UAE Company Registry: How to Verify a Business in Any Emirate or Free Zone

08/24/2026 06:51 · 15 min read
UAE Company Registry: How to Verify a Business in Any Emirate or Free Zone

In October 2025 the UAE quietly did something that should worry anyone maintaining a database of Emirati companies. It made corporate identity portable — a company can now move from Dubai mainland to a free zone, or between emirates, and remain the same legal person throughout.

That is good law. It is also a data-continuity problem, because the UAE has no single company register and no single company identifier. The entity survives the move. The licence number that most systems use to identify it does not.

This guide covers how UAE company registration actually works across more than fifty licensing venues, what each tier discloses, what the beneficial ownership regime does and does not give you, and what the 2025 amendment changes for anyone building on this data.

The short version

  • No national register. Seven emirate economic departments plus 46 free zones — 53 licensing venues. Zones and registrars are not one-to-one, and no official count of either is published.
  • The National Economic Register at the Ministry of Economy and Tourism aggregates licence data across all of them. It is the closest thing to a single lookup.
  • DIFC and ADGM are the exception — common-law registrars with genuinely public search, no account, no UAE ID.
  • Beneficial ownership is closed. Cabinet Resolution 109 of 2023 requires filing but the data is confidential, with no legitimate-interest route.
  • Three-tier UBO test: 25% ownership or control, then power to appoint managers, then the senior manager as fallback.
  • Article 15 bis, from October 2025, lets companies transfer registration between authorities while preserving legal personality.
  • Implementing regulations are not yet issued, so how transfers will be recorded is still open.
  • The TRN is the one federal key. Fifteen digits, issued by the Federal Tax Authority, publicly verifiable, and it crosses mainland and free zones.
  • Offshore is a fourth tier — RAK ICC, JAFZA Offshore and Ajman Offshore are not free zones and do not publish owners.
  • Off the FATF grey list since February 2024.

The registration landscape

The UAE is a federation, and company registration is handled at emirate and free-zone level rather than by one national registrar. That single fact explains most of the difficulty.

There is no UAE companies register. There are 53 places to be licensed.Which one holds your counterparty depends entirely on where its licence was issued.FederalMinistry of Economy and TourismNational Economic Register aggregates licence data across mainland and free zones1aggregatorEmirate7 Departments of Economic DevelopmentDubai DET · Abu Dhabi ADDED · Sharjah SEDD · and four more, each with its own portal and fees7licensingvenuesCommercial free zones44 zones, fewer authoritiesDMCC · JAFZA · RAKEZ · SAIF · several authorities operate more than one zone each44licensingvenuesFinancial free zonesDIFC and ADGMCommon-law registrars with genuinely public search portals — the exception2licensingvenues
Four tiers and 53 licensing venues, with no shared schema between them. The federal layer aggregates licences; it does not replace the authority that issued them.

Counted individually, the picture is starker.

53 places a company can be licensedOne square per licensing venue. Only two publish ownership by default.Emirate economic departmentsDubai DET · ADDED · SEDD · +4one per emirate, each its own portal7Commercial free zonesDMCC · JAFZA · RAKEZ · IFZA · +40own rules, own numbering, uneven disclosure44Financial free zonesDIFC · ADGMcommon law, genuinely public registers2Not counted above1 federal ministry — aggregates licences, issues none3 offshore regimes — run by authorities already countedZones and registrars are not one-to-one — several authorities run multiple zones, so the number ofdistinct registries is lower than 53. The UAE publishes no official count of either.
Fifty-three licensing venues. The count of distinct registries is lower, because several authorities operate more than one zone.

Be careful with the numbers, including ours

Published counts vary, and they measure different things. The UAE Embassy in Washington puts the number of free zones at 46; commercial sources range from “over 40” to “45+” depending on whether small single-activity zones are included. Add the seven emirate economic departments and you get 53 licensing venues, which is the figure used here.

That is not the same as 53 registries. Several authorities operate multiple zones — Dubai Development Authority alone covers Internet City, Media City, Knowledge Park, Design District and others under one registrar — so the number of distinct registries is meaningfully lower. Two of the three offshore regimes are likewise administered by free-zone authorities already counted.

No UAE body publishes an official count of its own registration authorities. Treat any precise figure, including ours, as a considered estimate rather than a statistic.

Mainland companies are licensed by their emirate’s economic department. Free-zone companies are registered by their zone’s own authority — DMCC, JAFZA, RAKEZ, SAIF and dozens more — most with their own database, fee schedule and disclosure rules. Above both sits the Ministry of Economy and Tourism, which operates the National Economic Register aggregating licence data across mainland and free zones and issuing an Economic Register Number.

Why this is not simply a US-style federal problem

The US has no central register either, but it has fifty comparable state registers doing broadly the same job — a point we made in our guide to the absent US beneficial ownership registry. The UAE is different in kind. A free zone is not a smaller version of a mainland registry; it is a separate legal regime with its own company law, its own disclosure standard and, in the case of DIFC and ADGM, a different legal system entirely. Three UAE companies can be equally real and equally licensed while offering you three completely different evidence sets.

Verifying a trade licence

The first question is always which authority issued the licence, because that determines where you look and what you get.

Where the company is licensedWhere to checkWhat you can search by
Any emirate, mainland or free zoneNational Economic Register, Ministry of Economy and TourismCompany name or licence number
Dubai mainlandInvest in Dubai licence search, Department of Economy and TourismLicence number, Dubai Unified Licence (DUL) number, or business name in English or Arabic
Abu Dhabi mainlandADDEDLicence number or name
Sharjah mainlandSEDDLicence number or name
Commercial free zoneThe specific free-zone authorityVaries by zone
DIFCDIFC Registrar of Companies public registerName or registration number, no account required
ADGMADGM Registration Authority public registerName or registration number, no account required

A successful licence check returns the trade name, licence number, status, expiry date, business activity, legal form and issuing authority. That confirms the entity exists and is currently licensed. It tells you nothing about litigation, debts or enforcement history — a distinction worth making explicitly in any procedure document, because a live trade licence is frequently mistaken for a clean bill of health.

Licence expiry is a real signal, and it is not the same as strike-off

UAE trade licences carry an expiry date and must be renewed. An expired licence does not immediately mean the company is dissolved, but it does mean it is not currently entitled to trade. In most of the jurisdictions covered elsewhere in this series, an entity is either on the register or off it. In the UAE there is a live middle state, and a counterparty operating on an expired licence is a materially different risk from one whose licence is current.

How many companies are registered in the UAE?

This should be a simple question. It is not, and the reason is the same fragmentation described above: no single authority counts them.

The honest answer first

There is no official, regularly published figure for the total number of companies registered in the UAE, and no consistent per-emirate series either. What exists is a patchwork: some emirates publish absolute licence counts, some publish only percentage growth, most free zones publish nothing, and the most widely quoted “UAE total” figures come from secondary analysis rather than a registrar.

We would rather set out what is actually published, with its source and its limits, than add another unsourced national total to the pile.

FigureWhat it countsWhat it is not
292,486
Dubai Chamber of Commerce active members, end-2025
71,830 joined during 2025
Companies holding active Dubai Chamber membership, including entities licensed by free zones such as JAFZANot a register count. Chamber membership is a separate institution from the licensing authority, and the two populations do not match.
258,318
the same figure at end-2024
70,500 joined during 2024
The prior year, giving a usable growth trendSame caveat. Useful as a direction of travel for Dubai, not as an entity count.
+12%
Abu Dhabi active licences, Q1 2026 vs Q1 2025
new licences +21%
Growth reported by the Abu Dhabi Registration Authority, with regional splits for Abu Dhabi, Al Ain and Al DhafraA percentage without a published base. ADRA reports the change, not the total.
37,755
Ajman active licences, H1 2024
+15% year on year
An absolute count from a smaller emirate’s economic departmentA single point in time, now dated, and not comparable in definition to the Dubai figure.
~1.5 million
active licences UAE-wide, 2024
The most commonly cited national figureSecondary analysis, not a registrar’s publication. Treat as an order of magnitude only.

Three structural reasons the numbers do not add up to a national total. Licences are not companies — one entity can hold several, and a lapsed licence does not necessarily mean a dissolved entity. Definitions differ by authority, so an “active licence” in Ajman and an “active licence” in Dubai are not the same measurement. And free zones are largely silent: with 44 commercial free zones plus three offshore regimes, most of the population sits behind authorities that publish no counts at all.

What to do with this in practice

Do not size a UAE market or a portfolio from a headline national figure, and be sceptical of any vendor quoting a precise UAE company count without saying which authorities it covers and how licences were deduplicated to entities. Ask for the split by emirate and by free zone. The answer will tell you quickly how much of the country the dataset actually reaches.

What is actually visible

What you can actually seeFour tiers, four answers. Read down a column for how open a tier is, across a row for how obtainable a field is.MainlandCommercialfree zoneDIFC /ADGMOffshoreCompany exists, licence statusLegal form and activityDirectors and officersShareholders and holdingsFinancial statementsBeneficial ownerFields fully public2 of 62 of 64 of 60 of 6PublicVaries by authorityNot availableOffshore publishes nothing beyond existence.
Licence existence is public everywhere. Ownership depends on where the company sits. Beneficial ownership is closed across all three.

The pattern is consistent: the UAE is open about whether a company exists and is licensed, variable about who runs and owns it, and closed about who ultimately benefits. Financial statements are not filed publicly for mainland or commercial free-zone companies at all.

Directors, shareholders and officers: what you can obtain

The single most common UAE question, and the answer changes completely depending on which of the four tiers the entity sits in.

Data pointMainlandCommercial free zoneDIFC / ADGMOffshore
Legal name, licence status, activityPublicPublicPublicLimited
Directors and managersOn the licence and in the MOA; portal disclosure variesVaries by zonePublished on the registerNot published
Shareholders and holdingsIn the memorandum of association, obtained from the company or the authorityVaries by zonePublished on the registerNot published
Authorised signatoryNamed, and normally evidenced by a power of attorneyVaries by zonePublished or filedVia registered agent
Registered agentn/an/an/aMandatory and often the only reachable party
Beneficial ownerFiled with the registrar, not available to you — in all four tiers

The memorandum of association is the document to ask for

For a mainland company the MOA is where shareholders, their holdings and the management arrangement are set out, and it is notarised. It is not something you pull from a portal — it comes from the counterparty or, in some cases, the licensing authority. In a jurisdiction where portal disclosure is uneven, requesting the MOA plus the trade licence plus the UBO declaration is the practical equivalent of a company profile elsewhere, and a counterparty that will not provide all three has told you something.

Note also that 100% foreign ownership of mainland LLCs has been permitted across most activities since Federal Decree-Law No. 26 of 2020 ended the historical requirement for a 51% UAE-national partner. Older guidance still describes that requirement, and ownership records predating the change may show a local partner structure that no longer reflects economic reality.

Financial data: private companies

Stated plainly: private company financial statements are not publicly filed anywhere in the UAE. There is no equivalent of Companies House accounts, no XBRL filing regime for private entities, and no register you can query for a balance sheet.

That does not mean the accounts do not exist. Several obligations now require them to be prepared and retained:

  • Corporate tax. Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 requires taxable persons to register with the Federal Tax Authority and file returns within nine months of the end of the tax period. Accounts underpin that filing.
  • Record retention. Books must be kept for a minimum of five years, and the same period applies to UBO registers after de-registration or liquidation.
  • Audit for some free zones. A number of free zones require audited accounts to be submitted to the zone authority as a condition of licence renewal. Those go to the authority, not to the public.

What this means for credit and counterparty work

UAE private financials are a documentary exercise, not a data exercise. You obtain audited accounts from the counterparty, or from a parent that reports in a jurisdiction which publishes, or you work without them. Any provider offering broad UAE private-company financials should be asked precisely where they came from, because no registrar publishes them.

The corollary is that corporate tax is quietly changing this. As registration and filing become universal among licensed entities, audited accounts become standard practice rather than optional — which improves the evidence a counterparty can produce on request, even though it does not make anything public.

Financial data: listed and public companies

For public joint stock companies the picture inverts completely. This is the one part of the UAE corporate landscape with disclosure comparable to a major Western market.

The Securities and Commodities Authority is the federal securities regulator, operating outside DIFC and ADGM, which have their own regulators. The two onshore exchanges are the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange and the Dubai Financial Market; Nasdaq Dubai sits within the DIFC.

Private companyListed PJSC
Annual accountsNot publishedAudited, filed with the SCA and the exchange, published
Interim reportingNoneQuarterly results announced to the market
Accounting standardWhatever the company adoptsIFRS
Ownership disclosureMOA, on requestMajor shareholders disclosed at 5%, with further reporting at 10%, 20%, 30% and 50%
Director dealingsNot disclosedReported to the exchange within 5 business days
Material informationNoneContinuous disclosure of price-sensitive information
Sustainability reportingNoneAnnual, within 90 days of year end or before the AGM, whichever is earlier
Enforcementn/aSCA fines from AED 100,000, trading suspension, and delisting for persistent non-compliance

Where to look, and why it is not the registry

None of this arrives through a Department of Economic Development or a free-zone authority. Listed company disclosure sits with the SCA and the exchanges, so a UAE data pipeline built only on licensing authorities will miss the richest financial data in the country entirely. Treat listed issuers as a separate source path from the moment you identify one.

The same split applies on ownership. For a private company the shareholder question ends at the MOA and then at a closed UBO filing. For a listed company you get disclosed holdings at 5% and each subsequent threshold, plus director dealings within five business days — which is a materially better ownership picture than anything available onshore for private entities.

How Global Database handles this

Fifty registers, one schema

UAE data sourced first-party from official registries and normalised onto the same schema as 200+ other countries.

The work in the UAE is not retrieval, it is reconciliation — matching an entity across mainland, free-zone and financial free-zone records that share no identifier and no field structure, and keeping that link intact when a company moves between them.

Built for KYB, onboarding, third-party risk, due diligence and data teams.

Legal forms, and the tier most guides leave out

Three tiers were described above. There is a fourth, and it is the one most likely to appear in an ownership chain and least likely to be understood.

FormWhereCan it trade in the UAE?Owners public?
LLCMainlandYes, onshoreVaries by emirate
Sole establishmentMainlandYes, owner personally liableOwner named on the licence
PJSC / PrJSCMainlandYes. Public JSCs may listSignificant holdings via SCA disclosure
Branch or representative officeMainland or free zoneBranch yes; rep office may not tradeOwnership sits with the foreign parent
FZE / FZCO / FZ-LLCCommercial free zoneWithin the zone, and onshore via a distributor or branchVaries by zone
DIFC / ADGM companyFinancial free zoneWithin the zone, under common lawYes
Offshore companyRAK ICC, JAFZA Offshore, Ajman OffshoreNoNo

The offshore tier

A UAE offshore company is registered with one of three specialised registries — RAK ICC, JAFZA Offshore or Ajman Offshore. It is not a free zone company, and conflating the two is the most common error in UAE due diligence.

An offshore company may not conduct commercial activity with persons inside the UAE, may not lease office space in its own name, and may not sponsor residence visas. What it can do is hold: shares in UAE mainland and free-zone companies, intellectual property, international assets, and — in JAFZA Offshore’s case alone — freehold property in Dubai directly through the Dubai Land Department.

Why this matters for a chain

Names of shareholders and directors of offshore companies are not placed on a public register. So an offshore entity sitting above a mainland LLC is a deliberate stop in the chain — and it is permitted to hold those shares even though it cannot trade with UAE residents.

The practical read: a UAE operating company whose shareholder is a RAK ICC or JAFZA Offshore entity has not given you its ownership. It has given you the name of a vehicle whose own ownership is not published anywhere. RAK ICC also permits re-domiciliation and continuation from other offshore jurisdictions, so the entity in front of you may have arrived from somewhere else entirely.

Offshore entities are, however, inside the federal UBO regime described below, and must record their beneficial ownership with the registry. As with everything else in that regime, the filing exists and you cannot read it.

DIFC and ADGM: a different country, legally speaking

The Dubai International Financial Centre and Abu Dhabi Global Market are common-law jurisdictions inside a civil-law federation. Each has its own company legislation and its own registrar — the DIFC Registrar of Companies and the ADGM Registration Authority — with disclosure requirements modelled on English company law.

For compliance work they are the most transparent registers in the country. Both operate public search portals requiring no account and no UAE identity document, and both publish director and shareholder information as a matter of course.

The practical consequence

If your counterparty is DIFC- or ADGM-registered, you are working with something close to a UK-standard evidence set and should collect it accordingly. If it is mainland or commercial free zone, you are not, and a procedure that assumes otherwise will either fail or quietly accept weaker evidence. Establishing which of the three you are dealing with should be the first step of any UAE onboarding check, not an afterthought.

One further consequence: the financial free zones sit outside the federal UBO regime described below, operating their own beneficial ownership rules instead. So the answer to “what are this company’s UBO obligations?” also depends on which of the three tiers it occupies.

The TRN: the one identifier that crosses everything

Everything so far points to fragmentation. There is one federal exception, and it is under-used by compliance teams because it looks like a tax field rather than an entity key.

The Tax Registration Number is issued by the Federal Tax Authority. It is always 15 digits, always begins 100, and contains no letters. It is entirely distinct from a trade licence number, which comes from a Department of Economic Development or a free-zone authority. If a number you are given is shorter than 15 digits or contains letters, it is not a TRN.

Two numbers, one of which travelsA trade licence number identifies a company to one authority. A TRN identifies it to the federation.TAX REGISTRATION NUMBER100123456700003always begins 10015 digits total, no letters, issued once by the Federal Tax AuthorityTRADE LICENCE NUMBERDubai DET1305880Free zoneDMCC-XXXXXXAnother zoneSHAMS-12345OffshoreRAKICC/XXXXXNo shared format, no check digit, and no guarantee of uniqueness outside the issuing authority.
The TRN is the only company number in the UAE with a format you can validate before you use it.
Trade licence numberTRN
Issued by53 licensing venuesFederal Tax Authority — one issuer nationally
FormatNo common standard15 digits, begins 100
ScopeAuthority-specificMainland and free zones alike
Public verificationPer-authority portalsFree on the FTA portal, returns the registered entity name
Survives an Article 15 bis transfer?UnlikelyProbably — the FTA is federal and legal personality is preserved

The reconciliation key hiding in the tax system

Free-zone companies hold ordinary TRNs, verified exactly as a mainland company’s is. Corporate tax registration under Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 applies to most licensed entities including free-zone entities — Qualifying Free Zone Person status affects the rate, not the obligation to register.

That makes the TRN the closest thing the UAE has to a national entity identifier, and the most plausible key for tracking a company across an authority transfer. We would rather flag it as the best available anchor than repeat the common claim that the UAE has no national identifier at all.

Three honest limits

It is tax-scoped, not universal. A TRN exists because an entity registered for VAT or corporate tax, not because it exists. Entities below thresholds or outside scope may not hold one.

It is a lookup, not a dataset. The FTA tool checks one TRN at a time behind a captcha, returning validity and the registered name. It is not a bulk source.

It confirms identity, not standing. A valid TRN tells you the FTA knows the entity. It says nothing about the licence, the activity or the counterparty’s health.

Beneficial ownership: comprehensive, enforced, and closed

The UAE overhauled its beneficial ownership regime as part of the reform programme that led to its removal from the FATF list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring in February 2024, having been added in March 2022.

The reforms cluster inside the grey-list windowUAE company-data reform, plotted against the 23 months the country spent under increased FATF monitoring.ON THE FATF GREY LISTMar 2022 — Feb 20242020202120222023202420252026Cabinet Res. 58/2020first federal UBO regimeFATF grey listincreased monitoring beginsRes. 109/2023 + Dec. 132/2023UBO regime replaced, penalties raisedDelistedmonitoring endsArticle 15 bisregistration transferBoth instruments that define today’s UBO regime landed in the final three months before delisting.
Reform did not stop at delisting — but the instruments that define the current regime arrived while the country was still being watched.

The operative instrument is Cabinet Resolution No. 109 of 2023 on the Regulation of the Real Beneficiary Procedures, in force since 16 November 2023, which replaced Cabinet Resolution No. 58 of 2020. UAE legislation uses the term “Real Beneficiary” where other jurisdictions say ultimate beneficial owner. It applies to entities on the mainland and in the commercial free zones, with the financial free zones outside its scope.

How the UAE decides who the beneficial owner isCabinet Resolution 109 of 2023 applies three tests in sequence. You move down only if the one above fails.1Ownership or controlA natural person holding 25% or more of capital or votes, directly or indirectly. Joint holders all qualify.2Control over managementFailing that, the person with the right to appoint or dismiss the majority of managers.3Senior management fallbackFailing both, the senior manager responsible for day-to-day operations is recorded instead.No structure escapes without a named individual — and none of it is public.
The fallback tier is the important one. It means a filing exists for every in-scope entity, even where ownership is genuinely diffuse or deliberately obscured.

Each licensing authority acts as registrar for its own entities, receiving and supervising UBO filings. In-scope entities must maintain a register of beneficial owners and keep it current — changes must be filed within 15 days.

Filed, enforced, and not available to you

UBO data submitted to the registrar is confidential. The Ministry and licensing authorities share it only with UAE competent authorities on official request, and the Ministry may share it with foreign authorities where mutual agreements exist. Commercial use is not permitted, and there is no legitimate-interest application of the kind the EU adopted under AMLD6.

Enforcement is real. Cabinet Decision No. 132 of 2023 sets escalating administrative sanctions, from a written warning on first offence up to fines of AED 100,000 and potential licence suspension for repeated violations.

The useful way to read this: UAE beneficial ownership data now reliably exists in a documented, penalty-backed form. It is simply not readable by you. That places the UAE alongside Switzerland and Singapore rather than the UK — a comparison set out in our survey of which countries publish UBO data. What it does mean is that asking a UAE counterparty to evidence its beneficial ownership is a reasonable request against a document it is legally required to hold.

The 2025 rule that breaks entity continuity

Federal Decree-Law No. 20 of 2025 was issued on 1 October 2025 and took effect the day after publication in the Official Gazette on 14 October 2025. It amends the Commercial Companies Law across fifteen articles, and inserts one new article that matters more than the rest combined for anyone maintaining UAE data.

Article 15 bis permits a company to transfer its commercial registration from one competent authority to another — between emirates, from mainland to free zone, from free zone to mainland, and between free zones — while preserving its legal personality, corporate history and operations.

The company now survives the move. Its identifier may not.Article 15 bis, in force since October 2025, lets a company transfer between licensing authorities.Beforederegister, then re-registerMainland entitylicence AStruck from registerrecord endsFree zone entitylicence B, new legal personAfterone continuous legal personMainland entitylicence ATransfer under Art. 15 bislegal personality preservedFree zone entitylicence B, same legal personIf your entity key is the trade licence number, both columns look identical to your pipeline.
Before the amendment, relocation created a new legal person. Now it does not. The distinction is invisible to any system keyed on the licence number.

What the transfer requires

  • A special resolution of the general assembly, or an absolute majority of partners, as applicable.
  • Both the transferring and receiving registries must permit the transfer and consent to it.
  • For joint stock companies, the Ministry or the Securities and Commodities Authority must also consent.
  • The transfer decision must be published in the manner determined by the competent authority.
  • Cabinet-issued rules will govern transfers between the financial free zones and onshore.

Two things to plan for now

Implementing regulations have not yet been issued. How transfers will be recorded, how the receiving registry will reference the prior registration, and whether any linking identifier will be published are all open questions. Until they are answered, the safest assumption is that your pipeline will see a deletion and a creation rather than a move.

The amendment does not cover inbound re-domiciliation from outside the UAE into the mainland. That remains outside the framework, and commentary suggests it may be addressed in future regulations.

Why this is the same class of problem as a register outage

Readers of this series will recognise the pattern. A UK register jump caused by a four-day service outage, a Swiss insolvency spike caused by a bankruptcy-law change, a Singapore late-filing step-change caused by a removed grace period — and now a UAE entity that appears to die and be reborn because it moved between authorities. In each case the data moves for administrative reasons and reads as an economic event. Article 15 bis is the most consequential of the four, because it does not distort a series — it silently breaks the link between a company and its own history.

The UBO clock runs six times faster than anything elseUAE compliance deadlines, drawn to the same scale in days.090180270365daysUBO register change15 daysCorporate tax registration3 monthsCorporate tax return9 monthsTrade licence renewalannualA change of shareholder starts a 15-day clock — faster than most monitoring cycles that check it.
Drawn to one scale, the beneficial ownership window is barely visible against the others — which is exactly the problem.

Deadlines, status and penalties

Compliance timing is legible in the UAE and worth extracting, because two of the deadlines are unusually short and one of them is annual rather than event-driven.

ObligationDeadlineConsequence of missing it
Trade licence renewalAnnually, per the licence expiry dateLicence lapses; entity not entitled to trade
UBO register changesWithin 15 daysEscalating sanctions under Cabinet Decision 132 of 2023, to AED 100,000 and licence suspension
Corporate tax registration, entities formed on or after 1 March 2024Within 3 months of incorporation, per FTA Decision No. 3 of 2024AED 10,000 administrative penalty under Cabinet Decision No. 10 of 2024
Corporate tax returnWithin 9 months of the end of the tax periodFTA penalties

Reading licence status

StatusWhat it means
ActiveLicensed and current.
ExpiredNot renewed. The entity still exists but is not entitled to trade. This is the state most often misread as “struck off”.
CancelledThe licence has been surrendered or withdrawn.
Under liquidationA winding-up process is running.
SuspendedAdministrative or regulatory suspension, including for UBO non-compliance.

The state that has no equivalent elsewhere in this series

In the UK, Switzerland and Singapore an entity is on the register or off it. The UAE has a live middle state: an expired licence on an entity that still legally exists. A binary active-or-not rule will either pass an entity that cannot lawfully trade, or fail one that is mid-renewal. Extract the expiry date, not just the status word.

Blind spots worth planning around

GapWhy it existsWorkaround
No national licence identifierLicence numbers are issued across 53 licensing venues with no shared format. The TRN is federal but tax-scoped, so it does not cover every entity.Use the TRN as the cross-authority key where one exists, and the National Economic Register as the licence-level reconciliation layer. Treat licence numbers as authority-scoped, never global.
Offshore ownershipRAK ICC, JAFZA Offshore and Ajman Offshore do not publish shareholders or directors.Treat an offshore shareholder as an opaque node; pursue the UBO filing or documentary evidence from the counterparty.
Beneficial ownershipCabinet Resolution 109 of 2023 filings are confidential with no legitimate-interest route.Request the entity’s own UBO register directly — it is legally required to hold one.
Financial statementsNot publicly filed for mainland or commercial free-zone companies.Audited accounts via the counterparty; parent-company filings where the group reports elsewhere.
Entity continuity after a transferArticle 15 bis preserves legal personality but the licence number changes.Monitor for paired deregistration and registration events; expect implementing regulations to clarify.
Uneven free-zone disclosureEach of the 46 free zones sets its own rules.Establish which zone before deciding what evidence is obtainable.
Group structureNo registrar models groups; chains frequently run offshore.Reconstruct across jurisdictions — see our offshore registry coverage.

What to watch

  • Article 15 bis implementing regulations. The single most important open question in UAE company data. How transfers are recorded, whether the receiving registry references the prior registration, and whether any linking identifier is published will decide whether entity continuity is solvable from the register or has to be inferred.
  • Cabinet rules on financial free zones. Transfers between DIFC or ADGM and onshore are to be governed by separate Cabinet-issued rules, not yet published.
  • Inbound re-domiciliation. The 2025 amendment does not address transfers from outside the UAE into the mainland. Commentary suggests future regulations may extend the framework.
  • Corporate tax maturing into a data layer. As corporate tax registration becomes universal among licensed entities, the TRN becomes a stronger national key than it is today. That is a positive trend for anyone building on UAE data.
  • FATF follow-up. Delisting in February 2024 was the end of increased monitoring, not the end of scrutiny. Any change in status would move the risk posture of every UAE counterparty at once.

Global Database vs the UAE registries

As elsewhere in this series, the honest answer depends on what you are doing, and often the registry is the right choice.

Official registriesGlobal Database
StatusThe legal source of truth, per authorityDerived, sourced first-party from official registries
Official documentsYes licence certificates and extractsNo we cannot issue on an authority’s behalf
CoverageOne authority at a time — you must know whichMainland, free zones and financial free zones on one schema
Cross-emirate matchingNoneEntity reconciliation across authorities
Beneficial ownershipClosedClosed — the same wall
Financial statementsNot filedNot filed — the same wall
MonitoringManual re-checksChange monitoring across the portfolio

Use the registry directly when

You need an official licence extract or certificate, you know which authority issued the licence, and you are checking a small number of companies. The National Economic Register and the Invest in Dubai search are free and authoritative, and no provider improves on them for a single verification.

A claim worth testing on any UAE vendor

Beneficial ownership and financial statements are marked identically on both sides of that table. Those are statutory restrictions, not sourcing problems. If a provider offers UAE beneficial ownership as a product feature, ask which registrar released it — because Cabinet Resolution 109 of 2023 does not permit commercial use of that data.

Get the data

UAE registry data, delivered the way your stack needs it

Company records sourced first-party from official government registries — the UAE alongside 200+ other countries on one schema, one identifier model, one refresh cycle.

Every answer carries its registry source, so an auditor can trace it back.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a single UAE company register?
No. The UAE is a federation and company registration sits at emirate and free-zone level, not with one national registrar. Mainland companies are licensed by their emirate’s Department of Economic Development — Dubai’s Department of Economy and Tourism, Abu Dhabi’s ADDED, Sharjah’s SEDD and so on. Free-zone companies are registered by their own free-zone authority. The UAE Embassy in Washington puts the number of free zones at 46, which together with the seven emirate economic departments gives 53 licensing venues — though several authorities operate more than one zone, so the number of distinct registries is lower. The two financial free zones, DIFC and ADGM, each have their own common-law registrar. A fourth category sits alongside all of them: offshore companies registered with RAK ICC, JAFZA Offshore or Ajman Offshore, which are not free-zone companies and cannot trade inside the UAE. The Ministry of Economy and Tourism sits above all of it and operates the National Economic Register, which aggregates licence data, but it is not the register of record for ownership or capital.
What is the National Economic Register?
A federal aggregation layer run by the Ministry of Economy and Tourism. It holds licence data for businesses across the mainland and the free zones, and it is the closest thing the UAE has to a single national lookup. Entities registering through connected service providers receive an Economic Register Number. It is genuinely useful for confirming that a licence exists and is current across any emirate. It is not a substitute for querying the issuing authority when you need ownership, share capital or director detail.
How do I verify a UAE trade licence?
Identify the issuing authority first, because that determines where you look. For mainland Dubai, the Invest in Dubai licence search accepts the licence number, the Dubai Unified Licence number, or the business name in English or Arabic, and returns trade name, licence number, status, expiry date, activity, legal form and issuing authority. For any emirate, mainland or free zone, the National Economic Register is the broadest single check. For DIFC and ADGM, use their own public registers. Whichever route you use, a valid licence confirms the entity exists and is licensed — it says nothing about litigation, debts or enforcement history.
Why are DIFC and ADGM different?
They are common-law jurisdictions inside a civil-law federation, with their own company legislation and their own registrars — the DIFC Registrar of Companies and the ADGM Registration Authority. Both operate genuinely public search portals with no account and no UAE identity document required, and their disclosure requirements are modelled on English company law. For compliance purposes they are the most transparent registers in the country by a wide margin. They are also outside the federal UBO regime, which applies to the mainland and the commercial free zones but not to the financial free zones — those operate their own beneficial ownership rules.
Can I see who owns a UAE company?
It depends where it is licensed, and mostly the answer is no. Mainland and commercial free-zone registers vary in what ownership detail they surface publicly, and many surface little or none. DIFC and ADGM publish shareholder and director information. Offshore companies — RAK ICC, JAFZA Offshore, Ajman Offshore — do not place shareholder or director names on a public register at all, which is precisely why they appear in holding structures. Beneficial ownership is a separate question with a consistent answer: not publicly, anywhere in the UAE.
What is the UAE UBO regime?
Cabinet Resolution No. 109 of 2023 on the Regulation of the Real Beneficiary Procedures, in force since 16 November 2023, replacing Cabinet Resolution No. 58 of 2020. UAE legislation uses the term “Real Beneficiary” for what other jurisdictions call the ultimate beneficial owner. It applies to entities on the mainland and in the commercial free zones; entities in the financial free zones are outside its scope. Every in-scope entity must maintain a register of beneficial owners and file with its licensing authority, which acts as registrar. Changes must be filed within 15 days.
How does the UAE define a beneficial owner?
A three-tier test applied in sequence. First, the natural person who owns or controls 25% or more of the capital or voting rights, directly or indirectly — and where several people hold jointly, all of them are treated as beneficial owners. If that produces no result, the person with the right to appoint or dismiss the majority of managers. If neither applies, the senior manager responsible for day-to-day operations is recorded instead. The registrar may take a risk-based approach in complex ownership structures. The design means no structure escapes without a named individual on file.
Is UAE beneficial ownership data public?
No, and there is no legitimate-interest route to apply for. UBO data filed with the registrar is confidential. The Ministry and the licensing authorities share it only with UAE competent authorities on official request, and the Ministry may share it with foreign authorities where mutual agreements are in place. Commercial use of UBO data is not permitted. Non-compliance is enforced under Cabinet Decision No. 132 of 2023, with escalating administrative sanctions from a written warning up to fines of AED 100,000 and potential licence suspension.
What changed with Federal Decree-Law No. 20 of 2025?
It is the most consequential change to UAE company data in years and it is barely discussed outside law firms. Issued on 1 October 2025 and effective the day after publication in the Official Gazette on 14 October 2025, it amends the Commercial Companies Law and inserts a new Article 15 bis. That article lets a company transfer its commercial registration from one competent authority to another — between emirates, from mainland to free zone, from free zone to mainland, and between free zones — while preserving its legal personality. Before this, such a move required deregistration and re-registration, which created a new legal person and broke the record. The transfer needs a special resolution or absolute majority of partners, and the consent of both the transferring and receiving registries; joint stock companies also need Ministry or SCA consent.
Is there any single identifier that works across the whole UAE?
The closest thing is the Tax Registration Number. It is issued by the Federal Tax Authority, is always 15 digits beginning with 100, and applies to mainland and free-zone entities alike — free-zone companies hold ordinary TRNs verified exactly as a mainland company’s are. It can be checked free on the FTA portal, which returns validity and the registered entity name. It is entirely distinct from a trade licence number, which is issued by one of 53 licensing venues with no shared format. Three limits worth stating: the TRN is tax-scoped rather than universal, the FTA tool checks one number at a time rather than serving bulk data, and a valid TRN confirms the FTA knows the entity but says nothing about its licence status or standing.
Is the UAE on the FATF grey list?
Not currently. The UAE was placed on the FATF list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring in March 2022 and removed in February 2024. The UBO overhaul described above, the associated penalty regime, and wider AML reforms were part of the programme that led to delisting. Delisting is not the same as an absence of risk, and a risk-based approach should reflect the counterparty and the structure rather than the jurisdiction’s list status alone.