ADGM vs a general UAE free zone

Concretely, and only these things:

• Your company law, employment law and insolvency regime are ADGM's, drafted from common-law precedent and published in full — rather than federal civil law.
• Your disputes go to a common-law court in English, with judges from senior common-law benches[ADGM Courts], rather than to the local civil courts.
• Financial activity is supervised by the FSRA, on a rulebook modelled on the UK's Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.
• Specialist structures: the SPV at specialised fee rates, the Foundation, the RSC, the DLT Foundation.

Everything else people list as a free zone benefit — full foreign ownership, profit repatriation, customs treatment[UAE Gov — Free zones] — you get in a general free zone too.

Anyone with external investors. A shareholders' agreement is only as good as the forum that will construe it. Institutional investors and their counsel ask about this.

Anyone with a financing structure. Security, priority and enforcement are common-law questions your lenders' counsel already knows how to answer.

Regulated financial firms. If you need FSRA authorisation, a general free zone is not an alternative — it cannot offer it.

Family wealth and succession. Foundations, firewall provisions, and a court that will apply them.

Holding structures of size. Where the assets justify caring about which law governs their ownership.

Being direct about this is the point of the page.

A trading company selling locally with one or two owners, no outside investment, no financing structure and no realistic prospect of a complex dispute. You would be paying for a legal system you will never invoke.

A small consultancy or services business where the contracts are simple and the counterparties are straightforward.

Anyone choosing on tax. Corporate tax is federal and the Qualifying Free Zone Person test is identical everywhere[UAE Ministry of Finance]. ADGM changes nothing.

Anyone who cannot satisfy the nexus test and wanted an SPV. Every ADGM SPV must show a genuine connection to ADGM, the UAE or the GCC, and appointing a service provider does not create one[ADGM RA — SPV Guidance Note]. A general free zone holding company may be available where an ADGM SPV is not.

ADGM publishes its Registration Authority fees: retail USD 2,800 to register and USD 2,300 a year; non-financial USD 5,800 and USD 5,300; SPV USD 1,900 and USD 1,400; Foundation USD 1,000 and USD 500[ADGM RA — Schedule of Fees]. ADGM cut the non-financial and retail figures by half or more from January 2025.

We do not publish a comparison table against named free zones. Their fees vary by zone, package, activity and visa count, no single authority publishes them, and a table built from marketing pages would be out of date and selectively favourable. Any site showing you one has assembled it from the same sources you could check yourself.

What is fair to say: general free zones can be cheaper, sometimes substantially, particularly for small trading licences with few visas. ADGM's SPV and Foundation rates are competitive with anything. And the government fee is rarely the largest number in a real budget — premises and people are.

Ask yourself: can I name a specific situation in which the law and the court would matter to me?

If you can — an investor who will want an ADGM Courts clause, a lender whose security needs to be enforceable, a family arrangement that has to survive you, a regulator you must satisfy — then ADGM is good value and the fee difference is noise.

If you cannot, and the appeal is the address or the perceived prestige, then you are buying something you will not use, and a general free zone will serve you better for less.

That is the honest test, and we would rather you applied it before enquiring than after. See also is ADGM worth it and ADGM vs DIFC.