Mainland and most free zones
Commercial licence
Buy, sell, import, export, distribute physical goods.
This is the trading licence. Wholesale, retail, import/export, spare parts, F&B trading (not always the café itself). Mainland commercial lets you invoice UAE customers directly. A free-zone commercial licence is built for re-export and zone-to-zone work unless you appoint a local distributor.
Banks and customs will ask what you actually trade. ‘General trading’ is a real activity in some zones and a red flag in others. Name the commodities. DMCC, JAFZA and DAFZA are the usual homes for serious traders; cheap SME zones work for light import if the activity list allows it.
You will still need a customs code, and some goods (food, cosmetics, medical, telecom) need extra approvals. The licence is the start of that stack, not the end.
A ‘general trading’ package with no warehouse and no invoices is how accounts get frozen.
Mainland DET and service free zones
Professional licence
Consulting, IT, marketing, design, training, and most desk work.
If you sell time and files rather than pallets, this is the licence. Management consulting, software, marketing, architecture (sometimes with a regulator), HR, education services. Lowest fit-out cost. Highest density of ‘I got a flexi desk in a week’ stories.
Mainland professional used to need a local service agent. For most activities that era is over — 100% foreign ownership applies. Confirm the activity on DET before you pay a formation house that still quotes the old 51/49 split.
Freelance permits (see below) are a thinner version of this: one person, limited visas, not a company you can hire into. Do not buy a freelance permit if you need staff and a corporate bank.
Regulated professions (audit, law, engineering, medicine) need the professional body as well as DET or the zone.
JAFZA, Dubai South, DSO, National Industries Park, some mainland
Industrial licence
Make, assemble, pack, or process goods.
You need a unit, power, and often environmental and civil-defence sign-off. Jebel Ali and Dubai South exist for this. A flexi desk in Business Bay is not an industrial licence, no matter what the brochure says.
Light assembly and packaging can sit in DSO or selected mainland industrial plots. Food production has a second stack (Dubai Municipality / food permit). The licence fee is rarely the expensive line — the unit is.
Do not take a ‘commercial’ licence and run a factory. Customs and civil defence will notice.
Mainland DET, some zones with DTCM overlay
Tourism licence
Hotels, holiday homes, travel agencies, tour desks.
DET issues the trade licence; DTCM (now under the tourism side of the same department) still owns hotel classification, holiday-home permits, and travel-agency rules. A mainland commercial licence that says ‘tourism’ without the tourism permit is half a file.
Holiday homes on a personal visa are a different product from a tourism company. Mixing them is how people get fined. Confirm on the DET / DTCM desk, not a Telegram group.
Holiday-home permits and a tourism trade licence are not interchangeable.
Mainland, Dubai CommerCity, Meydan, IFZA, DMCC, others
E-commerce licence
Sell online, with or without your own warehouse.
An e-commerce activity on a commercial or professional licence covers a shop on the internet. Fulfilment from Dubai to the GCC is why Dubai CommerCity and Dubai South exist. If you only drop-ship from China to Europe and never touch UAE stock, say so — the activity list and VAT analysis change.
Marketplace sellers on Amazon.ae / noon still need a licence if they are based here. Payment providers will ask for it. A personal account is not a store.
VAT on cross-border e-commerce is an FTA question, not a zone sales question.
TECOM, IFZA, Meydan, GoFreelance (DET), others
Freelance permit licence
One person, a permit, usually one visa. Not a hiring vehicle.
Useful if you invoice a handful of clients and do not need staff. TECOM (media, internet, knowledge, design) still runs well-known freelance permits. DET’s GoFreelance covers a mainland-flavoured list. SME zones sell ‘freelance’ packages that are sometimes a one-shareholder FZCO in disguise — read the document.
Banks are picky. Some will not open a proper freelance account. You cannot usually sponsor a spouse as easily as a company investor visa, and you cannot hide a five-person agency behind one permit.
A freelance permit is not a company. If you need employees, buy a company licence.
DIFC, ADGM (Abu Dhabi), some mainland, selected zones
Holding / SPV licence
Own shares, IP, or property. Not for trading.
A holding company owns other companies or assets. DIFC and ADGM are the grown-up homes for this; they cost more and talk to international banks. Some free zones will sell a ‘holding’ activity on a cheap package — fine for a simple UAE structure, thin for a cross-border fund.
If the point is a family office or a regulated fund, you are in DFSA / FSRA territory. That is not a same-week flexi desk.
A holding licence that starts trading is the wrong licence.
Mainland DET, DIFC, and most zones
Branch or representative office licence
The parent company in another country opens a Dubai arm.
A branch can usually trade (if the parent does). A representative office may only market and liaise — no local invoices. Parent documents need attestation. This is the right path if the brand already exists abroad and you do not want a new limited company.
Liability sits with the parent. That is the point, and the risk. Formation houses that convert this into a local FZCO without asking are not doing you a favour.
A rep office that issues Dubai invoices is out of scope.