that for any number of visas; the index reports the one-visa figure because it is the most common case.

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Renewals: the zones to read twice

Year one is a sale. Year two is the price. The widest gap this month is Masdar, whose Start-up Package is a genuine promotion: AED 6,300 through us in year one, then AED 10,800 from year two, a rise of 71%. Over two years that makes Masdar more expensive than any Sharjah zone despite the attractive first-year price, which is exactly why we show two-year totals in the table.

Ajman FZ and RAKEZ also price year one as a promotion, and their standard renewal rate is quoted only once you are in. We list both for completeness but do not recommend either, their reputation with banks makes account opening slower, and we would ask for the renewal figure in writing before signing anything with them. SPC, IFZA, Dubai South, Meydan and SRTIP all renew at their standard rate this month, so the year-one figure is the figure. Shams is the only zone with its renewal locked in writing, at the same rate as the first term.

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Direct, through an agency, through us

The red marks in Fig. 1 show what the same license costs through us. The zones pay us a commission for each company we register, and we pass part of it back, so our price sits at or below the zone’s own published figure: the saving this month runs from nothing (Dubai South and Shams, where we match the zone’s price exactly) to AED 700 at Masdar. Across all zones, the average is AED 278 below the published price.

We mention this not as a sales line but as a calibration point for the rest of the market. A typical formation agent charges the zone’s price plus a markup, 15% is common, and often a service fee that does not appear on the first quote. If a quote you are holding is above the “zone’s price” column in Fig. 2, you are paying someone to walk to the counter for you.

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The full table

Everything above in one place, sorted by the zone’s own price, with the first-visa figure, the year-two renewal and the two-year total next to each. From the November edition the last column shows what moved.

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What to do with this

If you are choosing a zone this month: decide the band first. If the Dubai address matters to your business, IFZA, Dubai South and Meydan are within AED 400 of each other on the license and the choice comes down to visa allocation and activity lists. If it does not, SPC is our pick in the lower band, AED 5,460 through us, five activities included, no office required, renewal at the standard rate, with Shams for media businesses and SRTIP for research and technology companies.

If you already hold a license: compare your last renewal invoice with the year-two column. If you paid more, the difference is either a package you do not need or a markup. We switch licenses between zones and renew existing ones at the zone’s rate; the switching page explains how.

And if you just want the numbers each month, the WhatsApp subscription in the sidebar sends every zone’s price and what moved, nothing else. Late November 2026 is the next edition.