The Cheapest Free Zones in the UAE, Ranked on Prices the Zones Actually Publish (2026)

Here is the finding that should change how you read every "cheapest free zone in the UAE" article you have ever opened. The two zones most often crowned cheapest, IFZA and Ajman Free Zone, publish no prices on their own websites at all. IFZA's business setup page carries zero AED figures and a "Book Free Consultation" button [4]. Ajman Free Zone offers a cost calculator that emails you a personalised quote and nothing else [1]. Neither zone issues a public rate card.

So every "IFZA from AED 12,900" and "Ajman from AED 5,555" you have read is a number the zone itself never published. Those figures come from agents, aggregators and each other. Some of them may well be close to what a real client paid on a real day. None of them are checkable, none are guaranteed to you, and none of them can be held to when your quote arrives higher. A league table built on unverifiable numbers is not a league table, it is a rumour with a spreadsheet.

This guide does the opposite. It ranks the cheap end of the UAE free zone market using only prices the zones publish themselves, marks every other figure as indicative, and then explains the four things that actually decide your bill: whether the headline includes a residence visa, whether renewal is published, whether the zone is a VAT Designated Zone, and whether your activity can ever reach the 0% corporate tax rate. Our free zone company setup page runs the same comparison against your activity and visa count. Since 2013, our team has bought, renewed and cancelled licences across most of the zones below, so the warnings come from invoices rather than brochures. This is a guide, not legal or tax advice on your specific company.

If you want an itemised quote you can hold someone to, talk to a setup expert→

Which UAE free zones actually publish their prices?

Fewer than half of them, and the ones with the loudest "cheapest" reputations publish the least. Ajman Media City publishes a full standing table including renewals. RAKEZ, Meydan, UAQ and DMCC publish real numbers with caveats. IFZA, Ajman Free Zone and both Fujairah zones publish nothing you can build a budget from.

This table is the spine of the article. It is not about who is cheap. It is about who will tell you a number before you hand over your passport.

Read the bottom four rows again. Fujairah Free Zone's own domain failed DNS resolution entirely when we checked, which means every FFZA price circulating on setup blogs has been copied from other setup blogs for an unknown length of time. Fujairah Creative City goes one better by referring to a 2026 fee schedule that is not published on the page referring to it.

Real Talk: A zone that will not publish a price is not necessarily expensive. It is optimising for a sales conversation. The quote you get is priced to your nationality, your activity, your urgency and how many other zones you mention. That is a legitimate commercial model, and it is why two founders can buy the identical IFZA licence in the same week at meaningfully different totals [4]. It also means no article, including this one, can honestly rank a zone it cannot get a number out of.

The zone that comes out of this best is the one almost nobody writes about. Ajman Media City publishes four tiers, what each includes, and what each costs to renew, on one page, with no form to fill in [2]. That is the transparency standard the rest of the market should be measured against.

What are the cheapest genuinely published licence-only prices?

On first-party published figures, the cheapest verifiable licence-only entry points are Ajman Media City at AED 4,999, UAQ LYTE at AED 5,500, SPC Free Zone at AED 5,750, RAKEZ Biz Starter at AED 6,000 and SHAMS Trader at AED 6,500. All of these are zero-visa licences. That distinction is the whole game.

Three caveats matter more than the ranking. First, RAKEZ's numbers live on promotional pages, and RAKEZ has visibly rotated its own headline starter price over time: an earlier AED 5,499 offer described as guaranteed for three years has been replaced by the current AED 6,000 Biz Starter [3]. A promotional price is a real published price on the day you read it, not a standing rate card.

Second, UAQ contradicts itself on one page. The same page that sets LYTE at AED 5,500 also states a standalone licence without a visa "from AED 8,000" [6]. We are not averaging those or picking the flattering one. Ask UAQ which applies to your activity and get it in writing.

Third, SPC's commonly quoted three-tier structure of AED 4,999, 5,750 and 6,875 is only partly confirmable. The AED 5,750 licence cost is first-party on SPC's own e-commerce package page, alongside an "upgrade to unlimited visas on flexi-desk option (T&Cs apply)". Treat the other two tiers as indicative until SPC publishes them in one place.

Why is licence-only the wrong number, and what does one visa really cost?

Because a licence with zero visas and a package with one residence visa are different products, and almost every league table compares them as though they were the same. Once you hold the visa count constant, the cheap end of the market compresses hard, and the gaps between zones shrink from thousands of dirhams to hundreds.

This is the comparison to actually use. Every figure here is first-party except the Meydan total, which is our arithmetic on Meydan's own published component prices.

Quick Math: UAQ START at AED 12,500 includes the residence visa, the medical, the Emirates ID, the status change, the insurance, the establishment card and the e-channel [6]. Meydan's Standard licence at AED 12,500 includes none of those, and reaches about AED 19,850 before the medical once you add the establishment card, the allocation and the visa issuance [5]. Two identical headline numbers, roughly AED 7,000 apart in reality. That is the single clearest demonstration that a headline licence price tells you almost nothing.

Now the gap that applies to the entire cheap end. Not one of these zones itemises the medical test, Emirates ID and in-country status change as a single combined figure. UAQ bundles them into UAQ START without breaking them out [6]. Meydan publishes a medical price and refers Emirates ID to the government schedule [5]. Everyone else is silent. Those three items are the invisible per-visa add-ons that "from AED X" headlines leave out, and they recur on every additional person you sponsor.

Common Mistake: Comparing a zero-visa licence in one emirate against a one-visa package in another and concluding the first zone is AED 7,000 cheaper. It is not cheaper, it is a different product. Before you compare anything, write the visa count at the top of the page and force every quote to answer it. If you need two visas, a zone that publishes a two-visa tier, as Ajman Media City does at AED 17,999 for its Pioneer package [2], is doing you a favour that an "up to unlimited visas, T&Cs apply" claim is not.

Ajman Free Zone or Ajman Media City: which one are you actually reading about?

These are two different entities under the same authority, with opposite pricing postures, and readers searching for "Ajman free zone" are routinely shown Ajman Media City prices without being told they are looking at a different zone. Ajman Free Zone publishes no static prices. Ajman Media City publishes everything, including renewals.

Note also that afz.ae redirects to afz.gov.ae, so older bookmarks and older articles pointing at the.ae domain land on the current site. That redirect is one reason stale AFZ package figures survive: the link still works, so nobody checks whether the price behind it ever existed.

The Ajman Media City table is worth studying for one detail beyond the prices. Renewal is lower than year one on every visa tier, because immigration setup is a one-time cost and the licence is the recurring one [2]. A Visionary package at AED 12,999 renews at AED 8,999. That is how honest package pricing looks when a zone is willing to show you year two.

The first-party AFZ figures that do exist are the ones nobody puts in a comparison table, because they are the fees you pay when something changes. From Ajman Free Zone's own FAQ: E-Channel renewal AED 1,100 a year, company manager change AED 2,500, and licence cancellation AED 2,135 [1]. Those are real, published, first-party numbers, and the cancellation fee in particular deserves a line in your budget before you sign, not after. Our Ajman Free Zone setup guide covers the zone's structures and the quote process in detail.

Pro Tip: When an agent quotes you "Ajman from AED 5,555" or similar, ask one question: which Ajman entity, AFZ or AMC, and show me the page. If the answer is AMC, you are being quoted a genuinely published price and you can verify it in ten seconds [2]. If the answer is AFZ, ask where the number comes from, because the zone does not publish one [1].

Why is JAFZA's AED 5,000 headline the most misleading number on this list?

Because JAFZA publishes exactly one price, "business licences that start at AED 5,000", and no facility, office or warehouse rates whatsoever, routing you to a cost calculator instead [8]. That makes JAFZA look like the cheapest entry in the UAE while being by far the most expensive place on this list to actually operate.

The cost at JAFZA is in the real estate, and JAFZA requires an active lease at setup. You cannot hold a JAFZA licence and skip the facility. So the AED 5,000 is not an entry price, it is the smallest line on an invoice whose largest line the zone declines to publish.

This is the sharpest illustration in the whole market of why a headline licence price is meaningless. A founder who reads "from AED 5,000" and puts JAFZA at the top of a cheapest-zones list has ranked a container terminal above a co-working desk on the basis of a line item that represents perhaps 3% of the real annual cost. Meanwhile Ajman Media City's AED 4,999 genuinely is the whole year-one bill for a zero-visa licence [2].

Based on our experience, the JAFZA clients who end up happy specified the warehouse or plot first and treated the licence as an output. The ones who arrive from a cheapest-zones article are usually gone within one meeting, because the moment the lease requirement lands, the budget they came with stops being relevant. If you want licence-and-desk economics, JAFZA is not a cheap zone that happens to have warehouses. It is a warehouse estate that happens to issue licences.

What does renewal cost, and which zones will not tell you?

Renewal is where cheap zones bite, and it splits the market cleanly. Four operators publish a renewal price or a renewal guarantee. Five publish nothing at all. Every "renewal drops by AED 2,500 to 3,000 in year two" claim you have read about the silent group is a third-party generalisation with no published source behind it.

The Ajman Media City column is the useful benchmark, because it shows what a genuine renewal curve looks like: the visa tiers fall by AED 4,000 to 8,000 in year two while the zero-visa tier stays flat [2]. That is not generosity, it is the arithmetic of one-time immigration setup dropping out. Any zone whose renewal you cannot see is a zone where you are guessing at 100% of your year-two cost.

Read the guarantees carefully too. "Same renewal price guaranteed" and "guaranteed price freeze" are strong claims and both are first-party [3][7], but they attach to specific packages, not to the zone. RAKEZ's guarantee is on the All-Inclusive SME product [3]. DMCC's is on Prime Plus [7]. Buying a different tier from the same operator buys you a different promise, or none.

Common Mistake: Choosing between two zones on year-one price when one publishes renewal and one does not. Over three years, a published AED 8,999 renewal beats an unpublished "it usually drops" every time, because the second one is not a price, it is a hope. Ask for years one, two and three in writing before you pay anything, and if the zone will not give it, treat year two as equal to year one in your model. Keeping licences, cards and filings alive on schedule is exactly the recurring work our post-setup services team handles.

What are the hidden costs nobody itemises?

The costs that break a cheap-zone budget are not the licence. They are the per-visa immigration items, the change fees and the exit fees, and almost none of them appear in a package headline. Here is what is actually published against what quietly is not.

That last row deserves its own paragraph. Nobody publishes the cost of leaving. You will pay a cancellation fee at the old zone, which at Ajman Free Zone is a published AED 2,135 [1] and elsewhere is unknown, plus visa cancellations, plus a fresh setup at the new zone, plus whatever your bank does to your account when your licence number changes. Founders treat the zone choice as reversible because nobody quotes the reversal. It is reversible, and it costs roughly a year of the savings you were chasing.

Real Talk: The cheapest licence in the UAE and the cheapest company in the UAE are different things. On a one-founder, one-visa business, the licence is typically 40% to 60% of your first-year outlay once immigration items, the establishment card and the e-channel are in. Optimising hard on the smaller half while ignoring the larger half is how people end up AED 6,000 over budget on a licence they saved AED 1,500 on. Corporate tax registration, VAT registration where you cross the threshold and annual filings are recurring costs too, and they do not care which zone you picked. That ongoing compliance layer is what our post-setup services team carries.

Which of these zones are VAT Designated Zones, and why does it usually not help you?

Designated Zone status is a published FTA list, not a property of being a free zone, and the cheap end splits unevenly. Ajman Free Zone, both UAQ zones, Fujairah Free Zone, FOIZ and JAFZA are on it. SHAMS, SPC, IFZA, Meydan, DMCC, DIFC and Ajman Media City are not [9].

The list sits in Cabinet Decision No. 59 of 2017 as amended by Decisions 35/2018, 43/2019, 34/2021, 63/2021 and 81/2021, the last effective 12 September 2021 [9]. Note that it is not a founding list frozen in time: Dubai Textile City was removed effective 4 April 2021 and RAK Airport Free Zone was removed effective 4 July 2019 [9]. Zones come off. That is exactly why we are not publishing a total count, and why you should check the current list rather than trusting a number in an article, including this one.

Now the part that deflates the whole topic for most readers of a cheapest-zones guide. Designated Zone status affects certain goods transactions only. Services supplied in a Designated Zone are standard-rated at 5%, because the place of supply is inside the UAE. It changes nothing about registration either: mandatory VAT registration still applies above AED 375,000 of taxable supplies, with voluntary registration from AED 187,500, wherever your licence was issued [9].

So if you are a consultant, an agency, a software developer or a service provider buying a cheap licence, Designated Zone status is close to irrelevant to you. If you are importing, holding and re-exporting physical stock, it is one of the most consequential lines in this article, and it rules out SHAMS, SPC, IFZA and Meydan for structural reasons that no discount fixes. Our guide to Designated Zones and VAT works through which movements actually get the treatment.

Why does a cheap licence almost never reach the 0% corporate tax rate?

Because the Qualifying Activities list is closed and has no services catch-all. Under Ministerial Decision No. 229 of 2025, the activities that can produce Qualifying Income are enumerated, and ordinary consulting, marketing, agency work, design, IT services and e-commerce retail appear nowhere on them [10]. The people who buy cheap licences are overwhelmingly in those activities.

That means the typical buyer of a AED 4,999 or AED 12,999 package is an ordinary taxable person: 0% on taxable income up to AED 375,000 and 9% above it. Not a Qualifying Free Zone Person, and not at 0% because of the postcode.

Attribute those two correctly, because a lot of published advice bundles them. The Qualifying Activities list is Ministerial Decision No. 229 of 2025 [10]. Small Business Relief, which treats a business with revenue at or below AED 3,000,000 as having no taxable income for tax periods ending on or before 31 December 2029, is Ministerial Decision No. 73 of 2023, as amended by Ministerial Decision 131 of 2026, a different instrument entirely.

Here is the part that reframes the decision. Small Business Relief and the AED 375,000 nil-rate band are not available to a Qualifying Free Zone Person. So a small consultancy in a cheap free zone that fails the QFZP test is often in a better position than one that passes it and then earns Non-Qualifying Income. Chasing 0% through a licence purchase is usually chasing the wrong outcome. Our guide to the qualifying free zone person and the 0% rate sets out the full conditions.

Pro Tip: If tax is genuinely why you are shopping for a free zone, stop and compare against the mainland before you buy the cheapest licence you can find. For a service business that cannot reach QFZP status anyway, the corporate tax outcome on either side of the line is broadly similar, and the mainland answers client-access questions a free zone licence does not. Our mainland company setup page gives you the other half of that comparison honestly.

What is the banking and substance trade-off at the cheap end?

Cheap packages are built on virtual offices and flexi-desks, and UAE banks apply enhanced anti-money-laundering scrutiny to exactly that profile. The saving on the licence is frequently paid back in weeks of account-opening delay, a second application at a different bank, or an account that opens with tighter limits than the founder expected.

None of this is a scandal, and no zone can fix it, because the credit and compliance decision belongs to the bank. But it is the most predictable consequence of buying at the bottom of the market, and it compounds when the zone is unfamiliar to the branch you walk into.

The substance point runs alongside it. Visa quota at the cheap end is a function of the workspace you hold, not the licence you bought, which is why "unlimited visas allocation" claims on promotional microsites carry the phrase "flexi-desk option, T&Cs apply" and why the terms are not published. Unlimited allocation is not unlimited approval either. Every applicant still goes through standard UAE immigration review.

The founders who get banked fastest at cheap zones are the ones who arrive with a specific business description matching their licensed activity, two or three real contracts or invoices, clean shareholder documents and a plausible turnover story. The ones who struggle bought a licence with eleven unrelated activities on it because the package "included up to 10", and then could not explain in one sentence what the company does.

Does distance matter, and is the northern-emirates trade-off worth it?

Sometimes, and the honest answer depends entirely on where your clients are. A Sharjah, Ajman, RAK, UAQ or Fujairah licence can undercut Dubai by AED 6,000 to 8,000 a year on first-party published prices [2][3][6]. It also puts your registered address 45 to 120 minutes from most Dubai business districts.

Two practical notes. Year one involves more physical trips than founders expect: medical, Emirates ID biometrics, occasionally a zone visit and a bank appointment. Those trips are a real cost in time even where the zone is generous about digital processing. And if your work genuinely requires invoicing UAE mainland clients and government entities directly, a cheap northern free zone licence may solve a budget problem while creating a market-access one, which is worth checking on our mainland company setup page before you commit.

For most remote-first founders selling internationally, the northern-emirates saving is genuine and the distance is a non-issue. For anyone whose revenue depends on being in the room in Dubai, it is a false economy. Our RAKEZ free zone setup and Meydan Free Zone setup guides cover both ends of that trade-off in detail.

How do you compare two quotes like for like?

Force both quotes onto the same grid before you look at the totals. Nine questions do almost all the work, and the answer to any of them being vague is itself the finding.

Quick Math: Run both quotes over three years, not one. A zone at AED 12,999 in year one that renews at AED 8,999 costs AED 30,997 over three years [2]. A zone at AED 11,500 in year one whose renewal you cannot see, modelled honestly at the same price, costs AED 34,500. The cheaper headline is AED 3,500 more expensive by year three, and that is before anyone has quoted you a change fee. Published renewal is worth paying a premium for.

If a zone or an agent will not put the nine answers above in an email, that is not an administrative inconvenience. It is the pricing model telling you what it is. Talk to a setup expert→

Who should buy the cheapest option, and who should not?

The cheapest licence is genuinely right for a specific profile and genuinely wrong for another, and pretending otherwise is how these articles get people into trouble.

The honest summary of the ranking is this. Ajman Media City wins on transparency and on the one-visa comparison, at AED 12,999 with a published AED 8,999 renewal [2]. UAQ START at AED 12,500 wins on inclusion, bundling the immigration items nobody else itemises, though the zone contradicts itself on its licence-only figure [6]. RAKEZ at AED 6,000 and AED 14,000 is competitive and publishes a renewal guarantee, with the caveat that everything sits on promotional pages [3]. Everyone else either does not publish, publishes one meaningless line, or is selling a different product entirely. If you want that mapped against your actual activity and visa count, our free zone company setup page is the place to start, and our IFZA free zone setup guide explains how to buy sensibly in a zone that publishes nothing.

Real Client Stories

These are real examples from businesses we have helped, with names and details changed for privacy.

The freelancer for whom cheapest was exactly right. A UK-based technical writer wanted a UAE company for international invoicing, no residence visa, no office and no UAE clients. We put her on a published zero-visa licence under AED 6,000 rather than the AED 12,500 Dubai package she had been quoted, because nothing in her model needed a Dubai address, a visa quota or Designated Zone status. She renewed twice at a price she could read on the zone's own page before she paid. Her comment: "I kept being told cheap was a trap. For what I actually do, cheap was just correct."

The trader whose saving cost him a year. A client importing small consumer goods chose a licence on a quoted price roughly AED 2,000 below the alternatives, from a zone that publishes nothing. Two problems arrived together. The zone was not on the FTA Designated Zone list, so the goods treatment he had assumed did not exist [9], and his year-two renewal came in several thousand dirhams above what he had been told to expect, with no published schedule to argue against. Moving zones cost him a cancellation fee, new visas and about four months. His verdict: "I saved two thousand and spent it eight times over. I should have asked for year two in writing."

The founder who caught the Ajman mix-up. A consultant came to us with a quote he believed was for Ajman Free Zone, built on a package price and a renewal figure he had seen online. Those figures were Ajman Media City's published table, a different entity [1][2]. Once we separated them, the choice was easy and he took the AMC Visionary tier deliberately, because it published its renewal. His advice to others: "Two zones, one emirate, one authority, completely different pricing behaviour. Ask which one you are actually buying."

The honest ranking, and how to use it

If a cheapest-free-zones table does not tell you where each number came from, it is not information. The two zones with the strongest cheap reputations, IFZA and Ajman Free Zone, publish no prices at all [1][4]. One publishes only a AED 5,000 licence line while charging for warehouses [8]. One could not be reached at a working first-party address. That is the state of the market, and no amount of confident formatting changes it.

What you can rely on is short and checkable. Ajman Media City publishes four tiers and their renewals [2]. UAQ publishes two packages and one internal contradiction [6]. RAKEZ publishes promotional prices with a renewal guarantee on one product [3]. Meydan publishes its components without a year-two total [5]. DMCC publishes list and promotional prices and still sells on discount at the premium end [7]. Build your comparison from those, hold the visa count constant, demand year two in writing, and check the FTA list before you assume anything about VAT [9] or Ministerial Decision No. 229 of 2025 before you assume anything about 0% [10].

Since 2013, BusinessDubai.ae has completed 700+ company registrations across the UAE, in most of the zones above, and we will tell you when the cheapest licence is the right answer as readily as when it is not. We will build an itemised quote with the licence, the establishment card, the allocations, the visas and the immigration items separated, check your activity against the Qualifying Activities list before you commit, confirm the VAT position against the published list, and handle the renewals afterwards. Talk to a setup expert→

Related guides:

• Ajman Free Zone setup
• Meydan Free Zone setup
• RAKEZ free zone setup
• IFZA free zone setup
• Qualifying Free Zone Person and the 0% rate
• Designated Zones and VAT

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the cheapest free zone in the UAE in 2026?

On first-party published prices, Ajman Media City's Business Club at AED 4,999 is the cheapest verifiable licence-only package, and it publishes its renewal at the same figure [2]. UAQ LYTE at AED 5,500 and SPC at AED 5,750 follow. All three are zero-visa licences.

Why does IFZA not publish any prices?

IFZA's business setup page carries no AED figures at all, only a "Book Free Consultation" button [4]. It sells through a consultation and partner model, which prices to the individual enquiry. That is a legitimate commercial choice, but it means no published IFZA price exists to compare.

Is the AED 12,900 IFZA package price real?

It is a third-party figure. The commonly circulated AED 12,900, 15,000, 17,500 and 20,000 tiers do not appear on IFZA's own website [4]. They may reflect what some clients pay, but IFZA does not publish them, so nobody can hold the zone to them. Get your quote in writing.

Does Ajman Free Zone publish package prices?

No. Ajman Free Zone offers a cost calculator that emails a personalised quote and publishes no static package price anywhere [1]. The first-party fees it does publish are administrative: e-channel renewal AED 1,100 a year, company manager change AED 2,500 and licence cancellation AED 2,135 [1].

Is Ajman Media City the same as Ajman Free Zone?

No. They are separate entities under the same Ajman authority with opposite pricing postures. Ajman Media City publishes a full four-tier table with renewals [2]. Ajman Free Zone publishes nothing static [1]. Many "Ajman free zone" prices online are actually Ajman Media City figures.

How much is Ajman Media City with one visa?

The Visionary package is AED 12,999 for year one including one visa, up to 10 activities, up to 10 shareholders and co-working, and it renews at AED 8,999 [2]. That is a first-party published standing price, not an estimate.

Which UAE free zone publishes its renewal prices?

Ajman Media City publishes renewal for all four tiers [2]. RAKEZ states "same renewal price guaranteed" on its All-Inclusive SME package [3]. DMCC offers a "guaranteed price freeze on licence renewal" on Prime Plus [7]. A SHAMS promo microsite advertises fixed lifetime renewal with unpublished terms.

Which zones do not publish renewal prices at all?

Ajman Free Zone, IFZA, SPC Free Zone, Fujairah Creative City and Fujairah Free Zone publish no renewal price [1][4]. Meydan publishes components but no itemised year-two total even on its own blog [5]. Any "renewal drops AED 2,500 to 3,000" claim about these zones is third-party generalisation.

What is the cheapest free zone package that includes a residence visa?

On published first-party prices, UAQ START at AED 12,500 and Ajman Media City Visionary at AED 12,999 are the cheapest one-visa packages [2][6]. RAKEZ All-Inclusive SME is AED 14,000 a year with one visa and a same-price renewal guarantee [3].

What does UAQ START include?

UAQ START at AED 12,500 includes a residence visa, co-working and lease, medical test, Emirates ID, status change, medical insurance, establishment card and e-channel, plus bank-account assistance [6]. It is the most inclusive bundle at this price point among the zones that publish anything.

Why do UAQ's own prices contradict each other?

The same UAQ page that lists LYTE at AED 5,500 also states a standalone licence without a visa "from AED 8,000" and a two-visa licence beginning at AED 13,500 [6]. That is an internal inconsistency on the zone's own site. Ask which applies to your activity and get it in writing.

Is RAKEZ Biz Starter at AED 6,000 a standing price?

It is first-party published, but on a /promotions/ URL rather than a standing rate card [3]. RAKEZ has rotated its headline starter price before, including an earlier AED 5,499 offer described as guaranteed for three years. Confirm the price and its end date when you buy.

How much are extra visas at RAKEZ?

RAKEZ's All-Inclusive SME package at AED 14,000 a year includes one residence visa and prices additional visas at AED 4,000 each, up to three more [3]. That is unusually explicit for this end of the market, where most extra-visa pricing is not published at all.

Why is Meydan more expensive than it looks?

Meydan's AED 12,500 Standard licence is licence-only [5]. Adding one visa means the establishment card at AED 2,000, a visa allocation at AED 1,850 and employment visa issuance from AED 3,500, reaching about AED 19,850 before the medical and Emirates ID. Same headline as UAQ START, roughly AED 7,000 apart in reality.

Is JAFZA really the cheapest at AED 5,000?

No. JAFZA publishes only that business licences "start at AED 5,000" and publishes no facility, office or warehouse rates at all [8]. It requires a lease, and the real estate dominates the bill. It has the cheapest headline and the most expensive operating cost on this list.

Does SHAMS publish a rate card?

Its static packages page returned HTTP 404 during research, so no standing rate card could be confirmed. The Trader Package at AED 6,500 is first-party confirmed. A promo microsite advertises a Media Package from AED 5,750 and Standard from AED 6,875 with terms that are not published.

What does "unlimited visas allocation" actually mean?

It appears on SHAMS and SPC promotional material tied to a flexi-desk option with "T&Cs apply" that are not published. Allocation is only the right to apply, not approval. Every applicant still goes through standard UAE immigration review, and unpublished terms are not a commitment you can rely on.

Can I trust Fujairah Free Zone prices I find online?

No. No working first-party Fujairah Free Zone website could be reached during research, so every FFZA figure circulating online is third-party with no verifiable source. Fujairah Creative City publishes a cost calculator only and refers to an "approved 2026 fee schedule" that it does not display.

Which cheap free zones are VAT Designated Zones?

Ajman Free Zone, both UAQ zones (Ahmed Bin Rashid Port and Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Road), Fujairah Free Zone, FOIZ and JAFZA are on the FTA list [9]. SHAMS, SPC, IFZA, Meydan, DMCC, DIFC and Ajman Media City are not [9].

Does Designated Zone status reduce my VAT bill?

Usually not, unless you move physical goods. The treatment applies to certain goods transactions only. Services supplied in a Designated Zone are standard-rated at 5%, and registration thresholds are unchanged: mandatory above AED 375,000 of taxable supplies, voluntary from AED 187,500 [9].

Has the Designated Zone list changed over time?

Yes. It sits in Cabinet Decision No. 59 of 2017 as amended by Decisions 35/2018, 43/2019, 34/2021, 63/2021 and 81/2021 [9]. Dubai Textile City was removed effective 4 April 2021 and RAK Airport Free Zone effective 4 July 2019. Always check the current list rather than an article's count.

Does a cheap free zone licence give me 0% corporate tax?

Almost never. The Qualifying Activities list in Ministerial Decision No. 229 of 2025 is closed with no services catch-all, so consultants, agencies, developers and e-commerce sellers cannot reach the free zone 0% rate [10]. They are ordinary taxable persons: 0% up to AED 375,000, then 9%.

Is Small Business Relief part of the free zone rules?

No, and the two are often wrongly bundled. Small Business Relief sits in Ministerial Decision No. 73 of 2023, as amended by Ministerial Decision 131 of 2026, covering revenue at or below AED 3,000,000 for tax periods ending on or before 31 December 2029. The Qualifying Activities list is Ministerial Decision No. 229 of 2025 [10]. Separate instruments.

Is failing the Qualifying Free Zone Person test bad?

Often not, for a small business. A Qualifying Free Zone Person cannot use Small Business Relief or the AED 375,000 nil-rate band. An ordinary taxable person can use both. For a small consultancy, not qualifying frequently produces a better outcome than qualifying and earning Non-Qualifying Income [10].

Will a cheap free zone company struggle to open a bank account?

It faces more friction. Banks apply enhanced anti-money-laundering scrutiny to virtual-office and low-substance entities, so expect more documentation and a longer timeline. What moves the decision is a clear business description matching your licensed activity, real contracts or invoices, and clean shareholder documents.

How many activities do cheap packages include?

Ajman Media City includes up to 10 activities and up to 10 shareholders on all four tiers [2]. RAKEZ Biz Starter includes up to 10 activities and up to 50 shareholders [3]. Meydan includes three activity groups then charges AED 1,000 per additional activity [5].

What does it cost to move to a different free zone later?

No zone we checked publishes this. You pay cancellation at the old zone, which Ajman Free Zone publishes at AED 2,135 [1] and most publish not at all, plus visa cancellations, plus a fresh setup, plus bank disruption. Budget roughly a year of your intended savings.

Does DMCC ever discount?

Yes, and it publishes both prices. Jump Start one-year flexi desk is AED 43,780 with a promotional AED 39,402, and Basic Biz one-year is AED 35,484 with a promotional AED 31,935.60, each including a residency visa [7]. Even the premium end sells on discount.

Is a northern-emirates free zone worth the distance?

For remote service businesses with clients abroad, usually yes, and the saving of roughly AED 6,000 to 8,000 a year against a Dubai package is real [2][5][6]. For anyone whose revenue depends on being in the room in Dubai, the drive of 45 to 120 minutes makes it a false economy.

What should I ask before paying any free zone deposit?

Six things in writing: how many visas are included, whether medical, Emirates ID and status change are included and at what price, the year-two renewal figure, whether the price is a promotion and when it ends, the cancellation fee, and whether government fees are separated from the agent's service fee.

References

[1] Ajman Free Zone. Cost calculator and published administrative fees, including the absence of any static package pricing, e-channel renewal AED 1,100 a year, company manager change AED 2,500 and licence cancellation AED 2,135. Ajman Free Zone cost calculator

[2] Ajman Media City Free Zone. Published four-tier package table with year-one and renewal prices: Business Club AED 4,999, Visionary AED 12,999 renewing at AED 8,999, Pioneer AED 17,999 renewing at AED 10,999 and Innovator AED 22,999 renewing at AED 14,999, all with up to 10 activities and up to 10 shareholders. Ajman Media City packages

[3] RAKEZ. Biz Starter package at AED 6,000 with up to 50 shareholders and up to 10 activities, the All-Inclusive SME package at AED 14,000 a year with one residence visa, additional visas at AED 4,000 each up to three more and a same-price renewal guarantee, and e-gaming from AED 7,725, all published on promotional pages. RAKEZ Biz Starter package

[4] IFZA. Business setup page carrying no AED figures of any kind, only a "Book Free Consultation" call to action. IFZA business setup

[5] Meydan Free Zone. Published cost breakdown including the Standard licence from AED 12,500, Fawri from AED 15,000, visa allocation AED 1,850 up to six, employment visa AED 3,500, establishment card AED 2,000 then AED 2,200, additional activity AED 1,000, office tiers and the multi-year discount of up to 15%, with no itemised year-two renewal total. Meydan Free Zone cost breakdown

[6] Umm Al Quwain Free Trade Zone. UAQ START at AED 12,500 including a residence visa, co-working and lease, medical test, Emirates ID, status change, medical insurance, establishment card, e-channel and bank-account assistance, UAQ LYTE at AED 5,500 without a visa, and the same page's conflicting statements of a licence without visa from AED 8,000 and a two-visa licence beginning at AED 13,500. UAQ Free Trade Zone packages

[7] DMCC. Published business setup packages with list and promotional prices, including Jump Start one-year flexi desk AED 43,780 promotional AED 39,402, co-working AED 49,941 promotional AED 44,946.90, three-year AED 120,000 promotional AED 96,000, Basic Biz one-year AED 35,484 promotional AED 31,935.60, and Prime Plus one-year AED 38,025 promotional AED 36,130.50 with a guaranteed price freeze on licence renewal. DMCC business setup packages

[8] Jebel Ali Free Zone Authority. Business licence page stating that business licences start at AED 5,000, with no published facility, office or warehouse rates and a cost calculator in place of a package schedule. JAFZA business licence

[9] Federal Tax Authority. List of Designated Zones for VAT purposes under Cabinet Decision No. 59 of 2017 as amended by Cabinet Decisions 35 of 2018, 43 of 2019, 34 of 2021, 63 of 2021 and 81 of 2021, the last effective 12 September 2021, including the removal of Dubai Textile City effective 4 April 2021 and RAK Airport Free Zone effective 4 July 2019. FTA List of Designated Zones

[10] Ministry of Finance. Ministerial Decision No. 229 of 2025 regarding Qualifying Activities and Excluded Activities, setting out the closed Qualifying Activities list with no residual services category. Ministerial Decision No. 229 of 2025