Executive summary
This free zone transparency scorecard measures how openly each of 18 major UAE free zones discloses its own fees on its own official website. Every zone was checked against seven verifiable criteria — published setup prices, itemised breakdowns, visa costs, renewal fees, a public cost calculator, dated pricing and inclusion disclosure — and scored out of 100. The result is the first published ranking of UAE free zone fee transparency: not how cheap a zone is, but how honest its public pricing is before you ever speak to a salesperson.
- Executive summary
- Key findings — August 2026
- Methodology — how the transparency score works
- UAE Free Zone Transparency Scorecard — 18 zones ranked (August 2026)
- What the grades mean in practice
- Evidence register — official sources checked per zone
- Why free zone transparency is getting worse, not better
- What this scorecard does not measure
Jump to: Methodology | Full scorecard table | Evidence register | Download CSV
Key findings — August 2026
- No zone earned an A. The highest free zone transparency score is DMCC at 75/100 — and even DMCC does not date its fee schedule or offer a public instant-price calculator.
- Only 3 of 18 zones score 60 or higher: DMCC (75), SPC Free Zone (67.5) and RAKEZ (60). These are the only zones where a founder can reconstruct most of the real cost of setting up from official pages alone.
- 8 of 18 zones score below 20/100. IFZA, SAIF Zone and Dubai CommerCity publish no usable pricing at all on their official websites — every figure circulating for these zones comes from third-party consultants.
- The most expensive zone is the most transparent. DMCC publishes a complete schedule of charges including renewal fees, late-renewal penalties and per-visa costs. Several of the cheapest zones publish nothing.
- Renewal fees are the biggest blind spot. Only 2 of 18 zones (DMCC and RAKEZ) clearly disclose what Year 2 will cost on their official sites. This matches the renewal-cost gaps documented in our Renewal Cost Index.
- “Cost calculators” are often lead forms. Of the 8 zones advertising a calculator, only JAFZA’s produces an estimate without first demanding your name, email and phone number.
Methodology — how the transparency score works
Each zone was scored between 30 July and 2 August 2026 using only its own official website, fee schedules and published documents. Third-party consultant prices were deliberately excluded: this scorecard measures what the zone itself tells the public. Every criterion is a checkable fact — a zone either publishes the information or it does not.
| # | Criterion | What earns the points | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | Publishes setup prices | At least one concrete AED price for a current licence or package on the official domain | 25% |
| C2 | Itemised breakdown or fee schedule | Line-item fees (establishment card, e-channel, per-activity fees) or a downloadable official fee schedule — not just a “from AED X” headline | 15% |
| C3 | Publishes visa costs | AED figures for residence-visa components (visa, medical, Emirates ID, e-channel) on the official domain | 15% |
| C4 | Publishes renewal fees | Explicit renewal pricing, or a written same-price renewal guarantee | 15% |
| C5 | Public cost calculator | An interactive tool on the official site that returns an estimate; half marks if it demands contact details before showing a price | 15% |
| C6 | Pricing is dated | Fee page or schedule states a year, effective date or validity period | 10% |
| C7 | Inclusion disclosure | Headline price clearly states what is included and excluded (e.g. “visa costs not included”) | 5% |
Scoring: each criterion is marked Yes (full weight), Partial (half weight) or No (zero). Weights sum to 100%. Grades: A = 80–100 (highly transparent), B = 60–79.5, C = 40–59.5, D = 20–39.5, E = below 20 (opaque). A Partial is recorded wherever a zone publishes some but not all of the required information — for example a single product price without a general price list, or a calculator gated behind a lead form.
Two design choices are worth flagging. First, setup-price publication carries the largest weight (25%) because it is the gateway fact: without any official price, no other disclosure can be cross-checked. Second, portal-only pricing behind a customer login counts as unpublished, because the audience for a transparency measure is the founder who has not yet signed — the person the fee information is being withheld from. Where evidence was ambiguous, the zone received the benefit of the doubt at Partial rather than No, and the ambiguity is noted in the evidence register.
UAE Free Zone Transparency Scorecard — 18 zones ranked (August 2026)
Y = published on official site. P = partially published. N = not published. Full evidence links are in the evidence register below.
| Rank | Free zone | C1 Prices | C2 Breakdown | C3 Visa | C4 Renewal | C5 Calculator | C6 Dated | C7 Inclusions | Score | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DMCC | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | N | Y | 75 | B |
| 2 | SPC Free Zone | Y | Y | Y | N | P | N | Y | 67.5 | B |
| 3 | RAKEZ | Y | P | P | Y | N | N | Y | 60 | B |
| 4 | JAFZA | Y | P | N | P | Y | N | P | 57.5 | C |
| 5= | RAK Innovation City | Y | P | P | N | P | N | Y | 52.5 | C |
| 5= | DAFZ (Dubai Airport Free Zone) | Y | P | Y | N | N | N | Y | 52.5 | C |
| 7 | Masdar City Free Zone | Y | P | N | N | P | N | Y | 45 | C |
| 8 | twofour54 | Y | P | N | N | N | P | Y | 42.5 | C |
| 9 | Dubai South | Y | Y | N | N | N | N | N | 40 | C |
| 10 | Ajman Free Zone (AFZA) | P | N | N | P | P | N | P | 30 | D |
| 11 | Hamriyah Free Zone | P | N | N | N | N | N | Y | 17.5 | E |
| 12= | Dubai Internet City | P | N | N | N | N | N | P | 15 | E |
| 12= | Dubai Media City | P | N | N | N | N | N | P | 15 | E |
| 14= | Fujairah Creative City | N | N | N | N | P | N | N | 7.5 | E |
| 14= | Dubai Silicon Oasis | N | P | N | N | N | N | N | 7.5 | E |
| 16= | Dubai CommerCity | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | 0 | E |
| 16= | IFZA | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | 0 | E |
| 16= | SAIF Zone | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | 0 | E |
What the grades mean in practice
Grade B (DMCC, SPC, RAKEZ): you can budget Year 1 from official pages alone. DMCC publishes a complete schedule of charges covering licence fees, renewal packages, multi-year renewals, late-renewal penalties and a full visa fee table. SPC Free Zone publishes an itemised pay-as-you-go menu (licence AED 6,875, visa allocation AED 1,600, e-channel AED 2,280, investor visa AED 2,530). RAKEZ publishes its AED 14,000 all-inclusive package with a written “same renewal price guaranteed” commitment — one of only two official renewal-price disclosures in the entire market.
Grade C (JAFZA through Dubai South): real prices exist officially but with gaps. JAFZA publishes annual licence fees by type (trading AED 15,000, service AED 5,000) and runs the only calculator that estimates without a lead form, but publishes no visa fees. Dubai South quietly hosts an official registration and licensing fee schedule PDF that almost nobody finds. twofour54’s standard fees (licence AED 15,000 + registration AED 3,500) appear only inside news articles about its current two-year fee waiver.
Grade D–E (AFZA and below): official pricing is fragmentary or absent. IFZA — one of the most heavily marketed zones in the UAE — publishes no prices at all and routes every enquiry through its partner network, meaning every IFZA price you have ever seen came from a commissioned reseller, not the authority. Dubai CommerCity’s own pricing FAQ page now returns a 404. For these zones, independent evidence-based comparison sites are effectively the only public source of pricing.
Evidence register — official sources checked per zone
| Free zone | Primary official evidence | Checked |
|---|---|---|
| DMCC | Schedule of Charges; setup packages | 2026-08-02 |
| SPC Free Zone | Pay-as-you-go fee menu; cost calculator (contact-gated) | 2026-08-02 |
| RAKEZ | AED 14,000 all-inclusive package + renewal guarantee | 2026-08-02 |
| JAFZA | Licence types and fees; cost calculator | 2026-08-02 |
| RAK Innovation City | Published packages AED 6,600–22,550 | 2026-08-02 |
| DAFZ | Scality programme fees incl. visa AED 4,200 | 2026-08-02 |
| Masdar City Free Zone | Licensing packages AED 7,000–27,000 | 2026-08-02 |
| twofour54 | Official fee article + waiver terms | 2026-08-02 |
| Dubai South | Registration & licensing fees PDF | 2026-08-02 |
| Ajman Free Zone | Cost calculator (contact-gated); e-commerce package blog | 2026-08-02 |
| Hamriyah Free Zone | FAQ: basic licence AED 11,000, visas excluded | 2026-08-02 |
| Dubai Internet City | GoFreelance AED 7,500/yr; company licences quote-based | 2026-08-02 |
| Dubai Media City | GoFreelance AED 7,500/yr; company licences quote-based | 2026-08-02 |
| Fujairah Creative City | Homepage calculator; no static prices found | 2026-08-02 |
| Dubai Silicon Oasis | Licence types (no prices); Dtec 2018 services price list | 2026-08-02 |
| Dubai CommerCity | Official site; pricing FAQ removed (404) | 2026-08-02 |
| IFZA | Setup pages — no public prices, partner-quote model | 2026-08-02 |
| SAIF Zone | Package pages — no AED prices published | 2026-08-02 |
Why free zone transparency is getting worse, not better
The most striking pattern in the data is structural. The zones that score worst are not small or under-resourced — they include some of the largest marketing spenders in the UAE company-formation industry. Free zone transparency has declined as the reseller channel has grown: when a zone sells mainly through commissioned partners, publishing an official price list undercuts every partner’s ability to bundle, discount and upsell. IFZA is the clearest case. It is among the most advertised free zones in the country, yet its official website contains no prices at all. Every IFZA figure a founder encounters is set by an intermediary with a margin to protect.
The second pattern is the lead-form calculator. Five zones now operate tools branded as cost calculators that are, functionally, contact-capture forms. The founder enters activity, visa count and licence duration — then must hand over a name, phone number and email to see a number, which arrives with a disclaimer that it is an estimate only.
A genuine calculator, like JAFZA’s, shows the figure first. A lead-form calculator inverts the exchange: you pay with your data before you learn the price. On this free zone transparency scorecard, that distinction is worth half the calculator weighting, and it is the difference between JAFZA’s full marks and the half marks earned by SPC, AFZA, Masdar, Fujairah Creative City and RAK Innovation City. The gating also has a second-order cost that founders rarely see: once the contact details are captured, the estimate arrives alongside a sales follow-up, and the number quoted on the call does not always match the number the tool displayed. An ungated calculator leaves a paper trail; a gated one leaves a phone call.
The third pattern is renewal silence. Sixteen of eighteen zones publish nothing about what happens to the price in Year 2. This is not an accident of web design. First-year promotional pricing is the industry’s main acquisition lever, and renewal uplift is where margin is recovered — our Renewal Cost Index documents renewal fees running up to 15% above Year 1 in evidence-confirmed cases. The two exceptions deserve credit: DMCC publishes explicit renewal packages including multi-year rates and late fees, and RAKEZ puts a same-price renewal guarantee in writing on its package page. Any zone could do this tomorrow.
How a zone could reach the A band
No zone currently scores 80. The path is short and entirely within each authority’s control: publish a dated fee schedule covering licence, establishment card, e-channel and per-visa costs; state the renewal price next to the setup price; make the calculator show its estimate before asking for contact details; and put a version date on the fee page. A zone doing those four things would score 90+ and would be the first A-grade authority in this free zone transparency ranking. We will re-score and re-version this page when any zone materially changes its disclosure.
What this scorecard does not measure
Transparency is not the same as value. A zone can be opaque online and still deliver excellent service, and a transparent zone can still be expensive — DMCC proves both points at once. This scorecard also does not measure whether published prices are honoured in practice, response quality of sales teams, or fee changes communicated privately to existing licensees. Where a zone’s pricing lives inside a customer portal behind a login, it is treated as unpublished, because a prospective founder cannot see it. Portal-only disclosure protects existing customers, not people deciding where to incorporate.
Scores reflect what was verifiably live on each official website between 30 July and 2 August 2026. Zones update their sites frequently; we re-check and re-version this scorecard. If you represent a free zone and have published new fee information, use the correction link below and we will re-score within one review cycle.
Version and citation
Version: 1.0 — published August 2026. Scoring window: 30 July – 2 August 2026.
Cite as: UAE Freezone Compare, “UAE Free Zone Transparency Scorecard”, August 2026.
Free zone transparency FAQs
Why does free zone transparency matter if consultants publish the prices anyway?
Consultant-published prices are commissioned marketing: they can be outdated, cherry-picked to the cheapest tier, or padded with service fees. When the authority itself publishes fees — as DMCC and SPC do — you can verify any quote independently. When it does not, as with IFZA or SAIF Zone, no quote you receive can be checked against an official source, and renewal-year surprises become far more likely. Our Cost Index and Visa Cost Index exist precisely to fill that gap with evidence-tiered figures.
Does a low transparency score mean a zone is bad or overpriced?
No. It means you cannot budget from official sources alone and should demand a written, itemised quote covering Year 1 and renewal before committing. Several E-grade zones are competitively priced — the risk is not the price, it is the inability to verify it, and the historical pattern of renewal costs exceeding first-year promotional pricing documented in our Renewal Cost Index.
How were “cost calculators” scored?
Full marks required a tool that returns an estimate on the official site without demanding personal contact details. JAFZA’s calculator was the only one to pass cleanly. SPC, AFZA, Masdar, Fujairah Creative City and RAK Innovation City operate tools that either require name, phone and email before displaying a price or route the output to a sales callback — useful, but a lead form is not price transparency, so they received half marks.
Request a current verified quote
Official transparency tells you what a zone admits publicly. If you want a current, written, itemised quote for a specific zone and visa count — including the renewal-year figures most zones will not publish — request one through our team and compare it against our cost calculator before you commit.
Download the Transparency Scorecard dataset
The CSV includes every zone, all seven criterion marks (Y/P/N), weighted scores, grades, primary evidence URLs and check dates. Use it with the methodology notes on this page; the marks record what each zone published on its official website during the scoring window, not the quality or price of the zone itself.