Free Zone Company Formation in the UAE

A free zone company is a UAE company entered on the register of one zone authority rather than on an emirate's economic department register. That sentence is the whole of what the phrase means; the legal consequences of it are set out in full on our page about free zone companies in the UAE, and the tax test that sits on top of it belongs to the qualifying free zone person page. What this page is about is narrower and more practical: which documents a formation actually produces, in what order, who issues each one, and which of them nobody in the chain can promise you.

A completed formation hands you a defined set of artefacts. A reserved trade name. An initial approval. Constitutional documents executed in the zone's own form. A certificate of incorporation or registration issued by the zone registrar. A trade licence naming the activities you may conduct and nothing else. A share certificate. An establishment card, which opens your immigration file. Work permits and residence visas drawn against that card. A corporate tax registration and a Tax Registration Number. A VAT registration, if a threshold is met.

Read what is missing from that list, because it is where most disappointment comes from. A bank account is not on it. A visa quota you were quoted verbally is not on it. A tax outcome is not on it — no registrar grants the 0% rate, and no provider can. And a company is not the same event as a licence: the point is made properly on our Dubai company formation page, and it matters here because a zone can issue a licence in days while the corporate documents behind it are still unexecuted.

On free zone company websites: there is no single official one. Each zone runs its own registration portal, and the UAE Government Portal's Starting a business in a free zone page lists the zone authorities emirate by emirate — Dubai Airport Free Zone, DMCC, Jebel Ali, Dubai Silicon Oasis, Dubai South, Sharjah Airport International, Hamriyah, Ajman, RAKEZ and the rest. That list, read on 17 August 2026, is the only consolidated index of zone authorities we can point to at source. To check whether a specific named company holds a free zone licence, use the National Economic Register, which publishes the licensing authorities; the authority on the licence settles it.

Almost every free zone comparison you will be shown is a price list with amenities attached. Price is the wrong first filter, because the two things that actually eliminate zones — your activity and where your customer sits — eliminate most of them before cost is even relevant, and a cheap licence in a zone that cannot license your activity has negative value.

Activity first. You may conduct only what is on your zone's approved activity list, and the lists differ by zone. This is the single most common reason a formation has to be unwound and started again: the package was bought, the deposit paid, and the activity turned out to need a different register or a mainland licence entirely.

Customer location second. Inside the zone and internationally, a free zone licence is unrestricted. Reaching a customer on the UAE mainland is regulated, and in Dubai the routes are now codified. Executive Council Resolution No. 11 of 2025 gives the Department of Economy and Tourism three ways to authorise activity outside the zone under Article 4(a): a licence for a branch within the Emirate, a licence for a branch operating out of the free zone, and a permit for specific activities. Article 12 prices only two of them — AED 10,000 per year to issue or renew the branch-operating-out-of-the-zone licence, and AED 5,000 to issue or renew a temporary permit, which Article 7 caps at six months, so continuous permit-based access is two payments a year and not one. The branch within the Emirate is not priced in Article 12 at all; Article 5(a)(6) says only that the prescribed fees are payable to the Department under applicable legislation. Quoting AED 10,000 for "a mainland branch" attributes a real figure to the wrong route.

Dubai Airport Free Zone and the other airport zones. These come up constantly, and there is one verifiable thing worth saying about them at formation. Dubai Airport Free Zone appears at item 7 of the Dubai section of the Federal Tax Authority's published list of VAT Designated Zones, annexed to Cabinet Decision No. 59 of 2017 and amended by Cabinet Decision No. 35 of 2018 — counted on that list on 17 August 2026. Dubai Aviation City is a separate entry at item 6 and the two are not interchangeable. Abu Dhabi Airport Free Zone, Al Ain International Airport Free Zone, Al Butain International Airport Free Zone and Sharjah Airport International Free Zone are also on it. That status is a customs-and-goods fact about the zone, not a benefit that attaches to you, and it does almost nothing for a services business. We publish nothing about any airport zone's own entity types, packages or fees: the DAFZ website refused our request behind a bot-protection block on 17 August 2026, and a zone's own current schedule is the only source we will take its terms from.

The UAE Government Portal lists, for free zones, a private limited liability company, a Free Zone Company, a Free Zone Establishment, a public joint stock company and a branch of a local or international company — and adds that not all zones register all types. What separates them is shareholder count and whether a shareholder may be a legal person. That much is menu selection. The part with cash consequences is capital.

Article 76 of Federal Decree-Law No. 32 of 2021 sets no minimum in dirhams. It requires that the company "shall have a sufficient capital to achieve the object of its incorporation and the capital shall consist of shares equal in value", and gives the Cabinet a power, on the Minister's proposal, to issue a decision fixing a minimum. Any figure you have been handed as "the UAE minimum share capital" is therefore not a federal number.

The two clauses after it are the ones that move money. Article 76(2): contributions may be in cash and/or in kind and shall be paid in full at the time of incorporation — not called up later. Article 76(3): cash contributions shall be deposited with a bank operating in the State, and the bank may not pay them out other than to the managers of the company, and then only on evidence of the company's registration with the Competent Authority, within the limits set in the manager's appointment contract. Contributions in kind are valued under Article 78 by an approved financial consultant, and a partner who overvalues one pays the difference in cash.

What makes this a decision rather than a rule is Article 5 of the same Decree-Law: where a zone's own regulations displace the Commercial Companies Law, the zone's capital rules govern instead — and they genuinely differ. Some zones state a capital with no deposit at all, some want a bank letter, some want the deposit evidenced before the licence issues. Establish which of the three your zone does, in writing, before you model cash. And note the sting in Article 5(1): where the zone's regulations permit the company to conduct activities outside the zone in the State, the federal statute comes back over it.

The trade name is the step most often left until the shareholders are already assembled, and it is the step most often rejected. The UAE Government Portal's stated requirements are that the name must not violate public morals or public order, must be followed by the legal form of the company — LLC, FZE, DMCC and so on — must not already be registered, must be compatible with the required activity and legal status, and must not contain the name of any religion, of any governing authority, or the names or logos of any external bodies. Zones publish their own restrictions on top: DMCC maintains a list of restricted trade names. A brand chosen and designed before availability was checked is a fortnight lost and an invoice paid twice.

The order below is the production order, not a sales sequence. Each step names the artefact it produces and the thing that stalls it, because a formation almost never fails outright — it stalls, and the stall is usually at the same five places.

There is no federal visa formula and no published national ratio. The UAE Government Portal states only that the number of visas a free zone business can obtain "depends on various factors such as the package they have signed up for", and directs applicants to the zone authority both for eligibility and for increasing a quota. Any "one visa per X square feet" you are quoted is one zone's own allocation rule. Get it in writing from that zone before you sign a lease sized around it — this is the second most expensive assumption in a UAE setup, after the activity.

The establishment card is the gate. Nothing in your immigration file exists before it, and three of its conditions catch founders out. First, the Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs and Port Security states that for companies operating under a free zone authority the request must be submitted through the respective free zone authority — you cannot go direct. Second, a valid Emirates ID, or a Unified Number for someone not yet issued one, must be provided for one of the authorised signatories, because "the establishment card issuance process cannot begin without it". Third, the required documents include the trade licence, the signature authorisation letter and, for a partnership, the memorandum of association — which means the constitutional documents have to be finished, not merely agreed. The Authority states a completion duration of two days once the file is in; the file being ready is the slow part, not the decision.

Employment inside a zone is not a separate legal universe, and the interaction between a zone workforce and mainland work is set out on our free zone companies page rather than repeated here. One provision belongs in a formation plan, though: Article 8 of Executive Council Resolution No. 11 of 2025 lets an establishment licensed or authorised to work within the Emirate of Dubai engage its existing workforce registered on the free zone portal and continue to benefit from the free zone employment privileges applicable to that workforce — so the Dubai mainland route does not automatically force a second payroll.

This is the point where free zone formations actually fail, and it is the point on which this page will give you no number at all. We publish no bank account opening timeline, no likelihood, and no success rate. Not because the question is unimportant — it is usually the most important one — but because the answer is a third party's regulated decision, taken case by case under that bank's own anti-money-laundering obligations, and there is no primary source that states an outcome or a duration for it. Anything you are shown that does state one is a marketing figure.

Understand the structural problem rather than the anecdotes. The zone registrar's job ends at registration. The bank's assessment begins at introduction and is not delegable: no zone, no adviser and no formation agent can bind it, and none of them sees its file. Meanwhile, where the Commercial Companies Law applies to you, Article 76(3) puts your paid-up capital inside a bank before your managers may draw on it — so the statute assumes a banking relationship at exactly the moment you are least able to demonstrate one. That is the squeeze: a company that exists, a licence that is live, renewal clocks already running, and no operating account.

What you can control is the file. A clearly scoped activity that matches the licence. Named counterparties and a plausible flow of funds. Shareholder documents attested and consistent across every form. Substance the zone can evidence — a facility, employees, decisions taken in the UAE. Realistic turnover projections that match the entity you have actually formed. None of that guarantees anything, and we will not say it does. It is simply the difference between a file a compliance team can approve and one it cannot.

One planning consequence follows: do not commit to a payment obligation, a supplier or a payroll date on the assumption that an account will exist by then.

A trade licence is a company-law and customs arrangement. It is not a tax status, and three obligations attach to a new free zone company immediately.

Corporate tax registration. Article 51 of Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 requires every taxable person to register and obtain a Tax Registration Number, with no revenue threshold. FTA Decision No. 3 of 2024 sets the clock: the table at Article 3(3) gives a resident juridical person incorporated, established or recognised in the State on or after the Decision's effective date three months from the date of incorporation — and the row names a Free Zone Person expressly. Registration is not conditional on profit, and not conditional on whether you expect the 0% rate.

VAT. Yes, VAT applies to free zone companies. There is no free zone exemption from the VAT Law, and registration runs on the ordinary thresholds: AED 375,000 mandatory under Article 7(1) of the Executive Regulation, AED 187,500 voluntary under Article 8(1), with the application due within 30 days of becoming required to register under Article 7(2). A person who registers late still has to account for the tax due on every taxable supply and import made before registering. Being in a VAT Designated Zone changes the treatment of certain supplies of goods and very little about services — the mechanics are set out on our free zone companies page, and the practical formation point is simply that a Designated Zone address is not a reason to skip a registration assessment.

The audit, which is the obligation formation quotes leave out. Article 2(1) of Ministerial Decision No. 84 of 2025 requires audited financial statements from a taxable person that is not a tax group and derives revenue exceeding AED 50,000,000 in the tax period — and, at paragraph (b), from a Qualifying Free Zone Person, with no revenue floor at all. A two-person zone company claiming the 0% rate therefore carries the same audit obligation as a group fifty times its size, and it applies to tax periods commencing on or after 1 January 2025. The audit has to be scoped, budgeted and completed, and it is one of the conditions of the status itself.

On choosing that auditor — the question behind audit firms in Dubai Airport Free Zone and company auditing services in the UAE — the checks are federal and you can run them yourself. Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2023 makes "Chartered Accountant" a designation that may not be used without a professional licence from the Ministry of Economy and Tourism (Article 8(2)); Article 14 requires a separate economic licence and makes the emirate's licensing authority verify the Ministry's approval first; Article 15(1) requires Securities and Commodities Authority accreditation to audit a public joint stock company or a mutual fund; and Article 15(2) requires a firm appointed by a bank, insurer, third-party investment fund or PJSC to have held the Ministry licence for not less than five years. Ask your zone separately whether it maintains its own approved-auditor list. We publish no auditor list for any zone.

Formation and dissolution are the same engagement seen from opposite ends, and the second is priced by almost nobody at the start. The UAE Government Portal describes closing a free zone company as a structured process run by the zone authority: passing a shareholder resolution to close the business, cancelling all employee and investor visas, settling outstanding financial obligations, deregistering with the Federal Tax Authority where applicable, then submitting a licence cancellation or liquidation application with the required clearances and documents. On approval the authority issues a final de-registration certificate. Page read 17 August 2026, stated as updated 16 April 2026.

Branches have their own rule on that page: to close a branch of a free zone company you must close the branches registered with the Ministry of Economy and Tourism, and for companies not registered with the Ministry you must provide an attested decision of the parent company to cancel them.

The tax deregistrations are on their own clocks and they do not wait for the licence to be cancelled. FTA Decision No. 6 of 2023, Article 2(2): a juridical person files its corporate tax deregistration application within 3 months of the date the entity ceases to exist, or of cessation, dissolution or liquidation. VAT deregistration is 20 business days from the occurrence, under Article 14(1) of the VAT Executive Regulation. Missing either is a penalty, not a formality, and a licence cancelled while a tax registration is still live leaves a registered taxable person with no operating company behind it.

The order that causes trouble is visas. Employee and investor visas have to be cancelled before the establishment card closes, and the establishment card has to close before the licence cancellation completes — while gratuity and final settlement obligations under the Labour Law are crystallising at the same moment. Budget for that at formation, not at exit.

Refusals belong on the page, not in a footnote, because each one is a place where a plausible number would have been easier to write than the truth.

No prices for any zone. No package cost, no licence fee, no registration or renewal fee, no visa cost, no establishment card fee schedule, no cost of a free zone company in Dubai or anywhere else in the UAE. No free zone publishes a stable tariff we can read at source, and a free zone figure previously carried on this site turned out to be attributed to a document containing no amounts at all. The only two amounts on this page are Dubai's own gazetted fees for mainland access under Article 12 of Executive Council Resolution No. 11 of 2025, read in the Resolution itself.

No cheapest or best zone. That is an opinion presented as a finding, and it inverts the moment your activity, facility or visa count changes.

No count of how many free zones exist. Approximations circulate widely; we could not verify a current total at source.

No bank account outcome or timeline, for the reasons set out above.

Nothing about this firm's own commercial terms. No fee, no turnaround, no package for our own service. No claim that we are licensed, registered, accredited or credentialled by any authority — check any adviser, including us, against the relevant register rather than against a badge on a website. No phone number, office address or location, because none is published. No client names, case studies, testimonials or track record, because there are none to publish. And no claim that we can incorporate a company on your behalf: only the zone registrar does that.

What is verifiable, you can verify without us. Instruments by number at the Ministry of Finance and the Federal Tax Authority. Licences and licensing authorities on the National Economic Register. Auditors against the Ministry of Economy and Tourism's professional licensing regime. Every figure on this page carries the article it came from, and every one was read in the primary text on 17 August 2026.