Dubai · June 2026
Find the licence for what you actually do.
Know your activity but not where it sits? Start here. Search for what your business does. Each carries its own regulator, jurisdiction options, and approvals, and the differences are exactly where setups go wrong.
The activity decides almost everything else.
One question decides mainland or free zone, cost, and bank alike: what the company will be permitted to do. The activity on your licence is the hinge. It sets which regulator you answer to, whether a free zone is an option, what approvals you need before the licence issues, and what a bank makes of you afterwards.
Two similar-sounding businesses can sit in completely different worlds. A management consultancy needs no external regulator and sets up quickly almost anywhere. Real estate brokerage needs RERA registration and a broker exam, and must be on the mainland. Crypto activity needs a VARA or financial-centre regime, real capital, and a banking relationship that is genuinely hard to secure. Same ambition, very different paths.
We do not sell a structure, so the activity drives the answer, not a package we are paid to push. You work with Manish directly, and the classification is confirmed against the official DET and free-zone lists, not guessed at. If a free zone does not fit your activity, you hear that before you commit, not after.
Search below for what your business does. The list shows the activity group, where it can sit, and the tier of engagement it calls for. Where a full activity page is published, it links through. Where it is not, a short conversation is the fastest route to the same answer.
Search for what your business does.
Type an activity or category. The list filters as you type. This is a working index of the highest-demand activity groups, not the full UAE catalogue of thousands of entries.
Loading activities…
No activity matches that yet. This index is a working seed, so newer or more specialised activities may not be listed. Tell us what your business does and you get the same answer the page would give.
Activity codes and approvals are confirmed case by case against the official DET and free-zone activity lists. Treat this index as a map of the terrain, not the final classification for your business.
Once you know the activity, the next questions are where it sits and how it is run. Read the company setup overview, compare free zones against mainland, or browse the industries we work across.
Business activity questions.
How many business activities can I have on one UAE licence?
Does my business activity decide which free zone or authority I can use?
What is the difference between a commercial, professional, and industrial licence?
Can I add or change activities after the company is set up?
Tell us what you do. We will tell you what it actually requires.
The right activity, the regulator behind it, the jurisdiction that fits, and the approvals to clear before the licence issues. Thirty minutes, no pitch, whether or not your activity has a page yet. If the firm fits your case, we proceed. If not, you leave with a sharper sense of where your activity belongs.