Mainland Licence Cost: What Moves the Number

The Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism publishes a business setup recommendation wizard that returns average fees for each licence route. On 17 August 2026 it returned one average for a normal licence at a physical Dubai mainland location, excluding the rent-linked supplement, and about the same for the instant licence issued at a virtual location. Both figures are for all nationalities and all legal types on the routes where those apply.

On 22 August 2026 a DET service centre confirmed what the number covers: it is the licence fee, as a single line item that does not decompose. Trade name reservation, initial approval, the memorandum of association, the mandatory immigration establishment file, visas and premises are all charged in addition. Schedule 1 of Executive Council Resolution No. 13 of 2011 shows the same separation: trade name reservation, a foreign or numeric trade name and initial approval each have their own line. Those 2011 lines may have been amended since, so read them as evidence of the structure, not as today's fees.

Some activities carry a licence issuance line of their own. Executive Council Resolution No. 13 of 2011, which approves the fees and fines of the Dubai economic department, carries Schedule 1 lines for issuing a licence to conduct a general trading activity and a contracting activity. Both are listed separately from the ordinary licence issuance fee, and the Resolution does not say whether they substitute for it or stack on it, which is a question to settle with DET before you budget. Fee resolutions are amended; an adviser confirms the current schedule.

Activity also decides whether the instant route is open to you: it carries a restricted activity list, as does the SME licence. An activity that falls outside those lists puts you on the normal route with its own timetable.

The same wizard prices a sole establishment licence well below the company routes. That difference in the licence fee follows directly from the form, before anything else in the file changes.

Two further routes are restricted by nationality rather than by activity: the SME licence, for UAE and GCC nationals at a physical location, and the Intelaq home-business licence, which has its own line in Resolution No. 13 of 2011. Both are priced below the company routes. Dubai SME's August 2020 announcement describes Intelaq as for home-based projects 100% owned by UAE or GCC nationals, with a limit of two licences per applicant. If you are not eligible, these routes do not apply to you.

This is the variable that moves the number furthest and appears in the fewest quotes. Across our capture of 2,277 Dubai mainland activities, 1,797 name an external authority whose approval is required: Dubai Municipality, the RTA, the Dubai Health Authority, the UAE Media Council, the Central Bank, TDRA, SIRA, KHDA, the Dubai Land Department and others.

Each regulator charges on its own schedule. We hold captured rows for many of them and publish none, because an approval fee we have not re-verified against the authority's current schedule gets quoted back to us after it has changed. Before you commit, we tell you whether your activity carries an approval, which regulator it is, and whether it lands before or after issuance.

The wizard's total for the normal licence rises with the annual rent you enter, and on our capture the supplement tracked five per cent of the annual rent. That is a rent-linked charge rather than a fixed fee, which is why any single total quoted for a mainland licence is quietly assuming a rent figure someone chose for you.

The instant route sidesteps this with a virtual location, at the cost of the restricted activity list. Where visas are involved, workspace stops being a pure cost question and becomes a capacity question, because premises drive visa quota.

Entry packages published by the free zones themselves start around AED 5,000 to 6,000 for a licence with no visa, and rise steeply as visas and physical premises are added. The free zone versus mainland options differ in market access as much as in price, so a lower entry price does not settle the choice.

A total stays provisional until four decisions are made: the activity, the legal form, whether a regulator's approval applies, and the workspace. Each point here traces to a dated capture or to the text of Executive Council Resolution No. 13 of 2011, and none of it includes what we charge.

Once those four are settled, the number stops moving and an adviser quotes it, itemised. The authority's charge is shown as the authority's charge, followed by each regulator approval and each separate service line, such as trade name reservation and initial approval.