What an LLC costs, state by state.
The number people quote is the formation filing, and it is rarely the whole story. Around it sit a registered agent, a report on the state's own cadence, an entity-level tax in some states, and a publication requirement in a small number of others. The lines are the same everywhere. Which of them apply to you is not. Pick your state for the itemized version.
Four things that change with your state.
An LLC has a small number of lines and they behave differently in each state. These four explain most of the gap between what people expect at formation and what year two actually looks like.
The one-time formation line
Every state charges to file the formation document, and that is the figure quoted in comparisons. It is a one-time line, set by the state, paid once at the start. It is also the least useful number for working out what the entity will take to run once it exists.
The filing that comes back
Most states want a report on a set cadence to keep the entity in good standing. Yearly in most, every other year in some, and at least one state asks for no LLC report at all. Miss it and standing is the first thing to suffer, long before anything else does.
A tax that ignores revenue
Some states levy a tax on the entity itself, due whether the year was profitable or not, on a date that has nothing to do with when you formed. It is separate from income tax and separate from the report. On the pages where it applies, it is the line that surprises people most.
Publication, in a few states
A small number of states require a newly formed LLC to publish notice in newspapers, for a set run of weeks, in papers the county decides rather than the owner. It is the one line with no equivalent anywhere else, and what it comes to depends on the county you are in.
Nothing here is hidden. It is just spread across the year.
Pick your state.
Each state page itemizes that state: the formation filing, the registered agent, the report and its cadence, any entity-level tax, publication where it applies, and the federal EIN alongside them. Line by line, in the order they arrive.
A clean handoff, in four steps.
Budgeting an LLC is mostly a sequencing problem. Know the lines, file them in order, and put the recurring ones somewhere you will see them well before they are late.
List every line
Start with your state page and write down what applies: formation, agent, report cadence, entity tax, publication. What applies varies enough that guessing from another state's list is how budgets go wrong.
File the formation
Articles of organization with the Secretary of State, with the registered agent named. This is the line everyone plans for, and the only one that happens exactly once.
Open the federal side
The EIN comes from the IRS rather than the state, and the bank will want it. Where the business has employees or taxable sales, the state tax registration is opened alongside it.
Calendar what repeats
The report, the entity tax where it exists and the agent's renewal all recur on dates the state chose. Tracked together they are routine. Tracked nowhere, they are how entities fall out of good standing.
The formation is one line. Everything else repeats.
The rest of What it costs.
Every one of these is built the same way: a national explainer above its state pages. They are the filings that sit closest to this one.
Annual report cost
Annual report cost, state by state
All 51 states → HubCorporation cost
What a corporation costs, state by state
All 51 states → HubLLC cost
What an LLC costs, state by state
All 51 states → HubTrademark cost
Trademark cost, state by state
All 51 states →The full index lives on What it costs.
The questions people ask before they file.
What actually goes into the cost of an LLC?
Five lines, at most. The state's formation filing, once. A registered agent, ongoing. The state's periodic report, on whatever cadence that state uses. An entity-level tax, in the states that levy one. And publication, in the small number of states that require it. The federal EIN sits alongside them. Every state page lists which of those apply and in what order they arrive.
Is the formation filing the only one-time line?
In most states, effectively yes. You file once and everything after that recurs. Where publication is required, that is a second one-time line attached to formation, and it is set by newspaper rates in the county rather than by the state. Anything else presented as a one-time requirement is worth checking against what the state itself actually asks for.
Does every state have an annual report?
No. Most do, on an annual or biennial cadence, and they use it to confirm the entity's details and keep it in good standing. At least one state asks for no LLC report at all and collects an annual tax instead. Cadence matters as much as existence: a report that only appears every other year is easy to forget, precisely because nothing happened last year.
What is a franchise tax?
A tax on the entity for existing, rather than on what it earned. States that levy one generally charge it on a fixed annual date whether the business traded or not, and it sits separately from income tax and from the report. Not every state has one. Where it does exist, it is the recurring line most worth understanding before you decide where to form.
Which line catches people out?
The recurring ones, months after the excitement has worn off. The report arrives on a cadence nobody memorized, the entity tax lands on a fixed date regardless of revenue, and the registered agent renews quietly in the background. None of them are difficult on their own. Missing them is what turns an administrative line into a standing problem, and eventually into a reinstatement.
Is it cheaper to form in another state?
That comparison is rarely just two formation lines. Filing elsewhere does not move where the business actually operates, and the state where it operates has its own filings and its own calendar to keep. That can mean two sets of obligations rather than one. The state pages exist so the comparison can be made on real lines rather than on the single number that travels well online.
Keep going, in order.
What it costs
Every hub in what it costs, in one place.
Open the index → IndexAll 51 state guides
Every filing a business does, organised by jurisdiction.
Open the index → ServiceCompliance calendar
Every deadline that touches your entity, watched.
Track deadlines → ServiceTalk to a specialist
A person who files these every day, not a call centre.
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