An SPC Free Zone licence through SwiftHub starts at AED 4,999. SPC publishes its own starting price of AED 5,750, so our entry package sits below the zone's own advertised rate. That is a fact you can check on spcfz.ae in about ten seconds, which is the only reason it is worth stating.
SPC is Sharjah Publishing City. It began as a publishing and media zone and has widened to e-commerce and general business, with more than 2,000 activities available.
What SPC costs
| Source | Figure |
|---|---|
| SPC published: E-commerce, publishing or media licence | From AED 5,750 |
| Through SwiftHub, entry package | From AED 4,999 |
The visa position, which is SPC's real advantage
SPC states there is no cap on visas per licence. In most free zones your visa quota is tied to the office or desk you lease, so growing the team means upgrading the facility first. Where that constraint is removed, hiring stops being a property decision.
SPC also quotes UAE residency in five working days. Treat that as the processing target once your documents are clean and you are in the country for the medical and Emirates ID steps, not as a promise that covers everything from first enquiry.
What sits on top of the licence
- Establishment card, required before immigration will process any visa
- E-channel or immigration portal registration
- Residence visa per person: entry permit, status change, medical and Emirates ID
- Corporate tax registration, required whether or not you make a profit
- VAT registration, once turnover crosses the threshold
- Attestation and legal translation, where your documents need it
What “no visa cap” actually costs
No cap means no ceiling. It does not mean free, and the two get blurred in almost every page written about this zone. Each person you sponsor is still a separate immigration file with its own government charges and its own steps, whether they are your first hire or your fifteenth.
These are our service fees, per person, so you can see where the money goes. They are not government charges and we do not present them as such — the immigration and medical costs sit on top and are billed at cost:
| Per visa, per person | SwiftHub fee |
|---|---|
| Visa typing | AED 200 |
| WPI (unemployment insurance) | AED 300 |
| Portal access | AED 300 |
| Health insurance, from | From AED 500 |
The practical consequence is that SPC changes when you can hire, not whether hiring is cheap. In a quota zone, the fifth visa can mean leasing a bigger office before you are allowed to issue it at all — a step change in cost that arrives at the worst moment. Here the cost per head stays roughly linear, which is much easier to plan against.
How the setup runs
- Activity selection. SPC's list runs past 2,000 activities, which is generous but not infinite. We check yours is on it before anything is filed.
- Name reservation and initial approval.
- Licence issuance and incorporation documents.
- Establishment card, before any visa can move.
- Visas, in order: entry permit, status change, medical, Emirates ID.
- Corporate tax registration.
What we need from you
- Passport copy for every shareholder and visa applicant
- Passport-style photograph against a white background
- Your intended activities, described plainly
- Three trade name options in order of preference
- A UAE entry stamp or visa page, if you are already in the country
When SPC is the right choice, and when it is not
SPC suits publishers, media and content businesses, e-commerce sellers, and any small team that expects to add visas faster than it adds office space. The no-quota visa position and the low entry price are a genuinely good combination for that shape of business.
It is the wrong choice in three situations:
- You need a Dubai address on the licence. SPC is in Sharjah. If your customers weigh that, IFZA is the Dubai option and costs more.
- You need warehousing, land or light industrial space. That is RAKEZ, which offers facilities up to land for development.
- You will sell directly to UAE mainland customers. No free zone licence permits that. Mainland setup is the honest answer, even though it costs more.
Year two, and the number nobody quotes
Renewal is where the no-cap advantage is either real or imaginary, because a team of five renews five immigration files as well as one licence. The one-off formation work drops away — name reservation, incorporation, issuing the establishment card happen once — but everything attached to a person comes back on that person's own cycle.
So the honest way to compare SPC against a quota zone is not first-year price against first-year price. It is your realistic headcount in year two, priced in both. That is the comparison we will run for you, and it is the one that occasionally sends people to a different zone. You can sketch it yourself with the cost calculator.
Opening the bank account
Worth planning for rather than assuming. The free zone does not open your account and neither do we — a UAE bank runs its own compliance review and decides on its own terms. Sharjah free zone companies whose shareholders, staff and customers are all outside the UAE draw the most questions, and “no UAE substance” is the usual reason a file stalls.
Our fee for preparing and introducing the file is AED 1,000 for a low-risk activity and AED 2,000 where the activity is treated as higher risk. Since risk follows the activity you licensed, this is another reason the activity list is worth an hour at the start. See bank account opening.
Tax, honestly
An SPC licence is not a tax exemption. UAE corporate tax is 9% on taxable profit above AED 375,000 and registration is required regardless of profit. A qualifying free zone person can access 0% on qualifying income, but the conditions must be met and evidenced. VAT is mandatory above AED 375,000 turnover, voluntary from AED 187,500. Thresholds are the Federal Tax Authority's, at tax.gov.ae. Verified August 2026.
Frequently asked questions
No. It started as Sharjah Publishing City and the name stuck, but the activity list now runs past 2,000 and covers e-commerce, trading and general business. The publishing heritage shows in how well it suits content and media work, not in a restriction.
No, it is in Sharjah. That is worth knowing before you compare it against Dubai zones on price alone, because the emirate appears on your licence and your banking paperwork.
SPC states there is no cap tied to the licence. That is unusual: in most zones the visa quota follows the office or desk you lease, so hiring means upgrading premises first. It is the single strongest reason to pick SPC for a growing team.
We buy from the zone and set our own retail price, so our entry package can sit below the zone's advertised rate. SPC publishes from AED 5,750; ours starts at AED 4,999. What that figure does not include is the same in either case, and we set it out above.
That is SPC's published processing target and it is achievable with clean documents. It assumes you are in the country for the medical and Emirates ID steps. It does not describe the whole journey from first enquiry to residency card.
No. It means there is no ceiling and no forced premises upgrade to raise one. Each person is still a separate immigration file with its own government charges, medical and Emirates ID. What SPC removes is the step change that quota zones impose when you outgrow a desk, not the per-person cost.
Nobody can promise one — not the free zone, not us. The bank decides on its own compliance review. Files where every shareholder, employee and customer sits outside the UAE get the most scrutiny. We prepare and introduce the application; the decision is the bank's.
The licence renews annually and the figure follows your visa count and activities rather than your first-year price. Ask for it up front. A cheap first year with an expensive second is the most common complaint about free zone setups.
Next step
Tell us your activities and how many visas you expect in the first year. You get a written figure covering the licence, the establishment card and the visa steps together, plus the renewal number.