How We Pick and Price LLC Services

We rank LLC services on what they cost over the years you will own the company, and on whether they suit where you live. No provider can pay to be listed, ranked or reviewed more kindly.

Real cost, not advertised price

Most formation services advertise $0. The money is in what comes after, so every pick carries three numbers:

• Advertised: the headline price on the provider's site.
• Real year 1: the service fee plus a registered agent for the first year, because every LLC needs one from day one. For US residents it assumes the EIN is free from the IRS. For non-residents it includes the EIN without a Social Security number, because that is what you would pay for.
• Five years: year 1 plus four years of the renewal you cannot avoid while you keep their agent. If a provider does not publish its renewal price, we say so rather than guess.

State filing fees are left out of these numbers unless a provider includes them in its price, in which case the table says "all in". The state fee is the same whichever service you choose, and it is in our 50-state fee table.

What counts as verified

We track 146 services. For 33 of them, the package tiers and prices were checked by hand against the provider's own pricing pages on 29 Oct 2026. The rest show "Price not verified yet" in the directory until we have checked them. We never print a price we have not checked.

A feature such as "registered agent included" is ticked only when we confirmed it is in the package, not when it merely appears somewhere on the provider's site.

Who it suits

A founder in Texas and a founder in Lagos need different things. Non-residents need an EIN without an SSN, a US address a bank will accept, and help with Form 5472. So there are two sets of picks, and the directory filters by where you live first.

What customers say

We show each provider's Trustpilot score and review count, read on 29 Oct 2026. The score covers the provider's whole domain: Wise's rating is all of Wise, not only Wise Business. We do not show scores for brands where the domain-wide number says nothing about the product, such as Stripe Atlas.

When prices change

Formation prices change often, and promotions come and go. Every page shows the date its prices were checked. If you find a price that has changed, tell us and we will re-check it.

Who does this

Will Nash researches and writes Open an LLC. Will writes about the filings, fees and deadlines small US companies hit in their first year. Read how the site is funded in our disclosure.