How much does it cost to open a company in Dubai? Full breakdown.

Thinking about starting a business in Dubai but not sure how much it actually costs? In this video, Kevin from GenZone breaks down the real cost of setting up a company in Dubai including free zone licenses, visas, Emirates ID, medicals, office requirements, banking costs, renewals, hidden fees, and what most agencies don’t tell you before you start.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, freelancer, e-commerce seller, consultant, or investor looking to relocate to the UAE, this video will help you understand exactly what budget you should expect in 2026 and how to avoid overpaying.

Topics covered:

•  Free Zone vs Mainland setup costs 
•  Visa & Emirates ID fees 
•  Office/flexi-desk requirements 
•  Bank account setup expectations 
•  Renewal costs 
•  Hidden government charges 
•  Family sponsorship costs 
•  Real examples of low-cost vs premium setups 
•  The cheapest way to legally start in Dubai 
•  Common mistakes people make when budgeting

Transcript

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If you're watching this video, you're probably wondering what does it actually cost to set up a business in Dubai? You've probably seen so much information online, and it seems like everything you see is just misinformation. And I totally understand. I was there once in your position, and here at Gen Zone, we've registered over 700 companies. So we've spoken to literally thousands and thousands and thousands of people who have expressed these exact same concerns. Why are the prices so different? Is someone trying to scam me? Is someone trying to overcharge me? Which is another form of scamming, I guess. Well, it depends. So in this video, I'll be going over everything you should know about setting up a business in Dubai, the actual government costs, and why you should be careful when setting up a business. Because here at Gen Zone, we've been setting up businesses for over three years now. Again, over 700, and we're getting 10 Emirates IDs delivered to our clients every single day, and we know exactly what the process looks like in and out. So I'll be going over the actual cost. One disclaimer: I'm not gonna be going over the cost of the other Emirates because as of 2024, we stopped working with the other Emirates. We only work with Dubai. Why? Because yes, the other Emirates can be cheaper, but it comes with a lot of issues that we just do not want to deal with, and our clients also do not want to deal with. There's a market for everything, some people like the cheapest on the market, some people want, you know, a good price, but don't want to spend too too much, and that's exactly why we work with the Dubai free zones. And there's a lot of them, and some of them are expensive, some of them are cheap. So I'll be going over the ones that we use for our clients specifically and the actual pricing that you need to know that comes with this. Because of course, you don't want to overspend, but you want to get the best quality possible, and that's exactly what we do here at Gen Zone. We make sure that you don't get overcharged while still getting literally the best quality on the market. Look at our Google reviews, look at our testimonials on Trustpilot on our website, you'll see exactly what I mean. So the first thing you have to keep in mind is the cost of the license. This is what starts it all. It's the foundation of a business. So, unlike in Canada or the UK or Spain, the cost of a license here in Dubai is significantly more. Why? Because this license gives you the opportunity to get essentially this right here: an Emirates ID. What do you do with this Emirates ID? You get tax residency, you get a bank account here in Dubai, you get access to world-class amenities. And with this, of course, you can save a lot more money. It's a direct investment. So zero visa allocation licenses is a license with no visa allocation. So let's say you already had an Emirates ID from buying a property for 2 million Durham or more. If you get a golden visa, you don't need a visa under your company. You already have your own. So $12,900 is the average price for this in Durham's. In dollars, it's around $4,000. Okay, so that's the first thing you need to keep in mind. Now, moving forward, if you do need a visa, like most people, you're gonna have to add an allocation on that, which is gonna be $2,000 Durham more, around $545 more US. Now, if you need more allocations, you're gonna add another $2,000 every single time. And again, this is the cost that continues to go up. If you have too many allocations, you might even need to get a special office because your company is getting quite large. Now, the next cost you have to keep in mind, other than the cost of the license and the allocations, is the cost of the visa itself. Each visa costs around $1,000 US dollars, so around $3,750 Durhams. And if you have multiple people, multiply this by the amount of people under your company. And I'm not talking about people that work for you in the Philippines or work for you in Spain, I'm talking about people that are going to actually need one of these Emirates IDs right here. For this, they're gonna need to pay for this visa cost. You're gonna need to pay for it at least. So that's that. Now, in addition to that, you're also gonna have to pay for the establishment card that even allows you to hire people under your company. Some people call it the immigration card. This is another 2,000 Durham or $545 US dollars. So we just went over the cost of the license, the allocations, the cost of the visa, and the cost of the immigration card. So these are the key factors when setting up a company. Now, there are more costs associated because that's not it. However, of course, online I see this advertised all the time. People think this is the only thing. Just set up, that's all you have to pay. What would that be around $5,000? Then you're good to go. No, that is not all because there are more costs. And the reason why I'm saying this is because a lot of people misrepresent what you actually have to pay just to get you in the door, get your business, and then hit you with other fees later. It's kind of like contractors when you start fixing your house, doing some renovations, and then they tell you, oh, you need to pay for these door handles, too. Speaking from experience, this just happened to me last week. Anyway, so moving forward, what do you need to pay for? You need to pay for the medical and biometrics exams for each visa holder. Now, there are three tiers of appointments that you can have: standard, which we do not do here at Gen Zone because it takes much too long, like a week and a half, two weeks, to complete the entire process, which is a colossal waste of time. There's VIP, which is a little bit less of a waste of time, which you can do your medical the same day and you get the results within around 30 minutes to an hour, but your biometrics is scheduled on another day, like three, four, five business days later, which is again a colossal waste of time for all of our clients looking to get things done quickly, not waste money on hotels, looking to get started, uh, you know, ASAP. So, what we do for our clients here at Gen Zone is we have a V VIP process for our clients to ensure that everything is done right away, the same day, medical and biometrics, which is quite rare. I know that the medical and biometrics uh centers still advertise same day appointments. This is not the case anymore, they do not have it. Check for it yourself, give them a call, you'll see it is not available. So the V VIP medical and biometrics is around 3,500 during. So in dollars, around $800. And again, keep in mind this saves you days and days and days of waiting. A hotel each day is around $150, $100, right? So this saves you that. Well, great, right? And more than that, it saves you the effort of having to go to the medical center one day, leave, and then come back one day later. It's just a waste of time. You need to run your business. I understand that it's hard to even make time to set up a business in Dubai as crazy as that seems. I know it's a pretty big move and you would expect people to make time for it, but I understand you have a business to run, you need to do things, right? You can't just make time freely. So that's why we only do V VIP here. The other processes are just not worth it. And if you want to set up a business bank account here in Dubai and personal bank account, we do this for $500. Of course, you can see prices all over the market. I've seen people charge a thousand dollars just for a personal bank account. And what is the difference between paying a thousand dollars and our fee? To be honest, nothing. We have the best service on the market. We can get your personal bank account open instantly and your business bank account open the same day. So there's no difference between someone else and us. We do give the best service on the market. So if you see someone charging $15,000, $20,000, $30,000, I've seen this. They're not better than us here at Gen Zone. Check our Google reviews, they speak for themselves. We make sure that you have the best experience the first time. And then finally, when you work with an agency, you're going to have to pay a service fee. Some people hide this and then they'll charge it to you after once it's too late for you to say, Oh, I don't want to pay this fee. Us, it's very transparent. $2,500 up front. This is not going to be something that we charge you in the future as well. Unlike many companies that have incredibly high renewal management fees, like $2,000 to just simply renew your license. That is not something we do here at Gen Zone. At the time of this recording, we don't even charge any service fees for renewals, we just charge you the government price. The reason why is because we have a retainer agreement with the free zones. We don't need to or don't want to at the moment charge you any additional fees. Well, again, like I mentioned with other people, they'll make you sign contracts that force you to pay their fees, and if you don't pay it, you have to pay $2,000 to leave. Speaking from experience, I have a lot of clients who have left this management from other companies and came to us to make sure that we could manage it for them. Not even about the price, they didn't mind paying the price, it's just more about the service. Here at Gen Zone, we have zero contracts that force you to work with us. If you want to go do this yourself later or hire another company to do it for you, be our guest. We do not care. You can go and do that. That is not an issue for us. And from our entire history here at GenZone, we haven't ever had even one person leave our management services because they were not happy with our services. That has just never happened. So to give you a rough idea, if you just want a business license with one visa, the entire package, including our service fee, will be around $9,000. For two people, it'll be just under $11,000. And the more people you add, the more costs you will incur. So if you want to set up a business with us here at Gen Zone in Dubai, click on the link down below. We'll give you a free consultation to go over exactly how we can help you get fully set up. And of course, if you want to see the entire process before getting on a call, this video right here goes over everything in detail. So you need to watch it if you want to learn more. So we'll see you on that call, or I'll see you in this video right here.