RAKEZ Activity List

RAKEZ is the unusual case among UAE activity lists. Most authorities license either free zone companies or mainland companies. Ras Al Khaimah Economic Zone licenses both, and its official activity list is filterable by zone as “Freezone” and “Non-Freezone”. If you take one thing from this page, take that: before you look up a RAKEZ activity, you need to know which side of that filter you are on, because the answer differs.

This guide covers the licence types RAKEZ offers, how its activity codes are structured, and how to read its official list. Everything here is as published by RAKEZ in August 2026.

RAKEZ Licence Types (Master Table)

The twelve licence types below are those offered in RAKEZ’s own activity-list filter, read on 8 August 2026. The names are RAKEZ’s; the notes are ours and describe what each type is normally used for.

Two of these are worth calling out because they are frequently missed. E-Commerce as its own licence type means an online seller does not have to be shoehorned into a general commercial licence. Individual/Professional and Freelance existing side by side means there are two distinct routes for a single practitioner, and they are not interchangeable. Ask RAKEZ which fits before assuming the cheaper one applies.

How RAKEZ Activity Codes Work

Every activity in the official list is published with a code and a licence type. These rows appear in RAKEZ’s own list and show the pattern:

Note that two code formats coexist: a RAKEZ-prefixed identifier and a bare numeric one. RAKEZ does not publish an explanation of the difference, so do not read meaning into which format an activity carries. What the codes are reliably good for is precision: quoting the code removes any ambiguity about which of several similarly named activities you mean, and that is worth doing on any application or amendment.

Only these three rows are reproduced here, and only because RAKEZ publishes them as examples on its own list. This page does not mirror the catalogue: it changes, and a copy would be wrong before long.

Free Zone or Non-Free Zone: Read the Filter First

RAKEZ licensing both free zone and non-free zone entities from one register is genuinely useful, and it is also the most common source of confusion about its activity list.

An activity being present in the register does not mean it is available to you. It may be listed under the zone you are not in. RAKEZ also publishes a separate downloadable document titled “Business Activity List Non-Free Zone” on its own site, which is the authority-hosted list many people are looking for when they search for a RAKEZ activity list PDF. Use that copy rather than a mirror on a consultancy site, because you can see its provenance.

The choice between the two is a business decision rather than an activity one: it turns on where you can trade, who your customers are and what premises you need. The activity list will not make that decision for you, and picking a zone because an activity appeared under it in a search result is the wrong way round.

How to Use the Official List

RAKEZ’s list filters three ways, and each answers a different question.

• By keyword when you know roughly what you do and want to find the official wording for it. Search the noun, not your marketing description.
• By group when you want to see what else sits near your activity, which matters if you intend to hold several related activities.
• By zone first, always, so that everything you then find is actually available to you.

The list paginates at 20, 40, 60 or 100 rows. RAKEZ does not publish a total, so there is no way to tell from the page how much of the catalogue you have seen. Search deliberately rather than browsing to the end.

Adding or Changing Activities Later

Activities can be amended after the licence issues, and the licence is reissued to reflect the change. Where a new activity implies a different licence type (moving from Services into Industrial, for example, or adding E-Commerce), the amendment may change your licence type rather than simply extending your activity list, and any regulator attached to the new activity has to be satisfied even though the company already exists.

RAKEZ does not publish amendment fees on its activity list, so confirm the current cost directly. For packages, visa tiers and warehousing costs rather than activities, see our RAKEZ cost and licence guide.