“Freelance visa” is the everyday name for three registrations: a freelance permit that lets you trade in your own name, an establishment card that connects that permit to the immigration system, and the two-year residence visa the permit then sponsors for you. We prepare each file and put it in front of the authority that decides it. Most applications finish in 10–12 working days once your documents are ready.
Nobody at the authorities calls it a freelance visa. The term covers three separate registrations, granted in order, each by a different body. We hold a Dubai documents-clearing licence, which is what allows a private firm to prepare and lodge those applications for someone else. The decisions themselves stay with the authorities.
Registration 1
The freelance permit
Your right to trade: a trade name, the activities you choose, and invoices your client’s finance team can actually pay. Already hold UAE residency? This is the only part that applies to you.
Free zone authority
Registration 2
The establishment card
The part almost nobody explains. A permit on its own cannot sponsor anybody — the establishment card is what connects it to the immigration system, so that it can sponsor you.
Immigration
Registration 3
The residence visa & Emirates ID
Your right to live here, held in your name rather than an employer’s. Then the medical, the biometrics and the Emirates ID that make it usable at a bank, a landlord or the RTA.
Two routes to residency. One for people who already have it.
If you want to live here and bill clients under your own name, the freelance permit puts both the licence and the visa in your name. If you want residency sooner and do not need to invoice, a recruitment agency licensed by the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation can sponsor an employment visa instead — the agency is the employer, and we say so plainly rather than calling it freelancing.
Whose name is it in?Yours
Freelance Permit
For people who already hold UAE residency — dependants, Golden Visa holders and GCC nationals. The status is already yours; what is missing is the licence that lets you invoice in your own name.
Most enquiredWhose name is it in?Yours — permit and visa
Freelance Permit & 2-Year Residency
The permit and the two-year residence visa it sponsors, filed as one application. The licence is in your name, and so is your residency — nobody else is holding your status for you.
Freelance permit application, up to 10 activities
Two-year residence visa application, self-sponsored
Entry permit, or status change without leaving
Medical test & Emirates ID biometrics booked
Bank account opening support
Family sponsorship guidance once residency is issued
A two-year Dubai residence visa and a freelance work permit, both held through a recruitment agency licensed by the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation. Client engagements are contracted and invoiced through the agency rather than in your own name.
Invoicing runs through the agency
Freelance work permit through the licensed agency
Two-year Dubai residence visa application
Medical test & Emirates ID biometrics booked
Standard medical insurance included
Bank account opening support
Family sponsorship guidance, subject to salary criteria
Plans are subject to your card issuer or payment provider’s approval, eligibility and terms. Not all plans are available with every card or provider. Any applicable fees and payment schedule will be confirmed before you proceed.
Flexible payment options
Take the next step. Spread your payments.
Choose a payment option that works for you, with credit card instalments, Tabby and Tamara.
More ways to spread the cost
Select your preferred credit card instalment plan to ask our team about availability.
Pay with Tabby
Ask your consultant about Tabby payment options for your freelance package.
Pay with Tamara
Ask your consultant about Tamara payment options for your freelance package.
Our consultant can help you check the options available for your quotation.
Interested in 4 instalments? Ask us to check your card’s eligibility.Interested in 6 instalments? Ask us to check your card’s eligibility.Interested in 8 instalments? Ask us to check your card’s eligibility.Interested in 12 instalments? Ask us to check your card’s eligibility.Your available plan is confirmed by Tabby before you accept.Your available plan is confirmed by Tamara before you accept.
Plans are subject to your card issuer or payment provider’s approval, eligibility and terms. Not all plans are available with every card or provider. Any applicable fees and payment schedule will be confirmed before you proceed.
Let’s find your payment option.Speak to your Trivup consultant.
A passport copy and one white-background photograph. We check validity, the photo and your activities before anything is filed.
Day 2–3Permit application and initial approval
We lodge the file with the free-zone authority. Initial approval usually returns within about 48 hours, and the freelance permit follows it.
Day 3–9Entry permit or status change, then the medical
From abroad you travel in on the entry permit; already in the UAE, we change your status with no exit run. Then the medical and Emirates ID biometrics, both booked for you.
Day 10–12Residence visa and Emirates ID
Stamped and issued. From then on you are a UAE resident — and a bank will open an account for you.
Those days are what we typically see, not a promise: every application is decided by the authority that issues it, and a file can wait on a medical slot or a document we have to come back to you for. The employment-visa route runs to a similar length, in a different order.
The list people brace themselves for is long. The list to open an application is not — everything else on it happens on the way through, and we book it for you.
1Passport, valid six months or more
A clear colour scan of the photo page. Six months of remaining validity is the practical minimum, and the single most common reason a file goes back.
2One photograph, white background
Recent, face fully visible. A phone photo against a plain white wall usually passes; a cream wall usually does not.
Your UAE status today, if you have oneVisit visa, residence visa or entry stamp — it decides whether your file runs as a status change or an entry permit. Outside the country is also an answer.
A UAE number and an addressNeeded for the Emirates ID registration. Don’t have them yet? Say so — it is a sequencing question, not a problem.
Medical insuranceCompulsory for residency in Dubai, and not included in our fee on the freelance route. On the employment route the agency includes a standard policy.
Nothing attested, in most casesDegree attestation applies to a small set of regulated activities. If yours is one, we say so at the consultation — not halfway through.
Before you pay anyone.
Ask one question, of us or of anybody else offering you this: whose name will the permit be issued in? If the answer is a company you have never heard of rather than your own, what you are being sold is employment sponsorship, not a freelance permit. Both are legal, and we arrange both — but they are not the same thing, and the difference shows up on the day the arrangement ends.
The permit is the half that lets you invoice. The residency is the half that lets you live here — and because your own permit sponsors it, nobody else is holding it on your behalf.
Your status is your own
Not held by an employer, so it does not have to be handed back when a piece of work comes to an end.
Bill clients directly
A trade name and a licence number — what a client’s finance team needs before it can pay you at all.
Emirates ID, and everything behind it
A bank account, a tenancy, a UAE driving licence, a phone contract, insurance in your own name.
Bring your family over
Sponsor a spouse and children, and in many cases parents, where you meet the income and housing conditions the authority sets.
Two years between renewals
Both residency routes run two years, so the paperwork comes round half as often as on a one-year visa.
Up to 10 activities on one permit
Design and photography, or consulting and training — no second licence every time the work shifts shape.
Client reviews
People remember how the process felt.
4.9★★★★★out of 5, average client rating
★★★★★Extremely cooperative staff, very happy with the customer service. Loved my experience with them.Vincent · E-commerce freelancer★★★★★Very helpful, professional, and fast. Got my licence the same day. I am very pleased.Monica · Freelance beautician★★★★★The overall experience was excellent from start to finish.Mason · Lifestyle coach
Questions, answered
The things people ask before they start.
Can’t find yours? Ask a consultant directly. No obligation, and you’ll get a straight answer.
01What is a UAE freelance visa?
Two things bought together: a freelance permit or licence issued by a free-zone authority, which makes you a legal business and lets you invoice clients, and a residency visa, which lets you live in the country, open a bank account and sponsor family. You can hold the permit alone if you already have residency, but you cannot legally freelance on residency alone.
02What is the difference between a company-sponsored visa and a freelance visa?
A visa issued under a private company is an employment visa: your employer sponsors it, and your status depends on that job continuing. On a freelance visa the sponsor is your own permit, so you pay for it and you hold it.
03What is an establishment card, and why does it come up?
It connects a licence to the UAE immigration system. A freelance permit on its own cannot sponsor a visa for anybody — including you — until there is an establishment card behind it.
04Is a two-year visa through a recruitment agency a freelance visa?
No, although it is often sold as one. The agency employs you and sponsors your residence visa — legal and quick, but there is no trade licence in your name and your residency ends when the employment does. We arrange both and tell you which one you are being quoted for.
05Can I work anywhere in the UAE, or outside it?
Yes. With a legal freelance permit or licence from a UAE free zone you can work anywhere in the UAE, and take on clients outside the country as well.
06Can I work with any company in the UAE as a freelancer?
Yes. Your freelance permit lets you work with companies across the UAE under a legal contract, and invoice them in your own business name.
Talk it through with a consultant.
No fee, no obligation. Call, WhatsApp, or send the form, and we reply within an hour during business hours.
10th Floor, Office 21, Aspin Commercial Tower, Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai · Trade licence 1242868 · Approval is decided by the authorities, never by us.