I spent way more time than I'd like to admit comparing free zones before I actually settled on one, and looking back, most of that time went into comparing prices instead of comparing what each zone was actually built for. That turned out to be the wrong way round to do it.
A cousin of mine runs a small trading business and picked his zone almost entirely based on the port access, since he's constantly moving goods in and out. That made total sense for what he does, but it would've been completely wrong for what I needed. I'm in a much more service-based line of work, and the zone that worked for him would've meant paying for warehouse-adjacent infrastructure I'd never use.
What actually helped was talking to a couple of people already operating in different zones instead of just reading comparison charts. One friend working in media said her zone felt like it was genuinely built around people doing what she does — the networking events, the kind of businesses she kept running into, all of it lined up with her industry. Another guy I know who does financial consulting ended up somewhere with a completely different legal framework, closer to a common-law setup, which mattered a lot for the specific kind of clients he works with.
I also learned the hard way that the cheapest license isn't always the cheapest overall. One zone I almost went with had a low headline price but bundled in fewer visas than I needed, so I would've ended up paying more once I added what I actually required. Another zone I looked at had a slightly higher sticker price but included almost everything I needed from the start.
If I could go back, I'd have spent less time building spreadsheets comparing numbers and more time just asking people already in different zones what their day-to-day actually looks like. The price differences between zones are usually smaller than they first appear once you account for what's actually included — but the fit for your specific type of work makes a much bigger difference than any of the comparison charts made it seem.