For years, the standard advice for a freezone company that wanted to invoice mainland UAE clients was: rent a mainland office, get an Ejari, register a branch with the DED, then wait. Since March 2025, that’s no longer the only option — and for a lot of freezone businesses, it’s not even the sensible one anymore.

Dubai’s Executive Council Resolution No. 11 of 2025 rewrote the rules for how freezone companies can legally operate on the mainland. If you’ve been quietly invoicing mainland clients from your freezone licence and hoping nobody notices, or you’ve been avoiding mainland work because a full branch setup seemed like overkill, this is worth ten minutes of your attention.

Three ways in, not one

The resolution gives freezone companies three distinct routes onto the mainland, and the right one depends entirely on how much mainland business you actually expect.

Temporary permit — AED 5,000 for six months. This is built for testing the water: a short-term project, a single government tender, or validating whether mainland demand is real before you commit to anything permanent. It’s not renewable in the traditional sense — after six months you either convert to one of the two licence options below or stop.

Dual licence (remote branch) — AED 10,000 a year. This is the one most freezone businesses will actually want. It lets you operate on the mainland under a branch licence while your registered office stays inside your existing freezone premises. No mainland office, no separate Ejari, no flexi-desk rental. You’re still the same freezone entity — just licensed to sell to mainland clients directly.

Branch licence with a mainland address — AED 10,000 a year plus office costs. The traditional route: a real mainland presence with its own Ejari-registered office, typically running an extra AED 20,000 to 50,000 a year in rent depending on location. Worth it if you want a physical mainland footprint — a shop, a walk-in office, a specific address for government tenders that require one. Overkill if you just need to invoice UAE clients.

What’s actually covered

The permit system applies to non-regulated activities — technology, consultancy, design, professional services, and general trading are the main categories DET published in its eligible-activities list in September 2025. If your business is in a regulated sector — financial services, healthcare, education, legal — you still need sector-specific regulatory approval on top of the DET permit, and that framework isn’t fully built out yet.

One exclusion worth knowing: DIFC entities aren’t covered by this resolution at all. If your freezone company is registered in DIFC, this route doesn’t apply to you.

The tax catch nobody skips past for free

Mainland revenue earned under any of these three routes is taxed at the standard 9% corporate tax rate above the AED 375,000 threshold — it doesn’t get the freezone’s 0% treatment. You’re required to keep separate financial records for the mainland activity versus your freezone activity, and the two need to stay genuinely distinct in your books, not just labeled differently.

Done properly, this doesn’t touch your freezone qualifying income status. Your international freezone revenue can keep its 0% corporate tax treatment as long as you meet the qualifying free zone person conditions and stay under the de minimis threshold for non-qualifying income. Mix the two together in your accounting and you risk your freezone company’s entire 0% status, not just the mainland slice — this is the part worth getting an accountant to set up correctly from day one, not after your first mainland invoice goes out.

If you’re already doing this informally

Here’s the part that matters right now if it applies to you: companies that were already conducting mainland activity before the resolution had until March 3, 2026 to regularize their status with DET, with a one-time extension available on request. That deadline has passed. If your freezone company has been invoicing mainland clients without one of these permits in place, you’re not in a grey area anymore — you’re out of compliance, and it’s worth sorting out before it becomes DET’s problem to point out to you instead of yours to fix quietly.

Which one should you actually pick

If you’re not sure mainland demand is real yet, the temporary permit is the honest starting point — AED 5,000 buys you six months to find out without committing to anything bigger. If you already know you’ll be invoicing mainland clients on an ongoing basis but don’t need a physical mainland address, the dual licence is the clear default: same AED 10,000 as a full branch, none of the office overhead. Reach for the full mainland branch licence only when the business genuinely needs a physical mainland location — a retail presence, a specific government tender requirement, or a team that needs to be based there.

For most freezone companies doing B2B work — software, consulting, design, trading — the dual licence route is the one that actually matches how the business runs day to day.