What ADGM company formation costs

Every figure on this page comes from the ADGM Schedule of Fees, version dated January 2025, which ADGM publishes as a document you can open yourself [ADGM RA — Schedule of Fees]. All fees are set in US dollars; the schedule states a conversion rate of US dollars[ADGM RA — Schedule of Fees].

That is worth saying because most pages answering this question do not cite anything. If you are comparing this page against another, the question to ask of both is: where did this number come from, and when?

Which brings up the caveat that matters most here. This is the January 2025 edition. We checked for a 2026 edition on 4 August 2026 and could not find one; if ADGM has published a newer schedule since, it supersedes everything below. Check the source link before relying on a figure for a decision.

Every registration total on this page is the same five lines. Only the fourth changes between categories [ADGM RA — Schedule of Fees]:

• Name reservation — USD 200. Valid for 30 calendar days[ADGM — Setting up FAQs], so do not reserve one before the rest of the file is close to ready.
• Application for incorporation — USD 300. Non-refundable if the application is withdrawn or rejected.
• Commercial licence — USD 200. The same for every category.
• Business activity fee — USD 0 to USD 16,000. This single line is what separates a Foundation from a financial firm. Everything else is identical.
• Data protection — USD 300[ADGM RA — Schedule of Fees]. Every category, on registration and on renewal, and ADGM requires the renewal to be submitted separately from the commercial licence renewal — which is why it is the one people forget.

Renewal drops the name reservation and the incorporation application, leaving the licence, the activity fee and data protection.

Seeing it decomposed is genuinely useful when reading a provider’s quotation: the government element is knowable to the dirham, so anything above it is the provider’s fee and can be compared like for like.

Two tracks sit outside the three main categories.

Specialised

A cheaper track for structures that do not trade. It covers professional membership organisations, captive insurers, investment partnerships and their general partners, open- and closed-ended investment companies, and Special Purpose Vehicles[ADGM RA — Schedule of Fees]. The activity fee is USD 900, giving the SPV total of USD 1,900[ADGM RA — Schedule of Fees].

Incentivised

Time-limited reductions to encourage particular sectors [ADGM RA — Schedule of Fees]:

• Tech Start-up — USD 1,500[ADGM RA — Schedule of Fees] for three years, covering registration and two consecutive renewals
• Venture Capital Fund Managers — USD 1,500 for three years, for FSRA-approved applicants
• Social Enterprises — USD 700, subject to holding a certificate from the competent authority
• Carried Interest Vehicles — USD 1,900 initial, USD 1,000 renewal

The cliff is the thing to plan for. Incentivised fees apply only for the stated period, after which the entity reverts to the standard fees for its category — non-financial tech start-ups to Category B, and fintech start-ups conducting at least one financial activity to Category A. A start-up paying USD 1,500 in year one may be paying USD 5,300, or USD 16,500, in year four. Annual data protection fees are excluded from the incentivised figure throughout.

There is also an additional USD 3,100[ADGM RA — Schedule of Fees] to register as a Restricted Scope Company.

The most important section on any cost page, and the one most commonly missing. None of the following is in the figures above, and several are larger than all of them.

• The registered office. Every ADGM entity must maintain one in ADGM and pay the associated lease registration fee [ADGM RA — Schedule of Fees]. For an operating company taking real space this is usually the largest line in year one. There is no ADGM entity without an ADGM address.
• A company service provider. Mandatory for non-exempt SPVs and Foundations [ADGM — Company Service Providers]. Priced at market by each provider; no authority publishes a figure. For a typical SPV the CSP’s annual fee exceeds ADGM’s renewal charge, so budgeting on the government line alone understates the running cost substantially.
• FSRA fees, for Category A firms — set out in the FSRA’s own FEES rulebook, varying by permission, and entirely separate from the RA schedule[FSRA]. Reading the USD 17,000 as the cost of a financial licence understates it by an order of magnitude.
• Regulatory capital, for regulated firms. Not a fee at all, and often the largest requirement of the exercise.
• Visas, medical testing and Emirates ID — federal charges, levied per person.
• Certified copies and translation. Lighter here than in many jurisdictions: ADGM requires No attestation required[ADGM — SPV brochure] for corporate documents, asking instead for copies certified within the last three months.
• Accounting, audit where required, and corporate tax registration and filing [UAE Ministry of Finance].
• Legal drafting. Articles, shareholders’ agreements, and — for a Foundation — the Charter and By-Laws. Optional in the sense that a template exists; not optional in any sense that matters later.

With effect from 1 January 2025, ADGM cut commercial licence fees for non-financial businesses from USD 10,000 to USD 5,000, and for retail from USD 6,000 to USD 2,000, with retail renewals halved[ADGM — 2025 fee reduction]. The USD 300 data protection fee continues across all categories.

Two practical consequences.

First, older figures are not slightly stale — they are roughly double. If a page quotes USD 10,000 for a non-financial ADGM licence, it has not been updated since 2024. That is a useful test to apply to any ADGM cost page you read, including this one: check the version date it cites.

Second, the announcement and the schedule quote different things and both are right. The announcement gives the licensing element (USD 5,000 = licence USD 200 + activity USD 4,800); the schedule adds name reservation, incorporation and data protection to reach USD 5,800. Neither contradicts the other, and a page that presents one as disproving the other has misread both.

You will have noticed this page gives you seven precise government figures and refuses to add a headline “setup from USD X”. That is deliberate, and worth explaining rather than leaving as an apparent omission.

ADGM’s charges are facts. They are published, verifiable in one click, and identical for everyone. Refusing to state them while claiming to be the sourced, verifiable site would be absurd, so we state them.

A total is not a fact. It depends on your structure, your premises, whether a CSP is required, what that CSP charges, how many people you will sponsor and whether the FSRA is involved. Any number we published would be right for a hypothetical reader and wrong for you — and the moment a real quotation differs from it, the number has cost you confidence rather than saved you time.

There is also a harder constraint. We are not a licensed corporate service provider and do not issue quotations. When you enquire we introduce you to a provider who does, and you agree fees directly with them. A site that publishes a setup price is implicitly offering to honour it.

What we can do — and what is more useful — is tell you which of the variables above apply to your situation, so that when you receive a quotation you can read it against the process and see exactly what each line is for.