United Arab Emirates Company Register: How to Search the National Economic Register and Verify Emirati Companies (2026)

1. What is the Emirati company register?

The UAE runs its company register on licences. Under Federal Decree-Law No. 37 of 2021 on the Commercial Register, which replaced the Commercial Register law of 1975, every licensing authority keeps its own Commercial Register. The law calls them competent authorities: the local government entity in each emirate and the authority of each free zone. Nobody may carry out an economic activity in the UAE without being entered in one, and that covers companies, sole proprietorships, branches of foreign companies, and businesses in the free zones alike.

On top of those sits a national copy. The same law sets up an Economic Register at the Ministry of Economy, now the Ministry of Economy and Tourism, which every licensing authority feeds with its data and every change to it. Its public face is the National Economic Register, in Arabic السجل الاقتصادي الوطني, branded "Growth". In the NER's own words, it "collects all economic activities practiced at the state level by local authorities and free zones". Each establishment gets an Economic Register Number, which the Ministry describes as a digital identity for establishments and which a business uses in its dealings with government entities.

In short: the licensing authority holds the original record, the NER holds a copy of everything, and the financial free zones run registers of their own, of which the DIFC's is the most open one we found.

2. How to search the National Economic Register step by step

There is no single free search box for all UAE companies, and the national one is behind a login. When we tried to capture a record for this guide, searching for Emirates on Dubai's DED e-services site (eservices.dubaided.gov.ae), the site returned an Access Denied page. Here is what each route gives you, and where the walls are.

1. Find out who licensed the company

   Everything depends on the licensing authority: the economic department of one of the seven emirates (in Fujairah, the municipality) or a free zone. The trade licence names it. If you only have a name and a city, the NER covers all of them, if you have a UAE PASS account. For a Dubai business, the free directory below is quicker.

2. Open the National Economic Register

   The NER lives at growth.gov.ae, and the old ner.economy.ae address redirects there. It runs in English and Arabic and offers three services: inquire about economic licences, inquire about economic activities, and search for the availability of economic names. According to its FAQ, you can inquire by economic name, by local licence number, or by economic registry number.

3. Sign in with UAE PASS

   All three services send you to a Ministry login page that reads "Welcome to National Economic Register" and offers one option: sign in with UAE PASS, which the page describes as the digital identity "for all citizens, residents and visitors". There is no guest search behind it. We did not sign in for this guide.

4. For a Dubai business, use the Dubai business directory

   The Dubai business directory on Invest in Dubai is free and needs no account. It searches by business name, DUL number, trade name, or keyword, with filters for mainland or free zone, sector, and licence type. Each result is one licence, showing the zone, the status, the DUL number, the year of incorporation, the issuing authority, the licence expiry date, the name, and an address that is often written in Arabic. Opening a record adds the licence number, licence type, issue date, legal type, sector, and the licence activities with their status. The page runs a CAPTCHA check in the background, which can put an image challenge in front of the results.

5. For an Abu Dhabi business, expect another login

   The Ministry links to TAMM, the Abu Dhabi government portal, for trade licence enquiries. That service, the Economic Licence Enquiry (TAHAQAQ), redirects to a TAMM sign-in page built around UAE PASS.

6. For a free zone company, go to the free zone's own register

   The DIFC Public Register is free and needs no account. Search by entity name or registered number, and the record shows the legal structure, date of registration, licence validity, current directors, shareholders, company secretary, financial year end, auditor, and share capital. ADGM runs its own online registry with an entity search.

3. What data is public and what it costs

The law is more open than the websites. Article 16 of the Commercial Register law lets any person access the basic data in the Commercial or Economic Register and request an extract, and the Implementing Regulation ties that extract to the published data and to an applicant with an interest or the relevant capacity. In practice the national search needs a UAE PASS account, and the NER's public pages do not state a fee for an extract.

Article 14 of the Implementing Regulation, Cabinet Decision No. 107 of 2022, lists exactly what the Ministry and the licensing authorities publish: the Commercial and Economic Register numbers, the trade name in Arabic and English, the date of incorporation, phone and email, the licence number with its issue and expiry dates, the licence status (valid, suspended, under liquidation, or written off), the licence type, the legal form, the capital and shares, the address, branch details, the economic activities, and the name of the director or chairman. That is a useful identity check. The regulation lets the Ministry publish more, but this is the list it sets.

What the list leaves out matters more. The register itself holds the owners, the full board, and the real beneficiaries, but apart from the name of the director or chairman, none of that is on the publication list. Neither are financial statements. The Commercial Companies Law requires every LLC and joint stock company to have its accounts audited each year, yet only a joint stock company, public or private, has to publish its annual statements. An LLC's audited accounts go to its partners.

4. Emirati legal forms, briefly

Mainland companies fall under the Commercial Companies Law, Federal Decree-Law No. 32 of 2021, in force since 2 January 2022 and amended by Federal Decree-Law No. 20 of 2025. Article 9 of the 2021 text allows five company forms. The Ministry's own list of legal forms adds the sole establishment, the civil company, branches of GCC and local companies, representative offices of foreign companies, and holding companies, and the free zones use forms of their own.

The table follows the 2021 text of the Commercial Companies Law. The 2025 amending decree-law changed 15 of its articles and added one. According to the Ministry's summary, it lets a company move its registration between emirates, free zones, and financial free zones, or change its legal form, while keeping its legal personality. Check the current text before you rely on a detail.

The suffix is the fastest check you have. The Ministry requires a trade name to end in the abbreviation of its legal form, such as LLC or PJSC, and a holding company must say "Holding Company" on its papers. A counterparty that presents itself as a listed group while trading under an LLC name is worth a second look, and an FZE or FZ LLC tells you to look in a free zone register rather than an emirate one.

5. How to verify an Emirati company: a practical checklist

1. Get the trade licence and identify the authority

   Ask for a copy of the trade licence. It tells you which emirate or free zone issued it, the licence number, and the legal form, and from that you know which register to check. For a quick first pass, our free company lookup finds the registration and revenue data in one search.

2. Check the licence status and expiry date

   Registrations are renewed with the licensing authority, and the regulation distinguishes a valid licence from one that is suspended, under liquidation, or written off. In Dubai the business directory shows the status and expiry date on every card. An expired or suspended licence is a reason to stop and ask before you sign.

3. Match the name, suffix, and number on its documents

   Compare the trade name and legal-form suffix on the licence with the name on the contract and invoice. The Implementing Regulation requires the Commercial Register Number on a business's documents and website, so a missing or different number is a question to ask before you pay.

4. Check that the activities fit the deal

   The Ministry counts more than 2,000 economic activities, and each licence lists the ones its holder may carry out. The published register data includes the title and number of each activity. Make sure what you are buying from the company is on its licence.

5. For a free zone entity, read the free zone record

   In the DIFC, the Public Register shows the directors, the shareholders, the auditor, and the share capital, free. Check that the person signing is a current director and that the shareholder is who you were told it is.

6. Ask for the audited accounts

   Every LLC and joint stock company must have its accounts audited each year, but only joint stock companies have to publish them. For anyone else, ask the company for its latest audited statements and the auditor's name, and confirm the auditor exists.

7. Handle beneficial ownership through the proper channel

   Beneficial ownership is not on the published list. If you are a financial institution, a designated non-financial business or profession, or a virtual asset service provider, the NER FAQ tells you to send a formal emailed request with your justification, your details, a contact person, and the company name and licence number.

6. Limitations of the official register

To be fair: the legal design is sound, with one national copy of every licence in the country. The limits are about access, and about what the design leaves out:

• A login in front of the national search. The NER's licence, activity, and name searches all require UAE PASS, and so does the Abu Dhabi licence enquiry.
• Blocks and CAPTCHAs. When we tried it, the Dubai DED e-services site returned Access Denied, and the Dubai business directory runs a background CAPTCHA check that can put an image challenge in front of its results.
• Licences, not companies. The Dubai directory shows one record per business licence, with registered branches listed under it, and the register keeps a separate licence for each branch. One business can carry a Commercial Register Number, a licence number, an Economic Register Number, and a DUL number.
• Fragmented by design. Each emirate and each free zone keeps its own Commercial Register, and the Ministry counts more than 40 free zones. Only the NER brings them together, and that is the part behind the login.
• No owners, no accounts. The publication list in the Implementing Regulation stops at the director or chairman. Shareholders and beneficial owners stay off it, and only joint stock companies have to publish accounts. The DIFC register is the exception for shareholders.
• Arabic data. Trade names are registered in Arabic and English, but addresses on the Dubai directory are often written in Arabic, with only the area name in English.
• Data that can lag. The regulation allows up to three working days to pass data to the Economic Register when the electronic link fails, and the NER FAQ has a procedure for licence data that was not updated.
• Little bulk access. The NER's open data section holds seven legislation files and no licence dataset. Dubai's open data portal, Dubai Pulse, has published mainland Dubai licence files as CSV (archived copies from 2025 show them), but it did not load when we checked in October 2026.

If you check one Emirati supplier a quarter, a UAE PASS account and some patience will do. If you onboard hundreds across the emirates and free zones, it is the whole problem.

7. Access National Economic Register data programmatically

CompanyData maintains a normalized database of all 817,823 Emirati entities in one place, instead of one register per emirate and free zone. Records are enriched with revenue and employee data that the official registers do not publish at all.

Our Company Data API lets you look up any Emirati entity by name, registration number, or address and get structured JSON back in real time, with 150 free lookups to start and no UAE PASS login required. It is used by developers, banks, and insurers across 190+ countries, so UAE checks work exactly like checks anywhere else.

GET /v1/companies?country=AE&name=Emirates

We have left the response out on purpose. Our attempt to capture an official record for Emirates failed at the Dubai register, so there is no register entry to check the fields against, and this guide only prints values it could verify. Run the request yourself to see the full JSON for any Emirati company.

8. United Arab Emirates vs other company registers

The UAE splits its register across licensing authorities and puts the national copy behind a login, while the DIFC publishes directors and shareholders free. For context: