Setting Up a Software Development Company in Dubai: Owning Your Code, Open-Source Risk and How SaaS Is Taxed

A software company sells something it can copy. That sounds like an advantage, and it is, but it also means the most valuable asset on your balance sheet is not on your balance sheet at all. It is a repository. Whether you actually own what is in it, whether anyone else has a claim over it, and how the tax system treats it when you sell copies of it are the three questions that decide what a Dubai software company is worth. None of them appear on a free zone price list.

The market case is strong. The UAE IT services market was worth about USD 20.24 billion in 2025 and is forecast to reach USD 37.69 billion by 2030 [7]. Dubai hosts more than 2,300 technology companies and Dubai Internet City has grown past 4,000 firms [7][9]. The Dubai Economic Agenda targets AED 100 billion in annual value from the digital economy, and MENA IT spending is projected to hit USD 169 billion in 2026 [8][9]. Developers want to move here, salaries carry no personal income tax, and you can own the company outright [2].

Before you read further, make sure you are in the right guide. This one assumes you produce software: a codebase you own, a product you licence, or bespoke builds you deliver. Your gates are intellectual property assignment, open-source licence hygiene, source code escrow, data protection for a system that holds users' data, and a VAT rule keyed to where your software is used rather than where your customer is registered. If what you actually sell is judgement rather than code, meaning roadmaps, assessments, architecture advice or governance frameworks billed by the day, your gates are completely different and considerably heavier at the licensing stage: a professional licence can require an attested degree and documented experience before it will issue, and your clients will want professional indemnity cover before they sign. That is covered in our guide to setting up an AI or tech consultancy in Dubai. Many founders need both, and the last section here explains why running them together is harder than it looks.

Since 2013 our team has set up technology and software companies across Dubai's free zones and the mainland, so the figures and traps below come from real files rather than brochures.

Is Dubai actually a good place to build software?

Yes, with one honest qualification. Dubai gives a software business a growing regional market, a low tax base and a residency system built to attract engineers. What it does not give you is a cost advantage on labour. If your entire proposition is building software more cheaply than someone else, Dubai is the wrong base and the numbers will tell you so within a year.

Where Dubai genuinely wins:

• Proximity to buyers with budget. Government, banking, logistics and retail are all mid-digitisation, and Dubai is the practical gateway to the wider Gulf, Africa and South Asia.
• Tax. Corporate tax runs 0% on the first AED 375,000 of taxable income and 9% above it, with no personal income tax on your salary or dividends [4].
• 100% foreign ownership, on the mainland or in a free zone, with no local partner [2].
• Setup speed. A free zone licence and investor visa can be issued in days.
• Talent that will relocate. Tax-free salaries and dedicated residency routes for technical people make senior hiring easier than in many Western hubs.

Real Talk: Dubai is strongest if your software touches artificial intelligence, fintech, govtech or e-commerce, where demand and funding are deepest and where a government mandate is already pushing spend. A generic outsourcing shop competing purely on rate will find margins here tighter than in India or Eastern Europe, and will spend its first year discovering that. Match your niche to where the money already is, then read the hiring section, because the offshore arbitrage question deserves a straight answer rather than a slogan.

If you want a market presence and residency in one move, Dubai is hard to beat. If you only need an entity to invoice remote clients, a lighter structure may do, and our offshore company formation team can compare that route.

What licence covers building software, and when do you need a second one?

You need a trade licence carrying a software or IT activity, issued by the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism for a mainland company or by a free zone authority [1]. The core activity for custom development sits under code 6201, computer programming activities, covering the design, writing, testing and support of software, web and mobile applications [1].

Development is generally treated as a professional activity, because it is skill based rather than goods based [1]. The distinction that costs founders money is what happens when your business model widens. A professional licence covers development, systems design and IT consultancy. It does not cover selling hardware or reselling third-party software licences, which is a commercial activity, and mixing professional and commercial activities on one licence is not always permitted without restructuring [1].

That matters more than it sounds, because the drift is natural. You build a client a system, the client asks you to supply the servers, then to resell them a third-party licence, then to bundle it all into one invoice. Each step is a small commercial decision and the last one puts revenue on your books that your licence may not cover.

Activities commonly licensed by a software business:

• Computer software design and development, covering custom development, APIs and databases
• Mobile applications and web development
• IT consultancy and computer systems design
• Software publishing and hosted software services, which is where SaaS sits
• Cloud computing and IT infrastructure services
• Cybersecurity and artificial intelligence solutions, some of which need additional approvals

If you intend to build and licence your own product rather than only bill for client work, add a software publishing activity from the start. It costs little at application and describes your business accurately to a bank and to the tax authority, which is worth more than it sounds. Confirm the exact activity wording on the live DET or free zone list at the time you apply, because the catalogue is revised [1].

Check which licence fits your model→

Which software business models can you licence in Dubai?

Almost any of them, but the model you choose determines your risk profile far more than your licence fee. The table below maps the common models to their activity and, more usefully, to the thing that will actually cause you trouble.

Read the right-hand column again, because it is the real difference between the models. A dev agency's problems are contractual. A product company's problems are structural, meaning they are baked into the codebase and the customer base and are expensive to unwind later.

Most founders combine two or three related software activities on one licence. Adding a trading activity, such as reselling hardware, is where a separate commercial licence may be needed, so decide your model before you apply. Compare the routes on our free zone company setup and mainland company setup pages.

Who owns the code your company writes?

Not automatically your company, and this is the most consequential misunderstanding in the whole guide. Source code is protected as a copyrighted literary work from the moment it is written, under Federal Decree-Law No. 38 of 2021, because the UAE follows the Berne Convention [12]. Protection is automatic. Ownership is not. Copyright vests in an author, and an author is a person.

That distinction is where companies lose their most valuable asset. Three situations produce three different answers, and only one of them is safe by default.

Employees. Work created by an employee in the course of employment is generally treated as belonging to the employer, but the safe practice everywhere is to say so explicitly in the employment contract, with an assignment clause covering copyright in all work product plus a duty to sign any further documents needed to perfect it. Relying on an implied position is the kind of thing that survives right up until an acquirer's lawyer asks for evidence.

Contractors and freelancers. Here the default runs against you. A contractor is not an employee, so absent a written assignment the copyright in what they produce can remain with them, and your company may hold nothing more than an implied licence to use it. A freelancer who built your first version, was paid, and moved on, without ever signing an assignment, is a live claim sitting in your codebase.

Co-founders before incorporation. The version written on a laptop before the company existed belongs to the people who wrote it, not to the company that did not yet exist. It has to be assigned into the company afterwards, in writing.

Common Mistake: Assuming that paying an invoice buys the copyright. It does not. Payment buys what the contract says it buys, and if the contract is silent on intellectual property, what you have bought is the deliverable, not the right to own and exploit it. Go back through every contractor and agency agreement you have ever signed, and if there is no assignment clause, get one signed now, retrospectively, while the relationship is still friendly. It costs nothing today and is close to impossible after a dispute.

Beyond ownership, three practical protections are worth setting up early:

• Register the copyright. Registration is not required for protection but creates a dated, official ownership record that carries weight in a dispute, a licensing negotiation or a funding round. Fees are modest and the certificate is typically issued within a few working days [12]. Confirm current fees at the time you file.
• Register your trademark separately. Copyright protects the code, never the name. Your product and company names need a trademark registration, valid ten years, and a national registration now extends across the free zones [12].
• There is no realistic software patent route in the UAE. The patent law excludes software and business methods, so do not budget for one, and be sceptical of any adviser who offers to obtain one. Only a genuine hardware-linked technical invention might qualify [12]. In practice your protection stack is copyright, trademark, trade secrets and contract, and that is enough if you actually use it.

If your product holds proprietary algorithms and you want the strongest trade-secret protection available locally, the DIFC operates its own intellectual property law and common-law courts, which is a real consideration for a product company rather than a branding one [14].

What will an open-source licence audit find in your codebase?

Almost certainly something, and if you are ever acquired this is the diligence item most likely to reduce your price. Nearly every modern application is assembled from open-source components, and every one of those components arrives under a licence with conditions. The conditions vary enormously, and the ones that matter are the ones that reach into your own code.

The core distinction is between permissive and copyleft licences. A permissive licence essentially asks you to keep the notice and not sue. A copyleft licence asks for something far more expensive: that if you distribute software built on it, you distribute your source code too, under the same terms.

Two rows deserve emphasis for a Dubai product company. Strong copyleft in a distributed commercial product is the classic contamination scenario: incorporate a GPL component into software you ship, and the licence's terms can require you to make your own source available. Network copyleft is the one SaaS founders miss entirely, because the usual mental model is "we do not distribute anything, we host it", and AGPL was written precisely to close that gap.

What an acquirer or a serious investor will ask for, and what you should be able to produce on a week's notice:

• A software bill of materials, listing every third-party component, its version and its licence
• Evidence that no strong or network copyleft component sits in the proprietary parts of the product
• Attribution notices actually shipped with the product, which permissive licences require and which almost nobody does properly
• A written policy governing what developers may add, and evidence it is enforced
• Confirmation that any modified components have been handled per their licence terms

Pro Tip: Run an automated licence scan across your repositories now, before anyone asks. The tooling is inexpensive and the output is usually uncomfortable the first time. Finding an AGPL library in your hosted product eighteen months before a funding round is an engineering task. Finding it during diligence is a price negotiation, and you will be on the losing side of it. Nobody covers this for a Dubai audience, which means most of your local competitors have never looked.

Note that none of this is UAE-specific law. Open-source licences are contracts that travel with the code and apply wherever you are incorporated, so a Dubai licence gives you no shelter from them.

When will a client demand source code escrow?

Sooner than you expect if you sell to enterprise, banks or government. Source code escrow is an arrangement where a neutral third party holds a copy of your source code and releases it to the client only on defined trigger events, most commonly your insolvency or your failure to maintain the software. It exists because your client is betting their operations on code they cannot see.

The client's reasoning is straightforward and hard to argue with. If they build a core process on your platform and your company disappears, they are left with a running system nobody can fix. Escrow converts that from an existential risk into a recoverable one. Expect it to appear as a contractual requirement rather than a negotiation, in these situations:

The practical points founders get wrong. First, escrow is not a one-off filing: the deposit has to be updated as the product changes, and an escrow holding a two-year-old build is worthless. Second, verification services, where the escrow agent confirms the deposit actually compiles, cost extra and are increasingly demanded, so price them into the contract. Third, the release triggers are the entire negotiation, and a broadly drafted trigger such as "material breach" is far more dangerous to you than insolvency alone. Fourth, escrow and your open-source position interact: a deposit that turns out to contain copyleft components you did not disclose is a problem multiplied.

Fees are charged by the escrow provider annually and vary by deposit size, verification level and the number of beneficiaries, so obtain a live quote rather than budgeting from a figure in an article.

What happens to your IP when a developer leaves or the company is wound up?

If your paperwork is right, nothing. If it is not, this is where the loss becomes visible, because a departure and a liquidation are the two moments when somebody has a reason to check who owns what. Both are foreseeable and both are cheap to prepare for while things are calm.

When a developer leaves. The exit itself does not transfer anything, which is the point: if the assignment was in place, the code was always the company's. The exposure lies in what walks out with them. Practical controls are an assignment clause that survives termination, a confidentiality obligation that also survives, revoking repository and cloud access on the last day rather than the last week, and a clean handover of any credentials, domains, signing keys and third-party accounts held in a personal name. That last item is the one that bites small companies: an app store account, a domain registrar login or a code-signing certificate registered to a former developer's personal email can lock you out of shipping your own product.

When a co-founder leaves. Same principle, higher stakes, because the pre-incorporation code problem usually surfaces here. If the earliest version was written before the company existed and never formally assigned in, a departing co-founder may hold a genuine claim over the foundations of your product.

When the company is wound up. Intellectual property is an asset of the company and falls into the liquidation with everything else, available to creditors. Founders sometimes assume they can take "their" code with them from a failing company, and they generally cannot, because it belongs to the entity, not to them. If you are running more than one venture, this is the argument for holding valuable IP in a separate entity that licences it to the operating company, so an operating failure does not consume the asset. That structure has genuine tax and substance consequences and should be set up with advice rather than copied from a template.

When you are acquired. Everything above gets tested at once. The diligence request list will ask for the chain of title on your codebase, every contractor assignment, your open-source bill of materials, your trademark registrations and your escrow arrangements. The companies that clear diligence quickly are not the ones with the best lawyers, they are the ones that kept the paperwork as they went.

Free zone or mainland: what changed for a dev shop in March 2025?

The wall between free zones and the mainland partly came down, and for a delivery business that sells project work to local clients it is the most important structural change in years. Under Dubai Executive Council Resolution No. 11 of 2025, effective 3 March 2025, a Dubai free zone company can now operate on the mainland through one of three routes [3].

The three routes, and what each is for:

• A mainland branch licence. A full branch registered with DET, for sustained mainland trading.
• A dual or remote branch, registered with DET but operated from the free zone premises, which is the practical option for a small team that does not want a second office.
• A temporary permit for project work, running up to six months, which suits a dev shop delivering a single mainland engagement.

Branch and dual licences cost in the region of AED 10,000 a year and a temporary permit around AED 5,000 for up to six months [3]. Existing free zone firms already trading on the mainland were required to regularise by 3 March 2026, so this is live compliance rather than a future plan [3].

Real Talk: Resolution 11 removes the operational problem, not the tax one. It means you no longer have to choose between a cheap free zone that cannot bill local clients and an expensive mainland licence, and for an agency winning its first mainland contract that is genuinely useful. But it does not create a tax advantage, because as the tax section explains, software revenue does not reach the free zone 0% rate in the first place. Treat it as market access with an annual cost attached, and price the branch or permit into the contract that triggered it.

On ownership, the position is simple: a foreign national can own 100% of a software company on the mainland or in a free zone, with no Emirati partner, since the Commercial Companies Law reform [2]. Software is not on the restricted strategic-impact list. The one narrow survival is the Local Service Agent for a sole establishment under a professional licence, which does not apply to an LLC or a free zone company, and which is covered in more detail in our AI and tech consultancy guide because it affects advisory structures far more than it affects a software company. Compare the routes on our free zone vs mainland vs offshore guide.

What does a software licence cost, and what do the hook prices leave out?

A Dubai free zone software licence starts from about AED 12,800 with a flexi-desk, and a package including one investor visa runs about AED 18,200 to 20,400 [15]. Ajman is the cheapest complete package at around AED 10,900 with a visa, and Sharjah zones list from about AED 5,750 licence-only [15]. A Dubai mainland licence starts from about AED 15,000, with one visa around AED 22,500 to 26,355 [15].

The advertised prices are almost always the licence-only, zero-visa base. Here is what they leave out, which is where a software company's real budget differs from a services firm's:

Quick Math: A Dubai free zone package with one visa runs about AED 18,200 to 20,400, and a comparable mainland setup with one visa about AED 22,500 to 26,355 [15]. The gap of roughly AED 4,000 to 8,000 is mostly government fees and the registered address the mainland requires. That gap is smaller than most founders assume, and smaller than the cost of a single mainland branch permit later, so if you already know your clients are local, paying it upfront is often cheaper than starting free zone and adding market access afterwards.

One warning on renewals. Year two is usually similar to or slightly below year one because the one-time registration fee drops away. The unpleasant surprise is a first-year promotional discount expiring, so ask the zone for its standard renewal price before you commit rather than the launch price. For an itemised quote across several zones plus the mainland, get a free setup quote→

Which free zone fits a product team, an agency, or a funded startup?

Different answers, and the honest sorting variable is not prestige but visa quota and whether the zone forces an audit. A product team of three needs different things from a fifteen-person delivery agency, and both need different things from a company about to raise a seed round.

How to choose, in order of what actually matters. First, visa quota, because it is tied to your desk or office size and it will constrain hiring before revenue does. Second, whether the zone mandates an annual audit and at what cost, which is a recurring charge many founders discover in month eleven. Third, legal framework, which matters mainly if your product's value is in proprietary algorithms and trade secrets, where DIFC's common-law regime and its own intellectual property law are a genuine advantage rather than a marketing one [14]. Prestige comes fourth, and for a product sold online it barely registers with customers at all.

If you are building an artificial intelligence product specifically, our Dubai AI and technology business setup guide covers the AI licence, the DIFC AI licence and the campus options in more depth.

How fast can you go from application to shipping code?

A free zone licence can issue in three to five working days with complete documents, and visas add one to three weeks on top. A mainland setup with an office and a bank account typically runs three to six weeks. The realistic constraint on shipping is not the licence, it is the bank account, which is why the sequence below front-loads the things the bank will ask about.

1. Define your activity and structure. Services only, or services plus trading, and free zone or mainland.
2. Choose your zone against visa quota and audit requirement, not against the headline licence price.
3. Reserve your trade name and obtain initial approval.
4. Submit KYC documents: passport, proof of address, photograph, plus a No Objection Certificate if you hold a UAE visa under another sponsor.
5. Choose premises: flexi-desk in a free zone, or an Ejari-registered office on the mainland.
6. Sign and, for the mainland, notarise the Memorandum of Association.
7. Pay the fees and receive the trade licence.
8. Get the establishment card and apply for visas, then medical, Emirates ID and stamping.
9. Open the corporate bank account, with a clear business description and, for a product company, an explanation of how subscription revenue will arrive.
10. Put the intellectual property paperwork in place before you write production code: employment and contractor assignment clauses, a repository policy, and an open-source licence scan.

Step ten is the one that gets skipped and the one that is impossible to backfill cleanly. Assignments signed on day one cost nothing. Assignments chased two years later, from people who have left, cost a funding round. Our post-setup services team runs the visa, Emirates ID and PRO steps in parallel with licensing so the immigration stage does not start from zero.

What documents does a software company need, including a foreign parent?

Less than most people expect for a solo founder, and noticeably more if an existing overseas company will hold the shares. A solo founder can usually start with a passport, a photograph, proof of address and a No Objection Certificate if they already hold a UAE visa. There is no degree or qualification evidence requirement of the kind a professional consultancy licence carries.

For each individual shareholder or director:

• Passport copy valid at least six months
• Passport-size photograph to UAE visa specification
• Proof of residential address from the last three months
• A No Objection Certificate from your current sponsor, if you hold a UAE residence visa
• Emirates ID copy, if you are already resident

For the company:

• Three trade name options for reservation
• The Memorandum of Association, plus Articles of Association for a mainland LLC, notarised
• Specimen signatures of shareholders and managers
• Premises proof: an Ejari tenancy for a mainland office, or the free zone's desk or office confirmation
• A short business plan, which most banks and some zones request

Where a corporate shareholder is involved, which is common for a software company being set up as a subsidiary of an existing dev shop or a foreign holding company:

• Attested Certificate of Incorporation of the parent
• A Board Resolution approving the UAE setup and naming the authorised signatory
• The parent's Memorandum of Association and a certificate of good standing or incumbency
• A group structure chart, which banks increasingly ask for even when the licensing authority does not

Any document issued outside the UAE generally needs attestation by the UAE embassy in the country of origin and then the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, plus a certified Arabic translation where it is not in Arabic or English [1]. For a corporate shareholder this is the item that adds a week or two, so start it before you file. If a foreign parent will own the UAE entity, decide early whether the intellectual property will sit in the parent or the subsidiary, because moving it later is a transaction with tax consequences rather than an administrative change.

Get your document checklist→

What corporate tax does a software company pay, and is the "IP route" real?

9% above AED 375,000 of taxable income, and 0% below it, exactly like any ordinary taxable person. The free zone 0% rate is not available for software revenue, because it requires Qualifying Free Zone Person status and that status depends on a closed list of Qualifying Activities in Ministerial Decision No. 229 of 2025. Software development, SaaS and artificial intelligence services are not on that list, and there is no general services category [4].

This is worth stating plainly because the market does not. A free zone software company is an ordinary taxable person for its software revenue. Being in a free zone does not change the rate, it changes the cost base. What you are buying with a free zone licence is speed, a flexi-desk and a lighter setup, not a tax rate.

Common Mistake: Registering in a free zone specifically for the 0% rate, then structuring the business around protecting a status you were never eligible for in the first place. The damage is not only the wasted expectation. A Qualifying Free Zone Person must produce audited financial statements regardless of size, and cannot elect Small Business Relief at all [4][6]. So chasing the status costs a small software company an audit it does not need and blocks the one relief it can actually use.

On the "qualifying IP" route, which you will hear pitched. There is a separate head of qualifying income relating to qualifying intellectual property, and copyrighted software can fall within the concept, with the qualifying portion determined by an internationally agreed nexus formula based on how much of the research and development was genuinely carried out in the UAE [4]. Treat this with caution rather than enthusiasm, for four reasons. It applies to income from the intellectual property itself, not to your development services revenue or your general subscription business. It still requires you to satisfy every other Qualifying Free Zone Person condition, including substance and the mandatory audit. The formula rewards development actually performed in the UAE, so an offshore-built product will get little from it. And the analysis is genuinely technical. If somebody is selling you a 0% structure on this basis, ask them to put the nexus calculation in writing and confirm it with the Federal Tax Authority before you build a company around it.

The relief that actually applies to most software companies is the ordinary one. Small Business Relief treats an ordinary taxable person with revenue at or below AED 3,000,000 as having no taxable income. It must be elected on EmaraTax, it runs only for tax periods ending on or before 31 December 2029, and a Qualifying Free Zone Person is barred from electing it [6]. For a bootstrapped dev shop or an early-stage product company, that is a real zero this year, achieved without an audit and without any structuring at all.

Our Qualifying Free Zone Person guide sets out the closed list, the de minimis rule and the five-period penalty in full, and our UAE corporate tax filing guide covers registration and returns. Model your position→

Why does VAT treat your SaaS differently from a consultant's invoice?

Because they can fall under different place-of-supply rules, and this is the single sharpest technical difference between a software business and an advisory one. A consultancy invoice is a general service, and its export treatment turns on whether the recipient is outside the UAE. An electronically supplied service is governed by its own rule in the VAT Executive Regulation, under which the place of supply follows where the service is used and enjoyed, which is a different test asking a different question [5].

VAT is 5%, mandatory registration begins at AED 375,000 of taxable turnover in twelve months, and voluntary registration is available from AED 187,500 [5]. What follows is about which supplies fall inside the UAE net at all.

The general rule, which a consultant relies on. A general service supplied to a recipient outside the UAE can be zero-rated as an export of services, provided the recipient does not have a place of residence in the UAE and is outside the State when the service is performed, and provided the service is not effectively connected with the UAE [5]. The test looks at the customer.

The electronic services rule, which a product company may fall under. Where a supply is an electronic service, the place of supply is determined by where the service is used and enjoyed, to the extent of that use and enjoyment, regardless of where the contract was signed or the payment came from [5]. The test looks at the usage. Electronic services broadly cover things delivered automatically over the internet with minimal human intervention, which is a description that fits a subscription software product closely and fits a bespoke consulting engagement not at all.

The practical consequence for a Dubai SaaS business is that your customer's registered address is not the answer, and building your VAT position on it is the mistake to avoid. If you sell subscriptions to a company registered overseas whose staff use the product from offices in Dubai, the used-and-enjoyed test points towards UAE treatment for that usage even though the invoice goes abroad. Conversely, a consultancy invoicing the same overseas group for advice may reach a different answer on the same facts, which is exactly why the two guides give different VAT answers. The consultancy side is worked through in our AI and tech consultancy guide, and if you sell both advice and a subscription to the same client, do not assume one treatment covers both invoices.

Real Talk: Be honest about where this is unsettled, because a lot of what is written about it is not. Whether a given supply is an electronic service at all turns on how automated it is, and bespoke development involving substantial human effort looks much more like a general service than an automated one. Hybrid supplies, meaning a platform subscription bundled with implementation and support, do not divide neatly. Apportioning usage between UAE and overseas users on a real customer base is an evidential exercise, not a formula. These are not settled points you can resolve from an article, and the professional answer for a product company with meaningful revenue is a private clarification from the Federal Tax Authority on your specific model, obtained before you have two years of invoices issued on an assumption. Budget for the advice, and get it before the revenue, not after.

Two things that are not in doubt. Free zone and designated zone status changes nothing here, because that special VAT treatment applies only to goods and never to services [5]. And registration is compulsory once you cross the threshold regardless of how your supplies are ultimately treated, so a product company with growing overseas revenue should be watching the AED 375,000 line early.

What will an enterprise security questionnaire ask about your product?

More than you have ready, the first time. Once you sell to a bank, an insurer, a large corporate or a government entity, you stop being assessed on your demo and start being assessed on your controls. The vendor security questionnaire is where small product companies lose deals they had already won commercially, and it arrives late in the sales cycle when you have no time to prepare.

The legal floor is the UAE Personal Data Protection Law, Federal Decree-Law No. 45 of 2021, which applies to processing personal data of people in the UAE and sets duties to process lawfully, secure the data, keep records and appoint a data protection officer in defined circumstances [11]. Its executive regulations, which supply much of the operational detail, have been slow to appear, so verify the current status before making a compliance claim in a tender document [11]. What is already fully enforceable is the Cybercrime Law, Federal Decree-Law No. 34 of 2021, which penalises unauthorised access to and misuse of personal data [11].

Above the legal floor sits what your customer contractually demands, which is usually more:

Two points on data residency in particular, because it is the one that becomes a hard blocker rather than a negotiation. Selling to UAE government entities generally brings expectations about where data sits and which cloud regions are acceptable, and the specialised government security standards that are optional for private-sector work can become contract conditions [11]. If government is in your plan, design for local data residency early, because retrofitting it means a migration.

Certification is the strategic decision. ISO 27001 or SOC 2 is a genuine cost in money and management time, and it is not worth pursuing before you have enterprise demand. But once a single large client asks, you are on a nine to twelve month path from a standing start, and the deal will not wait. The middle position most product companies land on is to build the underlying controls early, document them properly, and pursue certification when the first serious pipeline justifies it.

Can a dev agency turn itself into a product company?

Most try and few succeed, and the reason is not engineering ability. It is that services and products are different businesses with opposing cash flow shapes, and running both at once means the services side wins every resource conflict, because the services side is the one with an angry client on the phone.

The economics are worth setting out honestly, because the distinction shapes your hiring, your funding and eventually your valuation.

The trap is specific and repeats. An agency funds product development from services margin. Services work is unpredictable, so whenever a client deadline hits, the product engineers get pulled onto the client project. The product slips a quarter, then another. Two years later the agency is profitable and the product is 60% finished, which is worth nothing. Meanwhile the founder has learned that a product needs marketing, support, and a different sales motion than an agency ever needed, none of which are staffed.

Based on our experience: the transitions that work share three features. The product team is genuinely ring-fenced, with people who are never billed to a client no matter what breaks. Services revenue is deliberately capped rather than maximised, so the business stops taking work that would consume the product team. And the founders decide upfront which business they are actually building, rather than keeping both options open, because keeping both options open is how you finish neither. Some firms conclude the honest answer is to stay a services business and be excellent at it, which is a perfectly good outcome and considerably more profitable than a half-built product.

There is a third possibility worth naming. If what you have discovered you enjoy is the advisory part, the strategy work and the architecture decisions rather than the building, that is a different business again with a different licence, a qualification gate and a professional indemnity requirement. Our AI and tech consultancy setup guide covers what that shift involves, and it is a bigger change than adding an activity to a licence.

What does it cost to hire developers in Dubai, and what has to sit here?

Budget around AED 22,000 a month for an average software engineer, with a wide spread by seniority and speciality, and no personal income tax deducted from it. But the more important question, and the one most guides refuse to answer, is why you would hire in Dubai at all when the same engineer costs a fraction of that in India, Egypt, Pakistan or Eastern Europe.

Indicative monthly ranges for 2026, which move with demand and should be checked against current market data before you build a hiring plan on them:

Add each employee's visa at roughly AED 4,000 to 7,000 for two years, medical insurance and end-of-service gratuity. Visa quota is tied to your desk or office size, so plan headcount against the premises you licence rather than the other way round.

Now the arbitrage question, answered straight. Offshore engineering is genuinely cheaper and often genuinely good, and pretending otherwise does you no favours. The reason to have people in Dubai is not cost, it is the set of things that break when nobody is here.

Pro Tip: There is a tax dimension to this that founders miss until it costs them. Where you perform development work is not a neutral choice: the nexus concept behind the qualifying intellectual property rules rewards research and development genuinely carried out in the UAE, and any substance-based analysis looks at real people and real spend here rather than a flexi-desk with a nameplate [4]. If you have any intention of making an intellectual property or substance argument later, an entirely offshore engineering team undermines it. Decide the shape of the team with that in mind at the start, because relocating a development function to fix a tax position afterwards is expensive and looks exactly like what it is.

Our post-setup services team handles employee visas and payroll onboarding once you start hiring.

What does year two actually cost a software company?

More than year one's discounted licence suggests, and the increase is concentrated in items that only apply once you have a product and customers. Year one is a setup cost. Year two is the first honest picture of your running cost, and it is the number to plan against.

Alongside the money, these are the filings that keep the company alive: corporate tax registration and an annual return within nine months of your financial year end, even at nil [4]; VAT returns once registered [5]; an Ultimate Beneficial Owner register maintained and updated within 15 days of any change, for anyone holding 25% or more [2]; and proper books retained for seven years. The Economic Substance Regulations reporting older guides mention was discontinued for financial years from 2023 [2].

Our post-setup services team handles renewals, tax filing, accounting and UBO paperwork so none of it lands on an engineering week.

Can residency be a hiring tool for a technical team?

Yes, and it is one of Dubai's genuine advantages over other bases, which is why it belongs in your recruiting pitch rather than only in your own visa planning. A senior engineer weighing a move is comparing take-home pay after tax, family residency and how long the arrangement lasts, and Dubai answers all three well.

The routes that matter when you are recruiting:

• Ten-year Golden Visa, specialised talent. Available to software engineers, developers and data scientists on a basic salary of at least AED 30,000 a month with an accredited degree. Self-sponsored, includes family, no employer lock-in [10]. That last point is worth understanding: it is not a retention device, it is a relocation incentive, and candidates know the difference.
• The National Program for Coders, which has issued Golden Visas to programmers with partners including Google, Microsoft and IBM [10].
• A dedicated route for artificial intelligence specialists, whose terms have been revised, so confirm current criteria with ICP rather than relying on an article [10]. Our AI specialist visa guide covers it.
• Standard employment visas, sponsored by your company, which is how most of your team will actually arrive, subject to your quota.

For founders, the practical route is your own payroll: once your company pays you a basic salary of AED 30,000 a month, the specialised talent Golden Visa becomes available on salary alone, which secures ten-year residency through the business you just set up [10].

The recruiting point is that a candidate who qualifies independently for a Golden Visa is not tied to you, which cuts both ways. It makes the offer far more attractive and makes retention a matter of the work rather than the paperwork. Plan compensation and equity accordingly rather than assuming the visa holds anyone.

Which government tech programmes are worth applying for?

A handful, and the filter is whether you are genuinely building a product, because the artificial intelligence schemes in particular expect substance rather than a rebrand. The programmes below can materially cut your first-year cost or open doors, and all are application-gated [9][14].

• The Dubai AI Licence. A specialised licence for AI companies at a heavy discount to a standard commercial licence, based at the Dubai AI Campus [9]. Worth applying for if AI is your product rather than a feature description.
• The AI regulatory sandbox. A framework letting AI firms test higher-risk use cases for a limited period with certain licensing requirements relaxed [9]. Relevant if your product would otherwise need approval it cannot yet obtain.
• DIFC Innovation Hub. Subsidised innovation licences from around USD 1,500 a year, plus investor access, a common-law framework and the trade-secret protection that matters for algorithm-heavy products [14].
• Incubators and accelerators. in5 and Dtec at Dubai Silicon Oasis provide subsidised licences, mentorship and community, and Hub71 in Abu Dhabi offers cash and in-kind support to selected startups.
• Funding. The Mohammed Bin Rashid Innovation Fund and a growing venture scene back UAE-based technology companies, and Dubai supported 1,690 digital startups in 2025 [9].

Two practical notes. These are real savings and the licence subsidies alone can cover a first year, but they are time-limited and the subsidised rate usually steps up after the initial period, so model the year-three cost before you choose a zone on the strength of a discount. And several programmes expect the development work to happen here, which lines up with the substance point in the hiring section. Check your eligibility→

How do you get paid by overseas customers?

This is where a product company's banking problem diverges from everyone else's. A services business needs an account that receives a handful of large invoices. A SaaS business needs to accept card payments from customers in many countries, at high volume and low value, with refunds and chargebacks, which is a payments problem before it is a banking one.

Start with the bank account. Digital-first banks are the fastest route: Wio, Mashreq NeoBiz and RAKBANK's RAKstarter approve in days with low or zero minimum balances, while traditional banks such as Emirates NBD, FAB and ADCB offer more services but want AED 25,000 to 50,000 balances and take three to eight weeks [15]. Rejections cluster around a vague or mixed licence activity, a virtual office with no verifiable presence, unclear beneficial ownership and a weak business description, and scrutiny is heavier when every customer is outside the UAE [15].

Then the part that catches product founders out. A bank account is not a payment gateway. To charge customers by card you need a merchant facility or a payment service provider, and that is a separate application with its own underwriting, in which the questions are different:

• What is your refund and chargeback profile? Subscription businesses generate both, and a high chargeback rate can cost you the facility.
• Do you hold cardholder data? If so, expect compliance obligations that shape your architecture.
• Which currencies do you settle in, and where does the money land? Multi-currency settlement into a UAE account is not automatic and pricing varies widely.
• Is the product live? Providers underwrite what they can see, so a pre-launch application is harder than a post-launch one.
• What is your trading history? New companies frequently face a rolling reserve, meaning a percentage of your revenue is withheld for a period, which is a genuine cash flow item in year one.

Practical sequence: open the bank account first, get the product live even at small scale, then apply for the payment facility with real transaction history behind you. Applying for everything on day one is how founders end up with neither. And if the bank has already declined you, our guide on overcoming bank account rejection sets out the fixes.

What do software founders get wrong in Dubai?

The costly mistakes are rarely about the licence. They are about the asset, which is the codebase, and about assuming a tax position nobody ever confirmed. Here are the ones that actually cost money, roughly in order of how expensive they turn out to be.

• No written IP assignment from contractors. The single most expensive omission, because it is invisible until diligence and unfixable once a relationship has soured.
• Never running an open-source licence scan. A copyleft component in a hosted product is a valuation problem you will discover at the worst possible moment.
• Assuming a free zone licence means 0% corporate tax. Software is not a Qualifying Activity, so the rate is the ordinary one, and pursuing the status can cost you an audit and your Small Business Relief election.
• Building the VAT position on the customer's registered address. For an electronically supplied service the question is where it is used and enjoyed, which is a different test with a different answer.
• Credentials in personal accounts. App store accounts, domain registrars and signing certificates in a former developer's name can lock you out of shipping your own product.
• Choosing a free zone on licence price and discovering the visa quota and the mandatory audit in month eleven.
• Expecting to open a bank account remotely. No UAE bank does, and a product company also needs a separate payment facility.
• Funding a product from services margin without ring-fencing the team, which produces a profitable agency and a permanently unfinished product.
• Deferring the security questionnaire. Certification takes months and the enterprise deal that requires it will not wait.

Real Client Stories

These are real examples from companies we have helped set up. Names and identifying details have been changed.

The acquisition that repriced over a licence file

A Dubai-based product company with a hosted analytics platform was in late-stage acquisition talks when the buyer's technical diligence produced a dependency report. A component deep in the data pipeline carried a network copyleft licence, added years earlier by a contractor who had long since left, and the licence's terms reached the hosted product rather than only distributed copies. The company spent eleven weeks engineering the component out and re-verifying the build while the buyer held the price down over the uncertainty. Their chief technology officer's view: "We had a policy document saying we only used permissive licences. Nobody had ever checked whether that was true. A scan would have taken an afternoon and cost us nothing three years earlier."

The founder who did not own his first version

A solo founder built the first version of his platform with an offshore agency before incorporating in Dubai, on a contract that described the deliverable and the payment schedule and said nothing at all about intellectual property. Two years later, mid-way through a seed round, the investor's counsel asked for the chain of title. The agency was still trading and, once it understood the position, was in no hurry to sign a retrospective assignment for free. He got it done, at a cost, and lost a month of the raise. His comment: "I paid the invoices in full and on time and genuinely thought that settled it. The contract was silent, and silence did not mean mine."

The SaaS company whose overseas revenue was not overseas

A Dubai company selling a subscription product invoiced a group registered outside the UAE and treated the whole subscription line as outside the UAE VAT net on that basis. A review of the actual user base showed a substantial share of daily active users sitting in offices in the UAE, which put the used-and-enjoyed position under real pressure for that portion of the revenue. The correction ran across several filing periods and the company now reports usage by location every quarter and has sought formal confirmation of its treatment. Their finance director: "We had built the whole position on the customer's registration certificate. For a software product that turned out to be the wrong document to be looking at."

Start your Dubai software company the right way

For a software company, the licence is the easy part. What decides whether the business is worth anything is whether you actually own the codebase, whether anything in it carries obligations you have not read, and whether your tax and VAT positions were confirmed rather than assumed. Those three things are cheap to get right at the start and expensive to fix later, and they are the ones no free zone brochure covers.

The honest summary on tax is that software and SaaS revenue does not reach the free zone 0% rate, because it is not on the closed list of Qualifying Activities. You are an ordinary taxable person at 0% to AED 375,000 and 9% above, with Small Business Relief available under AED 3,000,000 for periods ending on or before 31 December 2029. On VAT, an electronically supplied service is tested on where it is used and enjoyed, not on where your customer is registered, and that is a genuinely different answer from the one a consultancy gets on the same customer.

BusinessDubai.ae has completed 700+ company registrations across the UAE, including software, SaaS and AI companies, with itemised pricing and no hidden fees. We will price a free zone company setup against a mainland company setup on the things that actually differ for a dev business, which are visa quota, audit exposure and whether you can contract directly with UAE enterprise clients. We will confirm your activity, compare zones on visa quota and audit requirement rather than headline price, make sure your intellectual property assignments are in place before you write production code, and map your corporate tax and VAT position before you spend a dirham. Talk to a setup expert→ for an all-in plan built around what you are actually building.

And if reading this has convinced you that what you sell is expertise rather than software, start with our companion guide to setting up an AI or tech consultancy in Dubai, which covers the qualification gate, professional indemnity cover and the engagement economics that decide whether an advisory firm makes money.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does my Dubai company automatically own the code my team writes?

Not automatically in every case. Work by an employee in the course of employment generally belongs to the employer, but you should say so expressly in the contract. Work by a contractor often stays with the contractor absent a written assignment, so your company may hold only an implied licence to use it.

Do I need a written IP assignment from a freelance developer?

Yes, and it is the most important document in a software company's file. Paying an invoice buys the deliverable, not necessarily the right to own and exploit the copyright. Get a signed assignment before or at engagement, and if past contractors never signed one, obtain retrospective assignments while relations are good.

Who owns code written before the company was incorporated?

The individuals who wrote it, because the company did not exist to own anything. That includes founders. It has to be assigned into the company in writing after incorporation, and this is a standard diligence question, so handle it at incorporation rather than during a funding round.

Do I need to register my software copyright in the UAE?

Registration is not required for protection, which arises automatically on creation. It is worth doing anyway, because it creates a dated official ownership record that carries weight in a dispute, a licensing negotiation or a funding round, and the fees are modest. Confirm the current fee schedule when you file.

Can I patent my software in the UAE?

No. The patent law excludes software and business methods, so there is no realistic software patent route here, and you should be sceptical of anyone offering one. Only a genuine hardware-linked technical invention might qualify. Your protection stack is copyright, trademark, trade secrets and contract.

Why does an open-source licence matter if I never distribute my code?

Because network copyleft licences such as AGPL are triggered by making software available over a network, not only by distributing copies. A hosted product can therefore be caught by obligations that a traditional distribution analysis would miss, which is the most common blind spot in a SaaS codebase.

What happens if a GPL component ends up in my commercial product?

The licence terms can require you to make the source of your derivative work available under the same terms, which for a proprietary product is usually unacceptable. In practice it means engineering the component out, which is far cheaper to discover through a routine scan than through an acquirer's diligence report.

What is a software bill of materials and do I need one?

It is a list of every third-party component in your product with its version and licence. You need one before any acquisition or serious investment, because it is a standard diligence request. Generating it with automated tooling is inexpensive, and the first run usually finds something you did not expect.

What is source code escrow and when will clients ask for it?

It is an arrangement where a neutral third party holds your source code and releases it to the client on defined triggers, typically your insolvency or failure to maintain the software. Expect it as a requirement from government, banking and large enterprise clients buying business-critical systems.

What should I watch for in an escrow agreement?

The release triggers, above all: a trigger drafted as broadly as "material breach" is far more dangerous to you than insolvency alone. Also confirm how often the deposit must be updated, whether verification that the code compiles is required, and that the deposit does not expose undisclosed copyleft components.

What happens to my company's IP if the business is wound up?

It falls into the liquidation as an asset of the company, available to creditors. Founders often assume they can take the code with them from a failing company and generally cannot, because it belongs to the entity. Holding valuable IP in a separate entity is a recognised answer, with real tax and substance consequences.

A developer is leaving. What do I need to secure?

Repository and cloud access revoked on the last day, confidentiality and assignment obligations that survive termination, and a handover of everything registered in a personal name: domains, app store accounts, signing certificates and third-party service logins. That last category is what most often locks a small company out of shipping its own product.

Can a free zone software company get 0% corporate tax?

No. The 0% rate requires Qualifying Free Zone Person status, which depends on a closed list of Qualifying Activities under Ministerial Decision No. 229 of 2025, and software development, SaaS and AI services are not on it. Your rate is the ordinary one: 0% to AED 375,000 of taxable income, then 9%.

Is the "qualifying IP" 0% route real for a software company?

There is a separate qualifying income head for qualifying intellectual property, determined by a nexus formula based on research and development genuinely performed in the UAE. It does not cover your development services or general subscription revenue, still requires every other QFZP condition including the mandatory audit, and needs a written calculation and confirmation rather than a sales pitch.

Can my software company use Small Business Relief?

Yes, if you are an ordinary taxable person with revenue at or below AED 3,000,000. It treats you as having no taxable income, must be elected on EmaraTax, and applies to tax periods ending on or before 31 December 2029. A Qualifying Free Zone Person is barred from electing it, which is another reason not to chase that status.

Why would VAT treat my SaaS subscription differently from a consulting invoice?

Because an electronically supplied service has its own place-of-supply rule keyed to where the service is used and enjoyed, while a general service such as consultancy is tested on whether the recipient is outside the UAE. Same customer, different question, and potentially a different answer on each invoice.

My SaaS customer is registered abroad but their staff use it in Dubai. What is the VAT position?

The used-and-enjoyed test points towards UAE treatment for the portion of usage happening here, notwithstanding the customer's overseas registration. Building your position on the registration certificate alone is the common error. Measure usage by location and take advice before you have years of invoices issued on an assumption.

Is bespoke development an electronic service for VAT?

Not obviously, because the electronic services concept turns on supply that is automated with minimal human intervention, and bespoke development involves substantial human effort. It is a genuinely contested area, particularly for hybrid supplies combining a platform subscription with implementation, and it is worth a formal clarification rather than an assumption.

Should I get an FTA private clarification on my VAT treatment?

For a product company with meaningful and growing revenue, yes. The interaction between the electronic services rule and export zero-rating is not settled enough to resolve from published guidance, and a clarification obtained before you have two years of invoices is far cheaper than a correction across multiple filing periods afterwards.

Does a free zone or designated zone address change my VAT position?

No. The special VAT treatment attached to designated zones applies to goods and never to services, so a free zone software company faces the same VAT rules as a mainland one. Any advice suggesting your address changes the treatment of your software supplies is wrong.

Can a free zone software company sell to mainland UAE clients?

Yes, since Dubai Executive Council Resolution No. 11 of 2025, through a mainland branch, a dual licence or a temporary permit for project work. Branch and dual licences cost around AED 10,000 a year and a permit around AED 5,000 for up to six months. It grants market access, not a tax advantage.

What activity code do I need for software development?

Most commonly code 6201, computer programming activities, covering the design, writing, testing and support of software and applications. Add a software publishing activity if you will licence your own product. Confirm the exact wording on the live DET or free zone list, because the catalogue is revised.

When do I need a second, commercial licence?

When you start reselling hardware or third-party software licences, because that is trading rather than a professional service, and mixing professional and commercial activities on one licence is not always permitted. The drift is gradual, so decide the model before a client asks you to supply their servers.

Why do most dev agencies fail to become product companies?

Because services and product have opposing cash flow shapes and the services side wins every resource conflict, since it has a client waiting. Product engineers get pulled onto client deadlines, the roadmap slips repeatedly, and two years later the agency is profitable and the product is unfinished. Ring-fencing the product team is the only reliable fix.

Should I hire developers in Dubai or offshore?

Offshore is genuinely cheaper for routine implementation and support, and pretending otherwise helps nobody. What needs to sit in Dubai is the managing director, client-facing delivery and local sales, architecture decisions, and any development you may later want to point to for substance or nexus purposes.

Does an offshore development team affect my tax position?

It can. Nexus and substance analyses look at research and development genuinely performed in the UAE and at real people and spend here, so an entirely offshore engineering function weakens any argument built on either. Decide the shape of the team at the start, because relocating development later to fix a tax position is expensive.

What data protection rules apply to a product holding user data?

The UAE Personal Data Protection Law applies where you process personal data of people in the UAE, requiring lawful processing, security, records and a data protection officer in defined cases. Its executive regulations have been slow to appear, so verify the current status before making compliance claims in a tender.

Will UAE government clients require my data to be stored locally?

Expect data residency expectations for government work, along with specialised security standards that are optional for private-sector clients and can become contract conditions. Design for local residency early if government is in your plan, because retrofitting it means a migration rather than a configuration change.

Do I need ISO 27001 or SOC 2 to sell to enterprise clients in Dubai?

Frequently, yes, and it is often the item that stops a deal. It is a real cost in money and management time and is not worth pursuing before you have enterprise demand, but from a standing start it is a nine to twelve month path and the deal will not wait. Build the underlying controls early and certify when pipeline justifies it.

How do I accept card payments from overseas customers?

Through a merchant facility or payment service provider, which is a separate application from your bank account with its own underwriting on refunds, chargebacks, currencies and trading history. Open the bank account first, get the product live, then apply with real transaction history, and expect a rolling reserve as a new company.

Can a foreign software company open a branch in Dubai instead of a new company?

Yes. An existing overseas company can register a branch, which keeps the same legal identity rather than creating a new one. The branch needs attested parent-company documents, and you should decide upfront whether the intellectual property will sit in the parent or here, because moving it later is a transaction rather than an administrative change.

Are there restrictions on the type of software I can build in Dubai?

General software, SaaS and applications face no special restriction, but content-related, gaming, fintech, crypto and cybersecurity products can require approvals from the relevant regulator. Confirm any sector approval for your specific product before you launch rather than after, because some are conditions of operating.

References

[1] Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism and Invest in Dubai. Business activities and licensing, including code 6201 computer programming activities, the professional and commercial activity distinction, and attestation requirements for foreign documents. invest.dubai.ae

[2] UAE Government Portal. Full foreign ownership of mainland companies under Federal Decree-Law No. 26 of 2020 and Federal Decree-Law No. 32 of 2021, the strategic-impact activity list, and Ultimate Beneficial Owner obligations. u.ae

[3] Dubai Executive Council Resolution No. 11 of 2025 on free zone establishments operating on the Dubai mainland through a branch licence, a dual licence or a temporary permit, effective 3 March 2025. dlp.dubai.gov.ae

[4] Ministry of Finance. Ministerial Decision No. 229 of 2025 on Qualifying Activities and Excluded Activities, setting the closed list of Qualifying Activities for a Qualifying Free Zone Person, the de minimis rule and the five-tax-period consequence of a breach, alongside the qualifying intellectual property provisions and their nexus basis. Ministerial Decision No. 229 of 2025

[5] Federal Tax Authority. Federal Decree-Law No. 8 of 2017 on Value Added Tax and its Executive Regulation, covering the place of supply of electronically supplied services and the used-and-enjoyed test, the zero-rating of exported services, and the treatment of designated zones as applying to goods only. tax.gov.ae

[6] Ministry of Finance. Ministerial Decision No. 73 of 2023, as amended by Ministerial Decision 131 of 2026 on Small Business Relief. The only realistic route to a nil corporate tax bill for a software company once the free-zone 0% rate is ruled out: revenue at or below AED 3,000,000, election required each period, unavailable to a Qualifying Free Zone Person under Article 3(2), and expiring for tax periods ending after 31 December 2029.ne Person from electing. Ministerial Decision No. 73 of 2023, as amended by Ministerial Decision 131 of 2026

[7] Mordor Intelligence. UAE IT services and ICT market size, growth forecast and the count of technology companies based in Dubai. mordorintelligence.com

[8] Gartner. MENA information technology spending forecast for 2026. gartner.com

[9] Dubai Media Office and Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy. Digital startups supported in 2025, the Dubai Economic Agenda D33 digital-economy targets, the Dubai AI Licence and the AI regulatory sandbox. mediaoffice.ae

[10] UAE Government Portal and Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs and Port Security. Golden Visa for specialised talent, the National Program for Coders, routes for artificial intelligence specialists and the Green Visa. u.ae

[11] UAE Personal Data Protection Law, Federal Decree-Law No. 45 of 2021, the Cybercrime Law, Federal Decree-Law No. 34 of 2021, and the status of the executive regulations. uaelegislation.gov.ae

[12] Ministry of Economy. Copyright and neighbouring rights under Federal Decree-Law No. 38 of 2021, trademarks under Federal Decree-Law No. 36 of 2021, and the exclusion of software and business methods from patentability under the patent law. moec.gov.ae

[13] DMCC. Schedule of charges and free zone licence fees. dmcc.ae

[14] DIFC. Innovation Licence, the DIFC Intellectual Property Law No. 4 of 2019 and its trade-secret protection, and the DIFC Innovation Hub and AI Campus. difc.ae

[15] BusinessDubai.ae. Internal data from UAE technology, software and SaaS company registrations, covering free zone selection, setup costs, timelines, banking and payment-facility outcomes and client case studies. businessdubai.ae