LLC formation service cost comparison
"Free LLC formation" means free service fee — the state filing fee still applies, and it ranges from $35 in Montana to $500 in Massachusetts regardless of whether the founder files directly, hires an attorney, or uses an online service. The service-side cost runs $0 to $349 in Year 1 and is the part marketing leans on, but it's only one variable. The real spread between services shows up in Year 2 and beyond, when the registered agent renewal becomes the dominant recurring expense and the cheapest headline price often turns into the most expensive five-year total.
The seven services that show up in nearly every 2026 buyer comparison: ZenBusiness, Northwest Registered Agent, LegalZoom, Bizee (formerly Incfile), Doola, Tailor Brands, and Rocket Lawyer. Pricing below was pulled from each service's public pricing page in the first week of May 2026. State filing fees are excluded from the service-only tables — add the actual state fee on top of every figure shown here.
The three real cost components
Every LLC has the same three cost components in Year 1, and the same three in every subsequent year. Buyers who conclude they got overcharged usually mixed them up at signup.
State filing fee. Paid to the Secretary of State (or equivalent business division) to record the Articles of Organization. Fixed by statute or administrative rule, not by the formation service. Montana is cheapest at $35. Kentucky charges $40. Most states sit between $50 and $150. California's $70 is offset by an $800 annual franchise tax. Massachusetts is the most expensive at $500 to file, with a $500 annual report on top. Every formation service charges this fee on top of its own service price — no service absorbs it, no $0 plan anywhere includes it. See individual state pages for current rates.
Formation-service fee. Paid to the online service for handling the paperwork. Ranges from $0 (Bizee Silver, ZenBusiness Starter, LegalZoom Basic, Rocket Lawyer's free tier) to $349 or more (ZenBusiness Premium, Tailor Brands Elite, LegalZoom Premium). Year 1 only. This is the number marketing leans on because it's the most visible and the most discountable.
Registered agent renewal. Every LLC must designate a registered agent with a physical street address in the state of formation. The owner can serve as their own agent for $0 in 47 states; Wyoming, Nevada, and New Mexico are the three with privacy advantages worth paying a commercial agent for. Commercial RA service runs $99 to $249 per year. Most formation services bundle Year 1 for free and bill the renewal on the formation anniversary — this is the line item that compounds, and where the long-run cost spread between services actually shows up.
Year-1 cost by service
The following table shows the headline Year-1 service-side cost for each plan, what is and is not included, and the all-in Year-1 service total. The state filing fee is excluded and must be added separately based on the state of formation.
| Service & tier | Year-1 service fee | RA included Y1? | EIN included? | OA included? | Year-1 service total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZenBusiness Starter | $0 | Yes (1 yr free) | No (+$99) | No (+$99) | $0 base / $198 with EIN+OA |
| ZenBusiness Pro | $199 | Yes (1 yr free) | Yes | Yes | $199 |
| Northwest | $39 | Yes (1 yr free) | No (+$50) | No (free template) | $39 base / $89 with EIN |
| LegalZoom Basic | $0 | No (+$249) | No (+$79) | No (+$99) | $0 base / $427 with EIN+OA+RA |
| LegalZoom Standard | $249 | No (+$249) | Yes | Yes | $249 base / $498 with RA |
| Bizee Silver | $0 | Yes (1 yr free) | No (+$70) | No (+$50) | $0 base / $120 with EIN+OA |
| Bizee Gold | $199 | Yes (1 yr free) | Yes | Yes | $199 |
| Doola Starter | $297/yr | Yes | Yes | Yes | $297 |
| Tailor Brands LLC Basic | $199 | Yes (1 yr free) | No (+$99) | No (+$30) | $199 base / $328 with EIN+OA |
| Rocket Lawyer LLC | $0 (member) / $99.99 non-member | +$149.99 | +$39.99 | Yes (member) | $0 + $39.99/mo subscription |
Year-1 service fees collected from each service's public pricing page in May 2026. State filing fee not included — add $35 to $500 depending on state.
Three patterns emerge from the Year-1 numbers. First, the $0 tier at every service is genuinely $0 only if the founder accepts that the operating agreement and EIN are not handled — and many founders accept exactly that, since both are free if handled directly. Second, mid-tier plans (ZenBusiness Pro, Bizee Gold, Tailor Brands Basic) cluster at $199 because the market has converged on that price point for a fully bundled package. Third, LegalZoom's headline $0 is misleading: registered agent is not included in Year 1, and adding it makes LegalZoom Basic the most expensive entry option in the table.
Year-2 and beyond: the registered agent renewal
The free first year of registered agent service ends. The renewal is where the long-run cost spread between services is decided. Same services, sorted by renewal rate.
| Service | RA renewal Year 2+ | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Bizee | $119/yr | Lowest commercial RA rate among major services |
| Northwest | $125/yr | Privacy-by-default; no upsells in dashboard |
| Tailor Brands | $199/yr | Bundled with subscription tier |
| ZenBusiness | $199/yr | Often discounted to $99 in first renewal cycle promos |
| LegalZoom | $249/yr | Most expensive RA among the seven |
| Doola Starter | $297/yr (included in plan) | RA bundled with annual subscription, not separable |
| Rocket Lawyer | $149.99/yr non-member / included for $39.99/mo members | Tied to legal subscription |
Bizee at $119 and Northwest at $125 set the floor. LegalZoom at $249 sets the ceiling among standalone RA services. Doola and Rocket Lawyer don't sell registered agent service à la carte at competitive rates — they bundle it inside a broader recurring subscription, which is reasonable for a non-US founder needing managed compliance (Doola) or a small business needing ongoing legal document access (Rocket Lawyer) but does not compete on RA price alone.
5-year total cost comparison
The five-year total isolates which service costs the least once the Year-1 marketing discount has worn off. The calculation is Year-1 service fee plus four years of registered agent renewal at the rate above. State filing fee and annual report fees are excluded — those are paid to the state, not the service.
| Service & tier | Year-1 fee | RA Years 2–5 (×4) | 5-year service total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Northwest | $39 | $500 | $539 |
| Bizee Silver (base, no add-ons) | $0 | $476 | $476 |
| Bizee Silver (with EIN + OA add-ons) | $120 | $476 | $596 |
| ZenBusiness Starter (base) | $0 | $796 | $796 |
| ZenBusiness Pro | $199 | $796 | $995 |
| Bizee Gold | $199 | $476 | $675 |
| LegalZoom Basic (with RA add-on Y1) | $249 | $996 | $1,245 |
| LegalZoom Standard (with RA) | $498 | $996 | $1,494 |
| Tailor Brands LLC Basic | $199 | $796 | $995 |
| Doola Starter (subscription) | $297 | $1,188 | $1,485 |
| Rocket Lawyer (member, $39.99/mo) | $0 | $1,920 | $1,920 (60 mo subscription) |
Two findings dominate the five-year view. Northwest is the cheapest credible option at $539, and Bizee Silver is technically cheaper at $476 if the founder is willing to forgo the EIN and operating agreement add-ons (both of which are free to handle directly). Once the add-ons are included, Bizee Silver at $596 sits a hair above Northwest, and Northwest's flat-priced, no-upsell dashboard becomes the deciding factor for many buyers. LegalZoom and Doola occupy the premium tier — they cost two to three times Northwest over five years and are worth that premium only when the value-add (attorney access for LegalZoom, foreign-founder support for Doola) is actually used.
What "free" actually means in formation services
The $0 hook works because most buyers shop on Year-1 headline price, not on five-year total. Services recover that $0 through three mechanisms, all of them legal and disclosed.
The first is the state filing fee, always charged separately and collected by the service as a pass-through. The buyer pays $0 to the service and $100 to the state and walks away thinking the service was free.
The second is the registered agent renewal. Almost every $0 tier comes with one free year of RA service. By Year 2, switching agents requires filing a Change of Registered Agent form with the state ($0–$50 plus 15 minutes), and most LLC owners don't bother — they pay the renewal at whatever rate the service charges, which runs $119 at Bizee to $249 at LegalZoom.
The third is checkout upsells. A $0 plan presents five to nine optional add-ons before the final order button: EIN application ($50–$79), operating agreement ($30–$99), banking resolution ($30–$50), BOI compliance ($50–$200 annual), business license report ($89–$149), and a banking referral that pays the service a fee at no visible cost to the buyer. Industry analyses show the average completed order on a $0 plan lands between $237 and $349 — close to the price of the fully bundled mid-tier plan, but assembled item by item.
None of this is hidden in fine print. It's structured so the lowest visible number is the one most buyers anchor on. The genuinely free path is self-filing: state fee, IRS EIN, your own operating agreement, and you as your own registered agent. The service tier labeled "free" is a marketing tier, not a cost structure.
The Operating Agreement add-on
An operating agreement is the internal governance document for the LLC. It is not filed with the state. It is the contract between members (or, for single-member LLCs, the founder's own statement of how the company is structured). Every formation service offers it as an add-on or as part of a mid-tier plan.
The typical add-on price is $30 to $99. Bizee charges $50. ZenBusiness charges $99 on Starter and includes it free on Pro. LegalZoom charges $99. Tailor Brands charges $30. Northwest does not charge for it at all — it provides a free template inside the customer dashboard.
The document itself is largely templated. Standard provisions cover ownership percentages, capital contributions, profit and loss allocation, management structure, voting rights, transfer restrictions, and dissolution. A single-member LLC operating agreement is roughly 8 to 12 pages of boilerplate the founder fills in with three or four specific facts. Free templates are widely available — the operating agreement template guide explains what each clause does and provides a fillable version. Paying $99 for the same document handled by a formation service is paying for convenience, not for legal review. Where the paid version starts to make sense is for multi-member LLCs with partners contributing unequal capital or holding different management roles — and those LLCs usually end up customizing with an attorney regardless.
The EIN add-on
The Employer Identification Number is the federal tax ID for the LLC. Every LLC that has more than one member, hires employees, or elects S-corp tax treatment needs one. Single-member LLCs with no employees can operate under the founder's SSN but virtually always get an EIN anyway because banks require it to open a business checking account.
The EIN is free directly from the IRS. The online EIN assistant at IRS.gov processes applications in about 10 minutes and issues the number immediately on completion. The only requirement is that the responsible party (the founder) has a Social Security Number or Individual Taxpayer Identification Number.
Formation services charge $50 to $79 for the EIN as an add-on. Bizee charges $70. LegalZoom charges $79. ZenBusiness charges $99 on Starter and includes it free on Pro. Northwest charges $50. The service performs the same 10-minute IRS filing the founder would perform — there is no expedited processing available because the IRS issues the number in real-time regardless of who submits the form. The fee buys convenience and the elimination of one task.
The EIN add-on is genuinely worth paying for only in one scenario: the responsible party has no SSN or ITIN. In that case, Form SS-4 must be submitted by fax or mail to the IRS, which takes 4 to 6 weeks. Doola and a handful of specialist services handle this filing for non-US founders, and the $50 to $297 they charge is reasonable for the back-and-forth involved. For founders with an SSN, the step-by-step EIN guide walks through the IRS online application — it costs nothing and takes less time than the formation service's checkout flow.
Hidden fees and upsells to watch
Several recurring fees show up after the initial formation that buyers commonly mistake for service charges. They are not — they are state-imposed fees the service is merely collecting and remitting.
Annual report fees are charged by 41 states to keep the LLC in good standing. They range from $0 (Arizona, Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina) to $500 (Massachusetts) annually. Some services bundle annual report filing into a higher tier (ZenBusiness Pro, Bizee Gold, LegalZoom Pro) and present it as a value-add. The "filing" itself is a $0 service task; the fee paid is entirely to the state. If the service charges $99 to file an annual report, that $99 is on top of the state's fee, not in place of it.
BOI (Beneficial Ownership Information) compliance was a federal requirement under the Corporate Transparency Act through early 2026 and remains a service offering even though enforcement has been suspended for domestic entities. Services charge $50 to $200 annually for BOI filing assistance. The underlying FinCEN filing is free. Whether to pay for the managed version depends entirely on the founder's appetite for keeping up with a regulatory environment that has changed three times in two years.
Business license help ($89–$149) is a research report listing which licenses the LLC may need based on industry and location. The same research is available free from state and local business licensing offices, though more time-consuming to assemble. The product is most useful in regulated industries (food service, contracting, healthcare) and least useful for pure online businesses.
Banking resolution ($30–$50) is a one-page document authorizing a member to open a business bank account. Most banks no longer require it for single-member LLCs. The service can be safely declined unless the chosen bank specifically asks for one.
Foreign qualification fees are state fees, not service fees, charged when registering an existing LLC to do business in a state other than the state of formation. They range from $50 to $750 per additional state. See the foreign qualification guide for when this is actually required.
State filing fee outliers
The state filing fee is the largest single component of total LLC cost in most price tiers and varies more than any other line item. Montana charges $35, the cheapest in the country, with no annual report and no franchise tax. Kentucky charges $40. At the top, Massachusetts charges $500 to file and $500 annually for the report, putting Massachusetts above $1,000 in state fees alone in Year 1. California's $70 filing fee is offset by an $800 annual franchise tax that applies even if the LLC has no revenue. Tennessee charges a $300 minimum and scales with members.
For founders with flexibility in state of formation, Wyoming ($100 filing, $60 annual report), New Mexico ($50 filing, no annual report), and Delaware ($110 filing, $300 annual tax) are the three most commonly chosen formation states for non-resident filers. The best states to form an LLC guide covers when each choice makes sense and the registered agent and foreign qualification implications of forming out of state.
When to skip the service entirely (DIY)
The case for skipping a formation service is straightforward: most state Secretary of State sites have a direct online filing flow that accepts the Articles of Organization for the state filing fee alone. The flow asks for the LLC name, registered agent name and address, principal office address, member or manager names, and an organizer signature. It takes 15 to 30 minutes for a first-time filer.
Self-filing saves $0 to $349 in service charges. The trade-offs: researching and verifying name availability through the state's business name database, serving as your own registered agent (or hiring one separately) and accepting that the RA's name and address appear in the public business record, and drafting an operating agreement plus applying for the EIN directly with the IRS — the EIN is free, but it's one more task to track.
A common hybrid that captures most of the cost savings without the registered agent privacy cost is to self-file the formation with the state and use Northwest's registered-agent-only service at $125 per year. The Year-1 total in that configuration is the state filing fee plus $125, full stop. Across five years, this is the cheapest defensible structure available — $539 in service-side cost (assuming a $100 state fee) using Northwest as the agent of record, with no formation service in the loop at all. The how to form an LLC guide walks through the self-filing flow state by state.
The case against DIY is also straightforward. The founder's time spent learning the state portal, drafting the operating agreement, and applying for the EIN is not free. For a founder whose hourly rate exceeds roughly $100, the $199 mid-tier service plan is often a better trade than the four to six hours of focused work the DIY path requires. The decision is a value-of-time decision, not a competence decision — every state portal is usable by a non-attorney.
Methodology
All service prices were collected from each provider's public pricing page during the first week of May 2026. Where promotional pricing was visible (typical at ZenBusiness and LegalZoom during seasonal sales), the non-promotional list price was used. Registered agent renewal rates were verified against the renewal fee disclosed in each service's terms of service or in the dashboard for an active customer where accessible.
The $100 reference state filing fee used in the five-year totals is an illustrative midpoint — actual state filing fees range from $35 in Montana to $500 in Massachusetts and must be added to every figure based on the state of formation. State-specific annual report fees, franchise taxes, BOI compliance fees, and any state-imposed publication requirements (New York, Nebraska, Arizona) are also excluded from the service-side comparison since they are paid to the state, not to the formation service.
This article does not test customer support, document quality, dashboard usability, or processing speed. Those variables are covered in the best LLC formation services 2026 ranking, which complements the cost analysis here.
Bottom line
Cheapest five-year total cost: Northwest Registered Agent at $39 formation plus $125 per year in registered agent renewal. Total service-side cost across five years is $539 — the lowest of any service that includes the registered agent and a viable operating agreement template. See the Northwest review.
Cheapest Year-1 headline: ZenBusiness Starter or Bizee Silver, both at $0 plus the state filing fee. The Year-1 sticker price is the lowest possible, but the Year-2 registered agent renewal arrives and the total cost converges with mid-tier alternatives within 24 months. See the ZenBusiness review and the Bizee review.
Best for foreign founders: Doola Starter at $297 per year. The premium over Northwest is real, but it buys EIN handling via Form SS-4 for founders without a US SSN and a single point of contact for ongoing compliance touchpoints. See the Doola review.
Best for attorney bundling: LegalZoom Standard at $249 plus $249 per year in registered agent renewal. The premium over Northwest covers the included attorney consultation and the LegalZoom brand recognition that some founders prefer when forming with partners or investors. See the LegalZoom review.
Best DIY hybrid: Self-file with the state for the filing fee alone, then add Northwest registered agent at $125 per year. This is the cost floor for any LLC that values registered agent privacy.
FAQ
What is the cheapest LLC formation service in 2026?
At the headline price, Bizee Silver and ZenBusiness Starter both advertise $0 plus the state filing fee. The cheapest cost over five years is Northwest Registered Agent at $39 for formation plus four years of registered agent renewal at $125 per year, totaling $539 plus the state filing fee. The $0 tiers carry a higher registered agent renewal rate that erases the Year 1 discount by Year 2 or 3.
Is LLC formation actually free?
No. The state filing fee, set by the Secretary of State, ranges from $35 in Montana to $500 in Massachusetts and is mandatory for every LLC. The $0 advertised price refers only to the service-side fee. The service typically recoups the discount through registered agent renewal in Year 2 onward, which runs $119 to $249 per year, plus checkout upsells such as the EIN, operating agreement, and BOI compliance support.
Can I skip the formation service entirely and file the LLC myself?
Yes. Every state Secretary of State office accepts direct online filings for the state filing fee alone. Self-filing eliminates the $0 to $349 service-side charge. The trade-off is time spent on the state portal, drafting an operating agreement, applying for an EIN with the IRS, and serving as the registered agent or contracting one separately. A common hybrid is to self-file the formation and use Northwest as the registered agent for $125 per year.
When does the registered agent renewal kick in?
Registered agent service is annual. Most services bundle the first year into the formation package and bill the renewal on the formation anniversary in Year 2. Northwest charges $125 per year. Bizee charges $119 per year after a free first year on its Silver tier. ZenBusiness charges $199 per year. LegalZoom charges $249 per year. The renewal is a recurring line item that compounds over the life of the LLC.
Why does the EIN cost extra at every formation service?
The Employer Identification Number is free directly from the IRS for any applicant with a Social Security Number and takes about 10 minutes through the online EIN assistant. Formation services charge $50 to $70 for the same filing because they handle it as a managed add-on. The EIN add-on is worth paying for only if the applicant has no SSN or ITIN, in which case Form SS-4 must be filed by fax or mail and takes 4 to 6 weeks.
Which service is best for a non-US founder?
Doola is the most common choice for founders without a US Social Security Number. Its Starter plan at $297 per year includes formation, registered agent, EIN application by fax to the IRS, and basic compliance touchpoints. Northwest also files for non-US founders and is significantly cheaper at $39 plus $125 per year, but the founder must handle the EIN through Form SS-4 directly. The pricing premium at Doola buys the EIN handling and a single point of contact.
Related guides
- Best LLC formation services 2026 — full ranking
- How much does an LLC cost — state-by-state breakdown
- ZenBusiness review
- Northwest Registered Agent review
- LegalZoom review
- Bizee (formerly Incfile) review
- Doola review (best for non-US founders)
- Operating agreement template (free)
- How to get an EIN (free from the IRS)
- How to form an LLC — DIY guide
- Best states to form an LLC