The heavyweight: adjacent to Jebel Ali Port, built for trading, logistics and manufacturing at scale. The AED 5,000 figure is the official licence fee alone — registration, establishment card and a lease come on top, so real entry budgets start well above it. JAFZA Offshore is a separate, much cheaper vehicle for holding structures.
LAST VERIFIED: 21 JUL 2026 · Tariff verified against the official schedule.
JAFZA is a physical-goods free zone. It fits importers, re-exporters, distributors, logistics operators and light manufacturers that move containers through Jebel Ali Port — the largest port in the region — and need warehouses, yards or land plots next to the quay. With 1,500+ licensed activities and no fixed visa cap (allocation follows your facility), it scales with headcount and stock rather than boxing you into a desk.
It is the wrong zone for a solo consultant, a freelancer, a small agency or a digital startup. Those businesses need a desk, not a warehouse, and the JAFZA model — a mandatory physical facility on every licence — makes them overpay. A cost-led service company is better served by a flexi-desk zone; see the free-zone index for desk-based options like IFZA or Meydan.
Budget beyond the licence for: name reservation and registration, the establishment card, a lease you cannot skip (office suite, warehouse or land plot, priced per facility), immigration and medical for each visa, and annual renewal. Model the real number on the setup-cost calculator before you commit — the gap between the AED 5,000 line and a warehoused operation is large.
JAFZA does not publish a fixed visa limit — allocation follows the size of the facility you lease, so a large warehouse supports a large team while a compact office supports a few. That makes it well suited to staff-heavy logistics and manufacturing, and awkward for a one-person holding.
As a qualifying free zone, JAFZA companies can target the 0% qualifying-income rate under UAE corporate tax if they keep adequate substance — real premises, staff and activity in the zone. Because JAFZA tenants usually hold genuine warehouses and staff on site, that substance test is easier to meet here than in a flexi-desk zone; see corporate tax for the qualifying conditions. For pure holding with no UAE operations, JAFZA Offshore is a separate, cheaper vehicle with no visas and no physical presence.
The three overlap on trading but differ sharply on physicality.
| Zone | Base | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| JAFZA | Jebel Ali Port; warehouses & land at scale | Physical trade, logistics, manufacturing that moves its own cargo |
| DMCC | JLT towers; office space, no port-side warehousing | Commodity and general traders who trade on paper |
| Dubai South | Al Maktoum airport / logistics district | Aviation and e-commerce logistics at a lighter cost |
If your cargo physically passes through Jebel Ali, JAFZA is hard to beat and the premium is justified. If you trade from an office, DMCC is cheaper and better placed for commodities; if you want logistics nearer the new airport at a lighter cost, look at Dubai South.
Pick licensed activities and reserve a trade name. Activity choice drives approvals, banking and whether your income can be QFZP-qualifying.
Passports, application forms and a clean source-of-funds story. No local sponsor is needed — free zone companies are 100% foreign-owned.
The zone issues your licence (typically 10–15 business days), then the immigration establishment card that unlocks visa processing.
Entry permit, medical, Emirates ID for each visa holder; corporate account opening runs in parallel — this is usually the slowest step.
We reply with numbers — a line-by-line setup estimate for your case. Not a call script, not a brochure.