Disclosure
Affiliate disclosure and how this site makes money
Some outbound links to formation and registered agent providers on this site are partner links.
If you sign up through one, this site may earn a commission. You pay the same price either way.
Every such link is marked in the page source with rel="sponsored" so machines can see it too.
What is and is not a partner link
- Partner links: buttons and links pointing to formation or registered agent providers — currently Northwest Registered Agent. These carry
rel="sponsored nofollow noopener". - Not partner links: every citation in a page's Sources section. Secretary of State fee schedules, statutes, comptroller and revenue pages, and provider help/pricing pages used as evidence are plain reference links that earn nothing.
- Never paid: placement in a table, a ranking position, or a state hub. No provider or agency has paid for coverage, ordering, or wording on this site.
Editorial rules the money does not touch
- No invented fees. Every filing fee, annual report charge, and franchise tax figure traces to an official Secretary of State, statute, or revenue-department source, linked on the page that uses it.
- Unverifiable numbers stay unverified. If a price cannot be confirmed on a primary source, the page says unverified — check source rather than guessing or rounding.
- Dated research. Each page shows the date its figures were researched. Prices and fee schedules change; the date tells you how stale a number might be.
- Rankings follow the data. The cheapest-states ranking is sorted purely by three-year Secretary of State and revenue dollars. Partner status has no effect on order, and the cheapest state in that table is not one anybody pays us for.
- Upsells get called out. Where a provider's checkout adds fees that are avoidable — an EIN you can get free from the IRS, for example — the comparison says so, including for partners.
Why partner links at all
Researching 51 Secretary of State fee schedules and re-verifying them as they change takes time, and this site carries no ads, no email capture, no paid placements, and no sponsored posts. Commission on links people were already going to click is the least intrusive way to fund that work. It is disclosed here, in the footer of every page, and next to the first call to action on any page that has one.
What this site is not
- Not a law firm, accounting firm, or formation service.
- Not legal, tax, or financial advice — the pages are cost research, and your facts may change the answer.
- Not affiliated with any Secretary of State, revenue department, or the providers compared.
Corrections
If a fee on this site is wrong or out of date, the primary source wins. Pages cite the exact schedule or statute used, so a mismatch is checkable in one click. Fee schedules are re-verified on a rolling basis and the research date on each page is updated when they are.