A Dubai company setup package buys you three things in almost every case: the trade licence, the company registration, and a registered flexi-desk address. Residence visas, the immigration establishment card, the medical test, the Emirates ID, health insurance and tax registration sit outside the package and are invoiced as you use them. That gap is why a headline of AED 12,500 and a first-year bank transfer of well over AED 20,000 are both accurate descriptions of the same setup.
Key takeaways
- Meydan Free Zone publishes its standard digital trade licence at AED 12,500, covering 100% ownership, up to three business activities, a flexi-desk and eligibility to apply for visas. Its own page lists the residency visa, medical and Emirates ID, office upgrades and later activity changes as separate items.
- A package that says “three visas” is selling you the right to apply for three, not three issued visas. Meydan prices an investor visa from AED 4,000 and an employee visa from AED 3,500 on top of the licence.
- The government side of the medical and Emirates ID step is smaller than the bundled line suggests. Dubai Health charges AED 270 for a standard medical fitness examination and the ICP charges AED 100 per year of residence for a new Emirates ID, plus a smart service fee of AED 100.
- Since 1 January 2025 the employer pays for basic health insurance before a residence permit is issued or renewed. The MOHRE scheme is priced at AED 320 a year.
- Corporate tax and VAT registration cost nothing at the Federal Tax Authority, but late corporate tax registration carries an administrative penalty of AED 10,000.
What a Dubai company setup package actually buys
Start with a zone that puts its numbers in public. Meydan Free Zone lists company formation at AED 12,500 and describes that licence as including 100% ownership, up to three business activity groups, a flexi-desk and visa allocation eligibility. Its Fawri instant licence is AED 15,000, issued in under 60 minutes, with one free amendment and a refund if the zone misses its own deadline. A non-resident licence, for owners who do not intend to move to the UAE, is also AED 12,500.
The same licence page carries an exclusions list that is worth reading before the sales call rather than after it. The items named as not included are the UAE residency visa, medical and Emirates ID, office lease upgrades, and additional activity changes made later. That last one matters more than it looks. Three activity groups sounds generous until a trading company wants to add a fourth line six months in, at which point Meydan’s cost calculator adds AED 1,000 per additional activity.
Two smaller lines in the same calculator tell you something about how these packages are built. The calculator shows an Innovation Fee of AED 10 and a Knowledge Fee of AED 10. It also shows AED 2,000 per shareholder beyond the first six, and a deposit of AED 3,000 when an investor sponsors a dependent. None of these are large. All of them are invisible in a headline price, and a company with four founders and a spouse to sponsor will meet several of them in the first month.
Visa allocation is not a visa
This is the single most common misreading we see when a client forwards three quotes and asks which is cheapest. A package advertised as “licence plus three visas” almost always means the licence carries a quota of three, tied to the flexi-desk or office you have taken. The quota is free. Each visa inside it is not.
Meydan’s published figures make the arithmetic visible: an investor visa from AED 4,000, an employee visa from AED 3,500, and a one-time immigration establishment card from AED 2,000. The zone states that a first investor visa typically adds around AED 7,850 once the visa fee, the allocation and the establishment card are counted together. Read that against the AED 12,500 licence and the picture changes. One owner who wants residency is looking at roughly AED 20,000 before insurance, not AED 12,500.
The establishment card is the item people forget entirely. It opens the company’s immigration file, it is charged once, and nothing visa-related can happen until it exists. A company that registers in November and decides in February that the founder should take residency pays for the card in February, months after the setup invoice was filed away as settled.
The government fees behind the medical and Emirates ID line
Most zones and agents quote a single bundled figure here. Meydan lists medical and Emirates ID assistance from AED 2,250. It is useful to know what sits underneath that number, because it tells you what you are paying the zone for.
Dubai Health publishes its medical fitness screening prices as a short list. A standard medical fitness examination with results in 24 working hours is AED 270. The premium service, at six working hours, is AED 700. The VIP service, at two working hours, is AED 1,020. The price list carries its own caveat that the institution may modify these prices in line with public interest, so treat them as current rather than fixed.
On the Emirates ID side, the ICP service page for a new identity card lists AED 100 for each year of residence, a smart service fee of AED 100, and an urgent service fee of AED 150 that is only available at the authority’s own service centres. A two-year residence visa therefore carries around AED 300 of Emirates ID fees at standard speed.
Add the standard medical at AED 270 and the government portion of that step sits near AED 570. The rest of the AED 2,250 bundled line covers typing, status change for applicants already inside the country, courier, biometrics appointments and the zone’s own handling. That is real work with a real price. You are still entitled to ask for the split, and a quote that will not give it is telling you something.
| Item | Usually inside the package | Published figure and source, September 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Trade licence and registration | Yes | AED 12,500 standard, AED 15,000 Fawri (Meydan Free Zone) |
| Flexi-desk address | Yes | Included in the AED 12,500 licence (Meydan Free Zone) |
| Up to three activity groups | Yes | AED 1,000 per activity beyond three (Meydan cost calculator) |
| Immigration establishment card | No | From AED 2,000, one time (Meydan Free Zone) |
| Investor or employee visa | No | From AED 4,000 and AED 3,500 (Meydan Free Zone) |
| Medical fitness test | No | AED 270 standard, AED 700 premium, AED 1,020 VIP (Dubai Health) |
| Emirates ID | No | AED 100 per year of residence plus AED 100 smart service fee (ICP) |
| Basic health insurance | No | AED 320 a year (MOHRE scheme) |
| Corporate tax and VAT registration | No | Free of charge at the FTA |
Health insurance moved into the visa file in 2025
This one changed the sequencing of a visa file. Under the MOHRE basic health insurance scheme, from 1 January 2025 private sector employers and employers of domestic workers carry the insurance obligation at the point a residence permit is issued or renewed. The cover is a precondition of the permit, not a task for later in the quarter.
The scheme is priced at AED 320 a year and the cover runs for two years, with the possibility of refunding the second year if the visa is cancelled. The co-payments are published: 20% on inpatient care up to AED 500 a visit and AED 1,000 a year, 25% on outpatient capped at AED 100 a visit, and 30% on medication with an annual ceiling of AED 1,500. Work permits issued before 1 January 2025 were carved out until the residence permit came up for renewal, so a company holding older permits meets this cost at its first renewal rather than on the start date.
For a five-person services company this is a small number. For a restaurant or a cleaning company with thirty staff on rolling renewals it belongs in the annual budget, and it sits with the employer rather than the employee.
Tax registration is free and still catches people out
Nothing in this section costs money at the point of registration, which is exactly why it gets deferred. The FTA corporate tax registration service is listed as free of charge, takes about 25 minutes to submit, and is processed within 20 business days. VAT registration is also free, with a mandatory threshold of AED 375,000 of taxable supplies and imports and a voluntary threshold of AED 187,500.
The cost arrives when the deadline does. The FTA sets out an administrative penalty of AED 10,000 for late corporate tax registration under Federal Tax Authority Decision No. 3 of 2024, with a waiver route where the first tax return is filed within seven months of the end of the first tax period. A free zone company is not outside this. The Ministry of Finance is explicit that juridical persons established in a UAE free zone are within the scope of corporate tax, and that a Qualifying Free Zone Person can benefit from a rate of 0% on qualifying income. Registration and filing still apply. The headline rates, per the UAE government portal, are 0% on taxable income up to AED 375,000 and 9% above it.
One point that rarely appears in a setup quote: Small Business Relief, with its AED 3,000,000 revenue threshold, is not available to a Qualifying Free Zone Person. A small free zone trading company that assumed it could sit under the relief and ignore the question needs to decide which treatment it is actually claiming. That decision belongs with an accountant before the first financial year closes, not after. Our corporate tax service and accounting and bookkeeping pages set out what that review involves.
Bank account support is an introduction
Every zone offers banking help and the wording is consistent once you read it closely. IFZA describes its banking service as a partnership with Wio, Mashreq and other UAE banks, with its team guiding clients through the documents the bank will ask for. Meydan states plainly that bank account assistance is priced separately from the licence. In both cases the zone is making an introduction and preparing a file. The bank makes the decision.
The consequence is practical. Compliance review on a new company with a non-resident shareholder, a trading activity and no UAE operating history can run for weeks, and nobody in the setup chain controls the outcome. Plan for the licence to exist before the account does, and avoid supplier contracts that assume the reverse.
Why some zones publish prices and others do not
Read three quotes for the same company and the spread is often wider than the underlying fees. Part of the reason is structural. Meydan publishes package prices on its own website. IFZA’s business setup page carries no prices at all and routes visitors to a booked consultation, while its navigation offers a partner portal and a become-a-partner route. Every IFZA figure circulating online is therefore a partner’s quote rather than a published fee. Ajman Free Zone likewise publishes no public price list and sends an estimate by email after you complete its cost calculator.
Neither approach is wrong, but they buy differently. A published price can be compared directly. A partner-quoted price compares service bundles as much as government fees, so the only honest method is to demand the same breakdown from each partner. Our pages on IFZA, Meydan and Ajman Free Zone set out how each zone is structured, and a fuller comparison sits in our post on RAKEZ against Ajman Free Zone.
Before you pay, ask for four things in writing. Ask which government fees are inside the number and which are passed through later. Ask what the visa quota is and what each visa costs to actually issue. Ask what the renewal invoice looks like in year two, itemised. Ask what happens to the price if you add an activity, a shareholder or an office.
What the second year costs
Year one is the number everybody compares. Year two decides whether the setup was actually cheap. The licence renews, the flexi-desk renews, the establishment card renews, and visas renew on their own two-year or three-year cycles rather than in step with the licence.
Some of the year-one cost genuinely does not repeat. Company registration is a one-time charge, and Meydan describes the immigration establishment card as a one-time item, though it carries its own renewal cycle afterwards. The one structural discount on offer is duration: Meydan states that multi-year licences save up to 15%. That suits a company with a signed pipeline better than one still testing a market.
One issue we often see is a founder who budgets for setup, gets the licence, and then meets three separate invoices in months nine to fourteen: visa renewal, insurance renewal and the first corporate tax filing. Nothing in that sequence is a surprise fee. It only feels like one because the setup quote ended at the licence. The earlier cost detail in our IFZA setup cost breakdown is a useful second reference point when you build that calendar.
