Business Setup Cost in Dubai: The 2026 Fee Breakdown

Ask five consultants what a Dubai company costs and you will get five confident numbers, none of which match. That is not because four of them are lying. It is because "a Dubai company" is at least six different products, and the biggest cost line is usually not the one on the quote.

Here is what we can actually verify in 2026, what we cannot, and how to build a budget that survives contact with the real file.

What actually goes into the first-year bill?

Three buckets. That is the whole model, and once you see it, most confusing quotes become readable.

Licence. The registration and trade licence itself, paid to a free zone authority or to Dubai's Department of Economy and Tourism. Annual.

Premises. A flexi-desk, a co-working seat, a serviced office or a leased unit with an Ejari registration. Annual, and it quietly controls how many visas you are allowed.

People. The immigration establishment card, then per-person costs: entry permit, status change, medical fitness, Emirates ID, and the residence stamp.

A quote that shows you one bucket and stays vague about the other two is not a quote. It is a lead magnet.

What does a free zone licence cost in 2026?

Free zones are the transparent end of this market, and a few publish real numbers you can hold them to. These are taken directly from the authorities' own pages, not from aggregators.

Notice the spread. RAKEZ Basic to DMCC is more than a threefold difference on the licence line alone, and both are legitimate UAE companies. You are buying different things: RAKEZ sells speed and price, DMCC sells a commodities-and-trade ecosystem with mandatory audit and the most transparent fee schedule in the country.

One detail worth knowing, because it tells you how carefully a consultant reads: DMCC's own blog quotes its application fee as AED 1,015, while its schedule of charges says AED 1,035. The schedule of charges is the document that governs. Small gap, useful test.

Several popular zones publish nothing. IFZA, DAFZA, SHAMS and Dubai South all route you to an enquiry form rather than a price. Secondary sources quote IFZA entry packages anywhere from AED 12,500 to AED 12,900 for a zero-visa licence, but the sources disagree with each other, so treat any exact IFZA figure you read online as an estimate until the zone puts it in writing for you. SHAMS is upfront about this: its own calculator says the prices it returns are estimates only.

If you are weighing zones against each other, our free zone company registration page covers what each is actually built for.

What does a mainland licence cost?

This is where most articles start inventing.

Dubai's Department of Economy and Tourism does not publish a plain retail fee list you can read the way you read the DMCC schedule. Its portals sit behind protections that block automated retrieval, and the consultancy blogs that quote exact DET line items contradict one another badly. The market fee alone is quoted as both 2.5% and 5% of annual office rent by sources that both sound authoritative.

So here is the honest version.

What is verified, from the UAE Government portal: mainland companies can be 100% foreign-owned. Federal Decree-Law 26/2020 removed the majority-Emirati-shareholder requirement and Federal Decree-Law 32/2021 consolidated it. A short list of "activities with strategic impact" under Cabinet Resolution 55/2021 still needs special handling, covering things like security and defence, banking and finance, telecommunications, and fisheries, where citizen ownership is set at 100%. Also verified: Dubai requires an Ejari-registered address, and you must pay for your trade licence within 30 days of receiving the payment voucher.

What is not verified: every DET dirham figure circulating online. Initial approval, trade name reservation, licence issuance, market fee, chamber membership. We can tell you the components. We will not tell you an exact total we cannot source.

The working range we see on real mainland files, government side only, is roughly AED 12,000 to AED 18,000 in year one for a straightforward commercial or professional activity with a modest office. It goes higher fast with extra activities, external approvals, or a large leased space, because the municipality market fee is a percentage of your rent rather than a flat charge.

Which costs do quotes leave out?

These are the lines that turn a tidy quote into a surprise. None of them are exotic; all of them are routine.

• Immigration establishment card. Nothing about staff visas moves until this exists. Meydan lists a one-time immigration card at AED 2,000; DMCC lists an establishment card at AED 1,825 with renewal at AED 2,205. See labour and immigration card.
• Per-visa cost. DMCC publishes AED 2,972.50 for a two-year employment visa applied for from outside the country, dropping to AED 1,898 once you are past a 200-visa quota. Meydan quotes a first investor visa all-in at around AED 7,850 and employee visas from AED 3,500.
• Medical fitness and Emirates ID. Meydan bundles medical and Emirates ID assistance at AED 2,250. The underlying government fees are separate again.
• Ejari registration. Roughly AED 178 all-in for the registration itself. Trivial next to the rent, but it blocks everything if it is missing. See office space and Ejari.
• Amendments. DMCC charges AED 1,515 to change a licence address and the same again to change an activity. Get the activity right the first time and that line stays at zero.
• Bank account. Usually no setup fee, but expect a minimum relationship balance and a compliance file that takes real work. See corporate bank account.
• Corporate tax and VAT registration. Registration itself is free. The accounting you need afterwards is not.

Worked example: two setups, side by side

Two founders, same month, very different bills. Both are composites of files we have run, with the published figures used where they exist.

Consultant, solo, clients across the Gulf. He takes a RAKEZ Lite instant licence at AED 12,000, which includes co-working access and one residence visa. He adds medical, Emirates ID and the visa processing around it. His premises cost is inside the licence. Year one lands in the mid-teens of thousands, and the single largest variable left is whether he needs an in-person UAE bank relationship or can operate through a digital business account.

Trading company, three staff, Dubai customers. She needs to invoice mainland clients directly, so a free zone entity would need a distributor or a branch. Mainland it is. Licence and approvals in the AED 12,000 to 18,000 band, a small Ejari-registered office, a municipality market fee set as a percentage of that rent, an establishment card, then four visas including her own with medicals and Emirates IDs attached to each. The licence is maybe a fifth of her first-year total. The office and the people are the rest.

Same city. Roughly a threefold difference. The deciding variable was never the licence price, it was who her customers are.

If that decision is the one you are stuck on, we wrote a separate guide on mainland versus free zone that turns it into five questions.

Where does the budget usually go wrong?

Four failure modes, in the order we see them.

1. Budgeting the licence, forgetting the peopleVisas are per head, and each one carries an entry permit, a status change if the person is already in the country, a medical, an Emirates ID and a stamp. Three staff is not "a bit more" than one. It is three times the per-head stack.
2. Choosing the desk on priceThe cheapest flexi-desk is the cheapest right up to the moment you need a fourth visa and the package will not carry it. There is no published federal rule mapping desk type to visa count; every zone sets its own. Ask for your quota in writing before you pay, not after.
3. Picking the activity looselyThe activity decides your authority, your external approvals, your office rule and sometimes your ownership structure. Changing it later is a paid amendment at every zone that publishes a price. Our guide to choosing a business activity covers how to get it right first time.
4. Treating year two as a copy of year oneRegistration and application fees are one-off. Licence, premises, establishment card and visa renewals are not. Year two is smaller, but it is not small, and multi-year licences are where the real discounts live: DMCC publishes 5%, 10% and 20% off for two, three and five years.

How do you get a number you can plan against?

Do these four things and you will have a figure you can actually plan against.

First, write down what the business does and where the customers are. One sentence. That single answer drives mainland versus free zone, which drives most of the cost.

Second, count the visas you need in year one, honestly. Not the ones you hope for.

Third, ask every provider to quote in the same three buckets: licence, premises, people. Ask each to state what is not included. The good ones answer immediately.

Fourth, check the government-side numbers at the source. Free zone schedules of charges are published. Mainland fee estimates should come from the Invest in Dubai cost calculator or the DET counter, in writing, with a date on them, because these fees are set by decision and change without much notice.

MSM prepares and files these applications every week, across DET, the major Dubai free zones, MoHRE and GDRFA. If you send your activity, your customer base and your headcount, we will come back with a costed route rather than a package price. Start with the business setup overview, or read the document checklist before you apply.