Commercial document attestation for the UAE

A commercial document is any company paper: a certificate of incorporation, a memorandum or articles of association, a board resolution, a certificate of good standing, a commercial licence, a trademark registration. To use one in the UAE it has to be legalised in the country that issued it and then attested again by UAE MoFA here. UAE MoFA charges AED 2,000 for that, per document. A degree certificate, a birth certificate or a marriage contract at the same counter costs AED 150.

How much does UAE MoFA charge for a commercial document?

UAE MoFA charges AED 2,000 per commercial document and AED 150 per individual affairs document. Both figures come from UAE MoFA’s own published fees, checked on 27 September 2026.

Then three rules multiply it.

The memorandum and the articles of association are two documents. The UAE mission pages we checked (New Delhi, Islamabad, London) state that memorandum and articles of association must be attested separately. A company that keeps them as one bound booklet still pays twice. That pair alone is AED 4,000.

A long agreement can be more than one document. UAE MoFA’s own wording is that commercial contracts or agreements may be considered as multiple documents based on their content. The UAE Embassy in New Delhi is blunter: the fee for commercial documents depends on the matter and the content, and applicants are told to present the documents at the counter to find out what they will pay. There is no way to price a complex agreement in advance from a published table.

A power of attorney crosses the line the moment it mentions company business. UAE mission pages (for example New Delhi, Islamabad and London) state that a power of attorney containing commercial content is considered a commercial document, and MoFA’s FAQ lists a general power of attorney as commercial too. Only a power of attorney of personal nature is AED 150, and power of attorney attestation sets out the drafting and notarisation rules that decide which band applies.

Count the documents before you budget

The fee is per document. If an authority asks for six separate corporate documents, the UAE MoFA stage is AED 12,000, before home-country, mission, courier and translation charges. The memorandum and articles count separately. A long contract may also be classified as multiple documents; UAE MoFA publishes no page-count rule.

Free zones and offshore registrars publish their own document lists, and their own rules about how recent a certificate has to be. Those vary by authority and we have not sourced them here, so ask yours directly rather than working from a list you found online. Every document you legalise speculatively is AED 2,000 you do not get back.

Which documents count as commercial?

MoFA’s FAQ lists commercial documents as including, but not limited to: contracts and agreements, commercial registration, appointment of a manager or director, board and partner meeting minutes, board of directors decisions, trade licences, partnership or shareholder certificates, memorandums, company name changes, branch registrations, company closures, bankruptcy documents, financial statements, product, patent, trademark and brand registrations, distribution agreements, corporate insurance and tax certificates, powers of attorney of commercial nature, general powers of attorney, signature documents, end-user certificates, tax certificates, completion certificates and ‘any other document of commercial nature’.

The list is ‘not limited to’, so a company document that is not named — a certificate of good standing or incumbency, for example — is still likely to be charged as commercial. MoFA classifies it at submission; call 80044444 if you need to budget in advance.

Two useful boundary cases. An employment contract and a work experience certificate are individual affairs documents at AED 150, even though a company issues them. A power of attorney of personal nature is AED 150; a general power of attorney, or one with commercial content, is AED 2,000.

The chain, and why an apostille is not the end of it

The UAE is not a contracting party to the Hague Apostille Convention. It does not appear on the HCCH status table for the 1961 Convention, and India’s own Ministry of External Affairs lists the UAE among the countries that are not members. So an apostille on a corporate document has no standing in the UAE on its own.

That does not make the apostille useless. In countries that are Hague members, the apostille is frequently the correct home-country output, and the UAE embassy stamps on top of it. It is insufficient, not invalid.

The four stages are set out in the timeline above. Several UAE missions now run MoFA’s combined service (‘one service, two attestations’): as at 27 September 2026, New Delhi, Mumbai, Islamabad, London, Dhaka, Canberra, Colombo, Kathmandu and Beirut. Most publish no processing time; MoFA’s service page says documents submitted through missions abroad may take up to 15 business days. The home-country foreign ministry step is still separate.

We do not publish the UAE embassy’s own attestation fee anywhere on this site. It is set by each mission and varies by country. Check yours through the UAE missions abroad directory. The Embassy in London states that its fees are charged in dirhams, revised monthly and converted at the prevailing exchange rate, plus a transaction surcharge of AED 3 and 2 per cent — which is why a fixed figure in pounds, rupees or pesos quoted by a service provider deserves a question about where it came from.

How the home-country stage differs by country

The document facet is fixed on this page, so the variation to watch is where the document was issued. Commercial documents diverge from personal ones early: the pre-authentication is usually a chamber of commerce rather than a court or a magistrate.

A rejection is expensive in time rather than in fee. UAE MoFA refunds the attestation fee automatically, normally within 14 working days, but delivery and service fees are not refunded, and a rejected application cannot be amended or reopened. You start a new one.

Arabic translation comes after attestation, not before

UAE MoFA accepts documents in English or Arabic, or with an official translation, so an English corporate document travels the whole chain as it is. Arabic becomes necessary at the point of use: mainland licensing, the notary public, the courts, the land department and most government filings expect an Arabic version produced by a translator licensed by the UAE Ministry of Justice. The ministry runs that registration regime itself, so the licence attaches to a named translator.

Translate last. If you translate before the chain, none of the stamps added afterwards appear in the Arabic version, and the translation has to be redone. Free zones and offshore registrars generally work in English, so this is largely a mainland cost.

Three ways to pay less than the full bill

Before you pay AED 2,000 six times

• Confirm the exact list with the licensing authority, registrar or bank first. Every document you legalise speculatively is AED 2,000 plus an embassy fee plus courier, spent on paper nobody asked for.
• Ask whether the registry extract can replace the certificate of incumbency, or whether one document can do the work of two. Free zones set their own document lists, and each document you can strike off is AED 2,000 you do not spend. We cannot tell you what your authority will accept — it can.
• Sign in the UAE if you can. A power of attorney executed in front of a UAE notary public has no legalisation chain at all, which removes both the embassy fee and the AED 2,000 band. Ask your free zone or registrar what other signing options it offers before you commit to the chain.

The UAE MoFA filing itself is available through the government website or app using UAE PASS, and UAE MoFA’s FAQ says anyone can attest documents on your behalf. Multi-country corporate sets are harder because registries, expiry windows and document lists differ. Compare the confirmed list with business-setup costs and the full attestation cost guide before proceeding.