Prices, 2026
What an Ajman NuVentures Centre Company Really Costs
Two numbers, everything that sits inside them, and an honest list of the things other people leave off the quote.
Setup pricing in the UAE is usually quoted as a headline with the expensive parts held back until you are committed. Here is the whole thing: what the licence costs, what the visa adds, what renews every year, and what genuinely cannot be folded into a fixed price. These are the numbers we invoice, VAT included.
The package most people take
AED 10,800
Ajman NuVentures Centre licence plus one residence visa, VAT included.
Licence on its own
AED 4,888 no visa
The trade licence with the visa quota left open for later.
In short
A Ajman NuVentures Centre company costs AED 4,888 for the licence alone, or AED 10,800 with one residence visa, VAT included. Renewal is annual. Medical insurance, extra visas, attestation and accounting sit outside those figures and are quoted separately.
- Licence only
- AED 4,888Year one
- Licence plus one visa
- AED 10,800VAT included
- Year two
- Stated in your quoteStated upfront
- Corporate tax
- 9% above AED 375,000Registration mandatory
- VAT
- 5%Above the threshold
- Not included
- Insurance, extra visasQuoted separately
Figures on this page were last checked on 2026-10-04. Government fees can change without notice.
The two packages side by side
| Licence only | Licence plus one visa | Freelancer permit | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | AED 4,888 | AED 10,800 | a quoted freelancer fee · on request with visa |
| Trade licence | Included | Included | Professional permit, not a company |
| Registered address | Included | Included | Lease agreement included |
| Establishment card | Not needed | Included | Included with the visa |
| Residence visa | Quota left open | Included | Included in the higher figure |
| Emirates ID | Not applicable | Included, two year | Included with the visa |
| VAT | Included | Included | Zone price, ask about VAT |
| Split payments | On request | 4 x an instalment plan | On request |
| Shareholders | Confirmed per case | Confirmed per case | One person only |
| Activities | Confirmed per case | Confirmed per case | One profession |
What is inside the AED 10,800
This is the package most people take. Every line below is covered by that one number.
- Ajman NuVentures Centre trade licence, one year
- Activity allowance confirmed in writing
- Name reservation and initial approval
- Certificate of incorporation
- Memorandum of association
- Share certificates
- Registered free zone address
- Immigration establishment card
- Entry permit or in country status change
- Medical fitness test
- Emirates ID, two year
- Residence visa stamping
- Government fees
- VAT
How to read a UAE setup quote without getting caught
Four questions turn a headline number into a comparable one. Ask them of us and of everyone else you are speaking to.
The first question is what the number includes at the immigration end. A licence price and a package price are different things by roughly eight thousand dirhams, and quotes are frequently written so that the distinction is technically disclosed but practically invisible. Ask directly: does this figure include the establishment card, the entry permit, the medical, the Emirates ID and the stamping. If the answer is anything other than a clean yes, you are comparing a licence price against somebody else's package price.
The second is whether VAT is inside or outside. Five percent on a fourteen thousand dirham package is seven hundred dirhams, which is enough to move a quote from cheapest to second cheapest. UAE B2B quotes are often written excluding VAT by convention, which is legitimate, but it makes a like for like comparison harder. Every figure on this site includes it.
The third, and the one almost nobody asks, is what year two costs. The setup price is a one off. The licence fee, the establishment card, the visa cycle, the insurance and the filing are forever. Two quotes a thousand dirhams apart at setup can be five thousand apart across three years, and the cheaper setup is frequently attached to the more expensive licence. We state the renewal figure in the first quote for exactly this reason, and if a competing quote does not, ask for it in writing.
The fourth is what happens if something is refused or delayed. If the name is rejected, is a second submission chargeable. If an activity turns out to need an external approval, who pays for it and what happens to the timeline. If the bank declines, does the agent help with a second application or is that a new engagement. These are not hypothetical: name rejections and regulator approvals are ordinary events, and the difference between agents shows up there rather than in the headline price.
One warning sign is worth naming. A quote materially below the market for the same package usually means either that the visa is excluded, that the figure is a deposit with the balance invoiced later, or that the activity list has been narrowed to the cheapest category and will not actually cover what you do. All three are recoverable, and all three cost more to fix than the discount was worth.
- Does the price include the establishment card, medical, Emirates ID and stamping
- Is VAT inside the number or added at invoice
- What does year two cost, in writing
- Who pays if a name is rejected or an approval is needed
- Is this the full price or a deposit
- Does the activity list actually cover what I do
When the AED 4,888 licence is the right choice
Two thirds of the price, and for a decent number of people it is the correct answer rather than the cheap one.
The licence only package makes sense in three situations. The first is that you already hold a UAE residence visa through an employer, through a spouse, or through another company you own. In that case a second visa is unnecessary and the immigration element of the package is money spent on something you already have.
The second is that you do not need residence at all. Plenty of people register a UAE company to invoice international clients, to hold intellectual property, or to have a corporate presence in the region, while living somewhere else entirely. A licence with no visa does that perfectly well and costs less than half the package. The trade off, and it is a real one, is banking: non resident shareholders face a narrower set of banks and higher balance requirements, which is worth weighing against the saving.
The third is timing. The visa allocation stays open when you take the licence alone, which means you can add the visa later without re incorporating. Some people take the licence, start trading, and add the visa in month four when cash flow is clearer. The total cost of doing it in two steps is slightly higher than doing it at once, because some of the immigration groundwork is charged on its own rather than bundled, but it is not punitive and it can be the right call.
Where the licence only option is a false economy is when you know you will need residence within the year. Doing it together is cheaper, the file moves in one continuous run rather than being reopened, and you avoid a second round of document collection. If the visa is inevitable, take the package.
The other thing the licence only route does not solve is UAE tax residency for you personally. A company licence does not make you a UAE tax resident. That status has its own tests around presence and residence, and a licence without a visa does not begin to satisfy them. If personal tax residency is the actual objective, say so at the start, because it changes which package is right and it is not a question a setup agent should be answering with a shrug.
Adding the visa later is always possible. The quota stays attached to the licence whether you use it in month one or month twelve.
The annual cost, which is what you are actually committing to
Setup happens once. Everything below happens every year for as long as the company exists.
The licence renews annually and Ajman NuVentures Centre's published rate card is explicit about the cost: the renewal figure is stated in your first quote rather than left to year two. Not a discounted renewal tariff, and not a higher one either. Whatever the package costs to take is what it costs to keep, which removes the most common unpleasant surprise in UAE setup pricing.
The residence visa renews on its own two year cycle, which means in a given year you may have a licence renewal only, or a licence renewal and a visa renewal together. The visa renewal carries another medical fitness test, a reissued Emirates ID and the stamping process. Because the cycles are different lengths they drift apart over time, so the two renewals rarely land in the same month after the first couple of years.
Medical insurance is mandatory for residence and for visa renewal. It is not a setup cost and no honest package includes it, because the premium depends on your age, your family size and the level of cover. It is, however, unavoidable, and for a family it is often the largest annual number after the licence itself. Budget it properly rather than discovering it at renewal.
Corporate tax filing is annual and mandatory whether or not you owe anything. VAT filing, if you are registered, is quarterly. Bookkeeping to support both is realistically monthly. These are small numbers individually for a small company and they are not optional, and the cost of catching up twelve months of records at the filing deadline is several times the cost of keeping them as you go.
Add those together and the true annual cost of holding an Ajman NuVentures Centre company with one resident owner is materially more than the licence fee on its own, and still comfortably the lowest in the country for what it delivers. The reason we spell it out is that nobody regrets a cost they were told about in advance. What causes the problem is a setup price presented as though it were the whole commitment.
Nobody regrets a cost they were told about in advance. What causes the problem is a setup price presented as though it were the whole commitment.
What actually moves the price up from the headline
Five things change the number. None of them is a surprise if it is raised before you pay.
Additional visas are the biggest and most common. Each extra person on the company's sponsorship carries its own government fees, its own medical and its own Emirates ID, and beyond a small number it also requires a facility upgrade because the visa allocation is tied to the space. A family of four and two employees is a different quote from a single owner, and it should be priced as one file rather than assembled one visa at a time.
General Trading is priced separately by the zone. General Trading is priced separately and is confirmed in your quote. If your trading genuinely spans unrelated goods it is worth taking. If it does not, there is usually a narrower trading activity that covers the same trade for less, and a normal activity list covers the same trade for less.
External regulator approvals apply to finance, healthcare, education, food and media activities among others. Each carries its own fee and, more significantly, its own timeline. The fee is usually modest next to the delay, which is why the important part is knowing about it at quote stage rather than at week three.
Attestation of foreign documents applies whenever a corporate shareholder is involved, and sometimes for personal documents depending on nationality and activity. The cost varies by country because it depends on that country's certification process and its UAE embassy. It is charged at cost and it is genuinely outside anybody's control here.
Facility upgrades are the fifth. Moving from the registered address to a dedicated office or a warehouse changes the annual cost significantly and raises the visa allocation with it. It is the one item on this list that is a business decision rather than an administrative one, and it is worth taking deliberately rather than as a reaction to a blocked visa application.
Splitting the payment into four
The all inclusive package can be paid in four instalments of an instalment plan rather than one payment of AED 10,800.
Paying in instalments can be arranged rather than assumed, and the terms are stated on your quote. The file opens on the first payment, which means the process starts immediately rather than waiting for the full amount to clear. For a founder funding setup out of personal savings before the company earns anything, that is often the difference between starting this month and starting next quarter.
The mechanics are straightforward: the instalment schedule is set at the point of payment, the remaining payments are taken automatically on their dates, and the licence and visa process runs in parallel rather than being held back. There is no interest and no arrangement fee on the split, and the total you pay is the same AED 10,800.
There is a judgement worth making here rather than defaulting. If the money is available and there is no better use for it, paying once is simpler and there is nothing to track. If cash is tight in the first month, or if you would rather keep working capital available while the company gets going, the split costs you nothing and keeps the cash where it is useful.
For the licence only package at AED 4,888 the split is available on request rather than as standard, simply because the amount is smaller. Ask when you are quoted if it would help.
One practical note. Whichever route you choose, the invoice and the receipt are issued in your company name once the company exists, and before that in your own name. That matters for your own accounting, because setup costs are a legitimate business expense and you want the documentation to support that when the first corporate tax return is prepared. We issue everything in a form that supports the claim rather than a handwritten confirmation.
What we will not promise you about price
Three things get promised in this market that nobody can actually deliver. Here is our position on each.
We will not guarantee a bank account. The account decision belongs to a commercial bank applying its own compliance standards, and it can decline without giving a reason. We prepare the file, introduce you to a relationship manager rather than a branch queue, and brief you on the questions that will come. That materially improves the odds and it is not the same thing as a guarantee. Anybody offering one is describing something outside their control, which tells you something useful about the rest of their claims.
We will not guarantee that government fees hold. Fees, thresholds and conditions are set by authorities that can change them without notice, and any agent claiming a fixed price for the next three years is making a promise on someone else's behalf. What we do instead is date every quote and honour it for a stated period, so the number you are given is real for a defined window rather than indefinitely.
We will not quote a timeline we cannot control. Two to four weeks to the licence is what a standard activity with complete documents and individual shareholders actually takes. Where an external regulator approval or a foreign attestation is involved, the timeline depends on an authority elsewhere and we say so at quote stage rather than quoting the best case and explaining later.
What we will commit to is the price itself. The quote is itemised, VAT is inside it, the year two renewal is stated on the same page, and no second invoice arrives once the file is open. If something genuinely extra becomes necessary, an external approval that was not apparent from the activity description for example, you are told before it is incurred rather than billed afterwards.
This is a deliberately unexciting set of promises. It is also the set that survives contact with the actual process, which is more than can be said for a guaranteed bank account and a fixed price forever.
Every quote is dated. Government fees can move, and we would rather say that than imply a number holds indefinitely.
The running costs nobody puts in a setup quote
These are not hidden fees. They are the ordinary costs of operating a company, and they belong in your plan rather than in our invoice.
Bank charges come first because they are the most consistently underestimated. UAE corporate accounts typically carry a monthly maintenance fee, charges on international transfers both incoming and outgoing, and a minimum balance requirement with a penalty if you fall below it. For a company receiving a handful of international payments a month, the transfer charges alone can exceed the monthly fee. Ask about the fee schedule before choosing the bank rather than after the first statement.
Accounting is next. Corporate tax filing is annual and mandatory, VAT filing is quarterly if you are registered, and both depend on books that have actually been kept. A small company can run on cloud accounting software with a bookkeeper reviewing monthly, and the annual cost of that is modest against the cost of reconstructing a year of records under deadline. It is also the difference between a filing that takes an afternoon and one that takes a fortnight.
Medical insurance for you and any dependants is a condition of residence, renews annually and moves with age and cover level. For a single person it is a manageable line. For a family it is often the largest recurring cost after the licence itself, and it is genuinely impossible for any setup package to include honestly because it depends entirely on who is being covered.
Then the ordinary operating items: a domain and email, a website if the business needs one, a payment gateway with its own merchant fees if you sell online, accounting software, a phone line, and coworking or office space if you need somewhere to actually sit. None of these is UAE specific and none belongs in a setup quote, but together they are the difference between a plan that works and a plan that was built on a licence fee.
The reason we spell this out on a pricing page is that a setup cost presented in isolation encourages a decision made on the wrong number. The licence is the entry ticket. What matters is whether the business supports the annual cost of being here, and that is a calculation worth doing before the first payment rather than during the first renewal.
- Bank fees: monthly charges, transfer fees, minimum balance penalties
- Bookkeeping, corporate tax filing and VAT returns
- Medical insurance for you and every dependant
- Domain, email, website and payment gateway fees
- Coworking or office space if you need somewhere to sit
- Licence and visa renewals on their own cycles
Three worked budgets
The same zone, three different businesses, three quite different first year numbers. This is why a single headline price is not a plan.
The solo consultant. One shareholder, a professional services licence, one residence visa, no staff, working from home or a coworking desk. Setup is the AED 10,800 package. Year one adds medical insurance for one person, a bank account with its monthly charges, cloud accounting with a light bookkeeping review, and the corporate tax registration and filing. This is the leanest realistic profile and the one the package is designed around. Year two drops to the licence renewal plus the same running costs, with the visa not renewing until year three.
The e-commerce seller. One shareholder, an e-commerce licence, one residence visa, selling through marketplaces and an own store. Setup is the same AED 10,800. The difference is everything that sits around it: a payment gateway with merchant fees taken as a percentage of every sale, a store platform, possibly a fulfilment arrangement, and VAT registration once sales cross the threshold, which brings quarterly filings. The licence is the smallest line in that budget by a wide margin.
The family of four. One shareholder taking the package, then a spouse and two children sponsored afterwards. Setup is AED 10,800 plus three dependant visas quoted individually, each with its own government fees, medical and Emirates ID. Add attestation and legal translation of a marriage certificate and two birth certificates, which varies enormously by country. Add medical insurance for four people, which will be the largest recurring line. Add a tenancy large enough to satisfy the accommodation requirement, because a studio does not support a family sponsorship.
The pattern across all three is that the licence is a small and predictable part of the whole, and that the variance comes from people and from the business model rather than from the zone. This is also why we ask how many people are on the file in the first message: a quote for one person and a quote for a family are different documents, and sizing it once at the start is cheaper than assembling it one application at a time.
We will put whichever of these shapes matches your case into writing as a three year view rather than a setup price, if you ask for it. It is the comparison we would want if we were buying, and it is a considerably better basis for a decision than the number at the top of this page.
These are shapes rather than quotes. The dependant visas, the attestation and the insurance all depend on nationality, family size and age, so they are priced individually.
What is genuinely extra
Nobody can fold these into a fixed price honestly, so they are quoted separately and only when you need them.
Extra visas
Each additional shareholder, employee or family member is priced on its own. Tell us the headcount and we quote the whole file at once rather than one at a time.
Dependants
Spouse, children and parents carry their own government fees and conditions, and those depend on income, accommodation and, for parents, a deposit and insurance.
Attestation and translation
Some activities and some nationalities need documents attested or legally translated. The cost depends entirely on the country of origin and the embassy involved.
Physical office or warehouse
The package address satisfies the licence and the immigration file. Real space is a separate annual cost, and it is also what raises your visa allocation.
Bank account
We prepare the file and make the introduction at no charge. Any minimum balance the bank requires is between you and the bank.
Accounting and filing
Corporate tax registration is included in the handover. Bookkeeping, VAT returns and the annual filing are a monthly or annual service, quoted once we know the volume.
Medical insurance
Mandatory for residence and for renewal. The premium moves with age and cover level, so it is a real number that belongs in your budget rather than a hidden one in ours.
External regulator approvals
Finance, healthcare, education, food and media activities need clearance from an authority outside the zone, with its own fee and its own timeline.
Amendments later
Adding an activity, changing the name, transferring shares or changing the manager are each an application with a fee. Cheap to avoid at setup, not free afterwards.
Paying for it
One invoice
Itemised, dated, VAT shown separately so your accountant can reclaim it if you are registered. No second invoice appears once the file is open.
One invoice, or instalments on request
The AED 10,800 package splits into four payments of an instalment plan at no additional cost. The file opens on the first instalment.
Card, transfer or cash
Whatever suits. The receipt and the licence carry your company name, not ours, because it is your company rather than a nominee arrangement.
One number, in writing
Tell us what you are setting up
Fill in the form and we pass your details to the right licensing partner for your case. They come back with one itemised price covering the licence, the visa, the government fees and VAT. If Ajman NuVentures Centre is the wrong answer for your business, you will be told that instead.
No call centre, no cold calling, and nothing shared with anybody until you press send.
Free written quote
Tell us what you need
Fill this in and we pass it to the right licensing partner. Your quote comes back in writing.
Cost questions
The pricing questions people actually ask, including the awkward ones.