Freelancing in Oman — there is no freelance visa

Oman has no freelance visa and no freelance permit. Neither instrument exists. If you are a foreign national in Oman and you want to work for yourself, the only lawful route is to form a company and be sponsored by it.

The short answer

Every competing page on this subject begins by implying a freelance permit exists and then explains how to get it. We are going to do the opposite, because the absence is the answer.

There is also no freelance concept in the Labour Law. Royal Decree 53/2023 governs only employer–employee relationships — work performed "for an employer under his management and supervision in return for a wage". There is no self-employment or independent-contractor chapter in it at all.

What does exist: the Freelance Work Register

Oman does have a Freelance Work Register (سجل العمل الحر). It is real, and it is genuinely useful — but it is not what the blogs describe. It is free of charge, requires no licence, and covers a defined set of activities. Registration is through the Oman Business Platform. As reported in April 2023 there were 62 approved activities, a limit of five activities per registration, and 184 registered freelance accounts.

Approved activities included software design, electrical work, photography, equipment installation and non-tourist vehicle rental. The register is run by the National Employment Programme, not by the Ministry of Labour as a permit-issuing body.

The benefits attached to it are the tell. Registrants get access to social insurance, a Riyada card from the SME Development Authority, bank account facilitation, wage support from the Ministry of Labour, interest-free Oman Development Bank loans of up to OMR 5,000, an income tax exemption below OMR 150,000 in annual sales, and up to 10% of Tender Board contracts reserved for freelancers. A separate platform, .Nxt Gig, was launched in January 2023 as a business-to-business marketplace — it issues no permit or licence of any kind.

Sijil Mahali is Omani-only, and it is not a freelance route

The home business register — commonly called Sijil Mahali — is governed by Ministerial Decision 473/2022, issued 21 July 2022 and published in Official Gazette 1451 on 24 July 2022. Unlike the Freelance Work Register, this one has a published legal text, and the text is unambiguous.

• The applicant must be of Omani nationality — this is the first condition in the decision
• Minimum age 18
• The applicant must not hold any other commercial, professional, craft or industrial licence
• The prescribed fee must be paid

The fee is OMR 3 for three years, renewable for successive three-year periods, with renewal filed 30 days before expiry. The gov.om service page adds an administrative fee of OMR 0.600 and states that the registration converts to a full commercial register after nine years.

The operating conditions matter as much as the eligibility. A licensee may not employ foreign workers, may not transfer the licence, may display only a small sign at the entrance of 30cm by 60cm, may not store goods outside the residence, and may not store hazardous or flammable materials.

Breach carries an administrative fine of OMR 100 after written notice and three days to correct, doubled on repetition, with suspension of up to three months or cancellation for continued non-compliance. Appeal lies to the Minister within 60 days.

Note also what it is for. The 30 permitted activities are home *production* — packaging, flower and plant retail, hairdressing, textile and clothing retail, Omani khanjars, silver crafts, distilled flower products, olive oil, leather goods, woodcraft, ceramics, metalwork, Arabic sweets, date packing, party organisation. It is not a route for a software developer, a designer or a consultant, and it was never intended as one. As of April 2023 there were 13,780 registered home businesses.

Part-time work is reserved for Omanis too

A common piece of advice is that an expatriate can take a "part-time authorisation" and freelance alongside their main job. This is wrong, and the instrument that makes it wrong is recent and explicit.

Ministerial Decision 13/2025, issued 13 January 2025 and published in Official Gazette 1580 on 19 January 2025, regulates part-time work and supersedes Ministerial Decision 115/2021. It states that employment under this framework shall be limited to Omanis. The eligible categories are existing employees, job seekers, students, retirees and minors — all Omani.

For completeness, the framework sets a minimum of four hours per day, a maximum of 25 hours per week, and a minimum wage of OMR 3 per hour, with a written contract and Social Protection Fund registration required.

Why an expatriate cannot freelance: the chain of instruments

This is worth being precise about, because it is the part most guides get lazy with. There is no single Omani provision that says "expatriates may not freelance." The prohibition is derived from several instruments read together. Here is the actual chain:

1. Royal Decree 53/2023, Article 29 — an employer may not allow a non-Omani worker to work for others without Ministry authorisation, and may not employ a non-Omani who is authorised to another employer.
2. Royal Decree 53/2023, Article 143(5) — a non-Omani working without a permit, or for an unauthorised employer, faces permit cancellation, deportation at the employing party's expense, and a ban on re-entry.
3. Royal Decree 53/2023, Article 143(1) — the party engaging them faces imprisonment and fines, cumulative per worker.
4. Ministerial Decision 602/2025 — the work licence is issued to an employer for a specified profession, and the licence to practise work is issued to a worker for a specified profession. Neither permits independent work or multiple employers.
5. Ministerial Decision 13/2025 — part-time work is limited to Omanis, closing the obvious workaround.
6. Ministerial Decision 412/2023 — commercial concealment, which catches the arrangement of trading under someone else's registration.

MD 602/2025 is worth dwelling on because it is the newest piece. Issued 22 October 2025, published in Official Gazette 1619 on 26 October 2025, effective three months later, it repeals MD 340/2016 and defines the two authorisations precisely. A work licence runs 24 months and is non-renewable; a licence to practise work runs up to 24 months and is renewable. Each employment arrangement requires separate licensing. The structure simply does not accommodate a person selling their services to several clients.

What happens if you do it anyway

Ministerial Decision 412/2023, issued 30 July 2023, is the one people underestimate. It defines hidden trade as "an activity being practised by a person that the laws and royal decrees in force in the Sultanate of Oman do not allow him to practise, whether on his own account or in association with others". That definition is broad enough to cover the classic arrangement in which an expatriate operates under an Omani friend's commercial registration. A third violation also blocks re-registration for a year. Legal persons are jointly liable where the violation occurs through employees acting for the entity's benefit, and there is mitigation for those who self-report.

The one lawful route for a foreigner

Form a company, and let it sponsor you. The Foreign Capital Investment Law, Royal Decree 50/2019, permits 100% foreign ownership across more than 1,700 activities, and the general minimum capital requirement has been abolished. An Omani partner is not required, though employing at least one Omani secures reduced registration fees.

One condition catches people who are already here. A foreign national employed in Oman may establish a company only with a no-objection certificate from their current employer, or after that employment contract has been cancelled. If you are on a family joining visa rather than an employment visa, you are not sponsored by an employer, but you still need the company and its own work authorisation — the family visa does not itself confer a right to work.

The e-commerce licence for freelancers

There is one official product that carries the word "freelancers" in its name. MOCIIP issues a licence to practise e-commerce (freelancers) at OMR 6.500 under local investment and OMR 12.500 under foreign investment. The dual fee tier means it is not restricted by nationality on its face, and it is the closest thing Oman has to what people are looking for.

Claims you will meet online

A "Specialised Freelance Visa", described as project-based with two months' validity renewable for one, circulates on job boards and consultancy pages. No such category appears on the ROP visa list. The description most closely resembles the Temporary Work Visa, which is a genuine ROP category but is employer-sponsored and is not a freelance instrument. We are not suggesting bad faith — it reads like a plausible mislabelling that has been copied onward.

The same source cites Royal Decree 38/2025 for Omanisation quotas of 10–25%. We could not verify RD 38/2025 as an Omanisation instrument and would not repeat the figure. By contrast, Royal Decree 56/2025 on personal income tax, which the same page cites, does check out. Total setup costs of around OMR 4,300 to OMR 4,320 appear on several pages, but they trace back to a single consultancy estimate rather than to any published Omani fee schedule — treat them as an order of magnitude, not a quote.

The Gulf contamination problem

This is the single biggest source of error in English-language material about freelancing in Oman. The Gulf freelance-permit ecosystem is Saudi and Emirati. Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Human Resources issues a freelance work document; Dubai Development Authority and other UAE zones issue freelancer and sole-professional permits. These are heavily marketed and rank extremely well in search.

Oman has no analogue. When we searched Arabic freelance terminology in an Omani context, the results were overwhelmingly Saudi and Emirati government pages. If a guide about Oman uses the phrase "freelance permit" or "freelance licence" as though it were a standard product, that vocabulary has almost certainly been imported from a neighbouring jurisdiction along with assumptions that do not apply here.

Tax, for when you are earning

Royal Decree 56/2025 introduced a Personal Income Tax Law, verified on decree.om and on the Tax Authority portal. The rate is 5%, it applies to a natural person whose total income exceeds OMR 42,000 a year, and it takes effect on 1 January 2028. On the Tax Authority's own estimate around 99% of the population falls below the threshold. For most people working for themselves in Oman, the practical position remains no personal income tax.

What no official source publishes

• No decision establishing the Freelance Work Register. We searched the MOCIIP and Ministry of Labour decision indexes and found none. The register appears to be an administrative initiative of the National Employment Programme rather than a legislated licence. There is, in short, no freelance law in Oman.
• No accessible list of the 62 approved freelance activities. Only the count and examples, from April 2023 reporting. The number may have changed since.
• No statement anywhere saying expatriates may not freelance. As set out above, the prohibition is derived from the Labour Law read with three ministerial decisions. Anyone quoting you a single article for it is inventing it.
• No enforcement statistics — no published figures on prosecutions or deportations for unlicensed freelancing.
• An unexplained discrepancy in Sijil Mahali. The gov.om page describes a nine-year conversion path to a full commercial register that does not appear in the text of MD 473/2022. There may be a later amendment we did not find.

If you are weighing this up: the honest question is not "how do I get a freelance permit in Oman" but "is my income high enough to justify a company". That is a real calculation with a real answer, and our office can walk you through the registration and the work authorisation that goes with it.