# AI Search for UAE Business Setup Firms: What ChatGPT and Google Quoted By David Ulmczak Some of the questions your customers used to ask you on a first call now go to an assistant instead. What does a free zone licence really cost? Do I need an office? Which firm should I use? They can reach your enquiry form with their mind already made up, and in the runs we logged, the answers were assembled from whichever pages stated the details plainly. That makes the way you describe your services a visibility question as well as a sales one: below is what the assistants quoted, and how to lay out a package page so your numbers survive being summarised. Short answer: in nine answers logged on one day in September 2026, ChatGPT and Google's AI Mode built UAE setup answers out of published detail. ChatGPT drew on government pages for the rules and on free zone fee pages for cost, while AI Mode opened instead with a setup firm's pricing page, a free zone blog or a forum thread. From the firms themselves, both tools took the package, its inclusions, its exclusions and its price. What the assistants quoted AI Visibility put three questions to ChatGPT and to Google's AI Mode: which firm to use for a consultancy, what a free zone company costs, and whether a mainland licence needs an office. Nine answers, two ChatGPT runs and one AI Mode run per question, on one day, on one account, in English. Far too small to be a study, but three things stood out. We logged what the assistants said without checking any of it. No firm, price or rating below is verified, and nothing here is our own view of any firm. Firm recommendations came down to what had already been published about each firm. ChatGPT named firms and justified each pick with things a customer can check: indicative starting prices and what they exclude, named free zone packages with and without a visa allocation, the breadth of the activity list, support that continues after the licence, years in business and review scores. Google's AI Mode picked different firms, smaller names than ChatGPT's, described each by the service features those firms publish, and put a public forum thread at the top of its citations. In ChatGPT, cost answers came almost entirely from the free zones' own fee pages. In both its runs the only sources cited were free zone authorities. Each answer started from a headline package price, then added back what it left out to reach a realistic first-year figure: the establishment card (priced separately from the licence), the investor visa, the medical test and the Emirates ID. One of the two runs closed by noting that a "from AED 12,500" advertisement generally means the licence or company formation itself. AI Mode took a setup firm's pricing page as its main source instead, and its answer followed much the same shape as that page: by setup type, then by itemised component, then by the costs people forget. Nothing displaced the government on the rules, at least in ChatGPT. Asked whether a mainland licence needs an office, ChatGPT cited only government material in both runs, between them the UAE government portal, dubai.ae, the Dubai Media Office and the Invest in Dubai portal. AI Mode did not follow suit. It led with a free zone's own blog post, cited a forum thread among its sources, and built the answer as a series of rules and catches, the catches coming from pages that spell out the limits. The half you control is the half the official pages do not cover: what your service includes, what it excludes, what it costs and what happens next. That half is where Lunasol, the agency behind this publication, does its work (Lunasol (https://lunasol.ae/geo-aeo)). Mainland or free zone: the decision before price In two of the three firm-choice answers, one from each tool, the jurisdiction came before the choice of firm. ChatGPT put it flatly: "The more important decision, however, is the licence jurisdiction, not the setup agent." A page that opens with a package price is answering the second question while the customer is still stuck on the first. So give the comparison its own space, one short block per route, on the same few axes each time: who it suits, ownership, whether premises are required, and a first-year cost range. Mainland, licensed in Dubai by the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism (DET). On the standard process, the UAE government's guidance states: "Office and warehouse rental agreement must be provided ... In Dubai, the agreement must be registered with Ejari." (The Official Portal of the UAE Government (https://u.ae/en/information-and-services/business/Doing-business/doing-business-on-the-mainland/steps-to-start-a-business-on-the-mainland), updated 16 July 2026). Ejari is Dubai's rental contract registration system. Licence routes differ, so name the route you are quoting instead of stating the rule as though it covered all of them. Free zone. There are many, each licensing under its own rules, packages, activity lists and desk or office options. Requirements and fees come from the authority, so name the zone you are quoting and link to its page. Offshore structures and other emirates. If you place companies outside Dubai, say which and what they are used for. If you do not handle a route, say so and say who does: state the limit yourself and it sits on your page in your words. The four things a customer wants stated What is in the package, line by line: jurisdiction, licence type, the number of activity groups (the categories of trade a licence covers) and any desk or office included. What is not in it. Residence visas, establishment card, medical test and Emirates ID, insurance, activity approvals, bank account assistance, bookkeeping and renewal. What varies, and what nobody controls. Activity, visa count, premises, shareholder structure and regulated approvals all move the price. You do not decide the approval, and you certainly do not decide whether a bank opens the account. What happens next. The steps, who does each one, and timelines you can stand behind. How Lunasol reads an offer page. Lunasol, the agency behind AI Visibility and the owner of this site, starts from the questions customers actually ask, checks whether the page answers them in words an assistant can lift, and makes sure the same facts turn up wherever a model might go looking (Lunasol (https://lunasol.ae/geo-aeo)). On a setup page, that work lands on the line items: the package, the exclusions, the renewal and the date beside each figure. How to write a package page that can be quoted correctly Six things make a package page quotable. Split the authority's fees from your fee. A customer comparing two proposals wants to know which part is the government's and which is yours. The answers in our check rebuilt totals item by item anyway, so do the split on the page. Publish a full first-year total for two or three typical cases, such as no visa, one visa, and a founder plus two staff, and say in one line directly under it what any "from" price covers. Publish the renewal cost. Every cost answer we logged built the first year up from scratch, and one of them marked each line with how often it recurs. Publish the year-two figure and nobody has to assemble it. Date every figure. Month and year beside the price, and a review cycle you actually keep. Map your service onto the official process. The UAE government's outline of mainland setup includes, in this order, "Identifying a business activity", "Applying for a trade licence", "Getting the initial approval", "Selecting a business location" and "Collecting the business licence" (The Official Portal of the UAE Government (https://u.ae/en/information-and-services/business/Doing-business/doing-business-on-the-mainland/steps-to-start-a-business-on-the-mainland), updated 16 July 2026). Say which steps you handle and which stay with the customer. Show who you are. Licence details, years in business, team and office. Both ChatGPT runs on the firm question cited years in business or review scores as a reason, so those facts were part of the answer a customer would have seen. Keeping them identical across every page and profile is the signals half of Lunasol's work (Lunasol (https://lunasol.ae/geo-aeo)). What a quotable package page looks like A package page with the inclusions, exclusions, totals and timeline on it comes out roughly like this: H1: [Package name], [jurisdiction], [licence type] Opening answer: jurisdiction, licence type, who it suits, total first-year cost, as of [month year] Included: line by line, your fee and the authority's fee in separate columns Not included: each item, indicative cost, and who charges it Totals: no visa / one visa / small team Renewal: what year two costs and what it covers Timeline: step, who does it, how long, what can delay it From the customer: the documents you need and when The official rules: one or two lines, quoted, linked and dated FAQ: visa count, activity changes, renewal, bank account, timeline Contact: one way to request an itemised quote Read your competitors' package pages against that same list, and let what they publish set your own floor. If two of them publish a one-visa total and you publish "from", the rest of your customer's total gets filled in from someone else's published numbers. Do not restate a rival's price as fact, though; prices move, and a stale comparison undermines the page carrying it. What to avoid claiming Guaranteed approvals. No firm approves a licence or a visa; the authority does. Describe what you prepare, submit and chase instead. Timelines you do not control. Publish your part of the timeline and name the points where the wait depends on an authority or a bank. Government fees you have not checked this month. If you quote an official fee, link the official page and put a date on it. Legal and tax positions. Your page can describe your service and quote the official rule. A customer's tax position, a structuring question or a dispute belongs with a licensed UAE legal or tax adviser, and saying so is a better answer than a paragraph of general advice. Your next step Open your main package page and try to answer three questions from it alone: what does this cost in total for a single founder with one visa, what is excluded, and what happens in week one. If the page cannot answer them, your customer's answer gets built from pages that can. In our check those were free zone fee pages and other firms' published pricing. Then put the questions your team hears every week to ChatGPT and to Google's AI Mode: what does this cost in total for one person, does a mainland licence need an office, mainland or free zone, how long does it take, what does the headline price leave out, what does renewal cost. Look at whose pages the answers are built from. It takes an afternoon, and it shows you which page to rewrite first. This article is general information about website content, current at September 2026. It is not legal, tax or licensing advice. Confirm requirements with the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism, the relevant free zone authority or a licensed UAE legal consultant. Product and authority names are used here for identification only: ChatGPT is a product of OpenAI, AI Mode a product of Google, and Ejari, Emirates ID and the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism are UAE government services and authorities. This publication and its owner are independent of all of them. Reading your own pages against those answers shows which line is missing. Lunasol, which owns AI Visibility, offers a free AI visibility check with no obligation; you can ask for it by WhatsApp or email, and the contact details are on its AI search service page (https://lunasol.ae/geo-aeo). AI Visibility is owned by Lunasol.