UAE Company Setup Cost: First-Year and Renewal Budget
A setup cost is a stack of charges, not one licence fee. This page lists what the budget has to cover. It does not publish a dirham figure, because a current public fee schedule could not be verified for a comparable package.
First year
Ask which of these are inside a quoted package, and which are extra. VAT on a service fee is its own question.
Licence or package
The authority’s fee for the activity and legal form. A package may bundle a desk or a visa allocation. Read the inclusions before comparing two quotes.
Registration
Name reservation, incorporation and constitutional documents can be charged separately from the licence.
Address or premises
A flexi-desk, an office, a warehouse or a mainland lease are different costs. Dubai mainland files refer to an attested lease. The rent is not an authority fee.
Establishment and immigration
An establishment card and the immigration file are separate from the trade licence when the company will sponsor visas.
Visa-related costs
Entry, medical, Emirates ID, residence permit and deposit rules vary by case. A zero-visa company does not include these.
Professional fees
A service provider’s fee is not a government fee. AskVi does not publish a service-fee menu on this page.
Tax and compliance support
Corporate tax registration with the Federal Tax Authority is a compliance step. Bookkeeping, a tax agent and VAT registration, where they apply, are usually charged apart from the licence.
Renewal is a second budget
The first year often includes incorporation work that does not repeat. Renewal still has to cover the licence, the premises, and any establishment card or residence visa the company keeps. Those items do not always fall due on the same day. A three-year package is not the same thing as three identical renewal invoices.
Corporate tax can change the later-year cost even when the licence fee stays flat. A qualifying free-zone person can be taxed at 0 per cent on qualifying income and 9 per cent on taxable income that is not qualifying income. That result depends on conditions in the Federal Tax Authority’s free-zone guidance. It is not an automatic feature of every free-zone licence. A qualifying free-zone person does not also receive the small-profit relief that other businesses may use up to the published threshold.
AskVi does not calculate tax or keep books. Accounting is coming soon. Recorded tax deadlines, where a company is already in AskVi, are a separate workspace.
How to compare two quotes
- Same activity, same number of visas, same type of premises.
- Same year: first year against first year, renewal against renewal.
- Mark each line as an authority fee, a third-party cost, or a service fee.
- Note whether VAT is included.
- Ignore a “cheapest company” label. It is meaningless until those assumptions match.