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Every LLC formation service advertises the wrong number. The $0 or $39 on the homepage is the one-time filing fee. The fee that actually costs you is the registered agent service you pay every year afterward, and it runs from $119 to $249 depending on who you sign up with. Here is how the three big names compare once you count what you really pay over time.
You already decided you want an LLC. Maybe a client asked for one before they would send you work. Maybe you read that it protects your personal savings if a project goes sideways. Maybe you just want your name off the public record. Now you are looking at three websites, all promising the fastest, cheapest, easiest filing, and you cannot tell which one is being straight with you.
The trap is the headline price. Bizee says $0. Northwest says $39. LegalZoom says $0 too. None of those numbers is what you will actually spend, because every LLC needs a registered agent, and that is a fee you pay every year for as long as the company exists. A $0 formation with a $249 annual agent costs you far more over three years than a $39 formation with a $125 agent. The sticker price is the cheap part. The recurring fee is the decision.
So I pulled live 2026 pricing from all three vendors, went through their checkout flows, and worked out the real cost over one year and over three. For most freelancers the answer is Northwest Registered Agent. But “most” is not “all,” and the reasoning matters more than the verdict. Here is the comparison I wanted when I was working it out for myself.
If you have not decided whether an LLC even makes sense for you yet, read our breakdown of sole proprietorship vs LLC vs S-corp first. That article covers the why. This one assumes you have already made that call and now want to know where to file.
The short answer, by freelancer type
You read fast and you want the verdict. Here it is, with the reasoning underneath.
- Most freelancers: Northwest Registered Agent. $39 plus state fee, free registered agent year one, $125 a year after. Their address goes on the public filing instead of yours. No upsells at checkout.
- Lowest cost over three years: Bizee. $0 plus state fee, free registered agent year one, then $119 a year. You will sit through a lot of upsell screens, and you have to hand over a card and cancel manually if you ever switch.
- You also need ongoing legal help: LegalZoom. Worth it only if you will actually use the attorney consultations. For the filing alone, you are paying for the brand.
Northwest is not the cheapest. Bizee is, by $51 over three years. If that $51 matters more to you than privacy and a clean checkout, Bizee is the rational pick and I am not going to pretend otherwise. The case for Northwest is that the extra money buys you two things Bizee does not: their address on your public filing instead of yours, and a checkout that does not try to sell you six things you do not need.
What a formation service actually does (and what you are really paying for)
First, the reason any of this matters. An LLC puts a legal wall between your business and your personal savings. If a client sues over a project, or a contract goes bad, or you cannot pay a business debt, the people you owe can generally reach only what is in the business, not your house or your personal bank account. A sole proprietor has no such wall. That protection is the whole point, and it is why a client or a bank sometimes asks you to form one before they will work with you.
Once your LLC is formed, the next step is to open a business bank account like Mercury to keep your finances separate.
Forming the LLC itself is three tasks. A formation service does the first two and sells you the third on repeat.
- Filing your Articles of Organization. This is the document that legally creates your LLC. The service fills it out and submits it to your state. In some states it is called a Certificate of Organization or Certificate of Formation. It is a one-time job.
- Acting as your registered agent. Every LLC needs a registered agent: a person or company with a physical address in your state who accepts legal mail and government notices for you. This is the recurring fee, and it is where the real money is.
- Selling you add-ons. EIN filing, operating agreements, “compliance” packages, business banking referrals. You can get most of these free or do them yourself in 15 minutes.
You can act as your own registered agent for free in every state. The catch is that your home address becomes public record, and you have to be physically available during business hours to accept service of process. If you work from a home office and do not want your address searchable online, paying a service for this is usually worth it. That is the whole reason this category exists.
You can also get your EIN yourself, free, straight from the IRS in about 15 minutes. Northwest charges $50 to do it for you. LegalZoom and Bizee bundle it into higher tiers or push it as a paid add-on at checkout, sometimes for $70 to $99. Skip it and do it at irs.gov unless you genuinely cannot face one more form. The same goes for the operating agreement, which is the internal document that sets out who owns the LLC and how it runs. If you are a single-member LLC with no partners, a free template covers you, so do not pay $40 to $99 for one.
Northwest vs LegalZoom vs Bizee: the real numbers
Here is the side-by-side the vendor sites will not show you, because it includes the year-two cost that actually decides this. All prices below exclude your state filing fee, which everyone pays no matter which service they use. Prices verified in May 2026.
How the 3-year totals work: Northwest and Bizee both include the first year of registered agent free, so the figure counts only two paid agent years ($39 + $125 + $125 = $289 for Northwest; $0 + $119 + $119 = $238 for Bizee). LegalZoom does not include registered agent in any plan, so all three years are paid ($249 × 3 = $747).
Look at the three-year row, because that is where the decision lives. Bizee comes out cheapest at $238, fifty-one dollars under Northwest. Northwest is second at $289. LegalZoom costs more than the other two combined, at $747, and that is before you add a single upgrade. The year-one column is a distraction. Bizee winning year one by $39 is real, but trivial next to the $458 gap between Northwest and LegalZoom over three years. The privacy column and the upsell column are why I still send most freelancers to Northwest rather than Bizee, and I will show you exactly why below.
Northwest Registered Agent: $39, free first year, no games
Northwest has been doing this since 1998 out of Spokane, Washington. The $39 formation fee includes a free first year of registered agent service, then $125 a year after that. What sets them apart for a privacy-minded freelancer is that they put their own address on your public state filing wherever the state allows it, so your home address stays off the searchable record.
As of January 2026 the $39 package also bundles what Northwest calls a Business Identity: a custom domain, a basic website, a professional email address, and a business phone line. The domain is free for the first year then renews at market rate, and the website, email, and phone stay free as long as you keep the registered agent service (about $9 a month each if you ever drop the agent but keep them). For a freelancer starting from nothing, getting the legal entity plus a domain and a branded email for $39 plus your state fee is real value, not a gimmick.
They do not sell your data to third-party marketers, which in practice means far fewer spam calls and emails after you file. The checkout is clean. There is no funnel trying to push you into a $299 package. Real people answer the phone, which matters the one time something goes wrong with your filing.
Two honest downsides. The dashboard looks dated, and there is no live chat, though email replies usually land within one business day. And read the fine print: the $39 rate applies to your first formation. File a second LLC later and it runs $100. For one solo LLC, none of that will bother you.
Bizee (formerly Incfile): cheapest over three years, with strings
Bizee advertises “$0 LLC formation,” and the free first year of registered agent service is real. You pay $0 plus your state fee, get a full year of agent coverage, then $119 a year from year two. That $119 is genuinely competitive, lower than ZenBusiness at $199 and well under LegalZoom at $249. Over three years it is the cheapest option on this page. Bizee has formed over a million businesses and holds about 25,000 Trustpilot reviews averaging 4.7 stars, so plenty of people come away happy.
The catch is not a hidden formation fee. It is the way the free year is structured and the noise around it. To claim the free registered agent year, you have to put a card on file, and it auto-renews at $119 unless you actively cancel. The checkout pushes paid add-ons hard, including a $70 to $99 EIN you can get free from the IRS and a roughly $40 operating agreement. Bizee shares your data with partners, so expect marketing email. Standard processing runs slower, around three to four weeks unless you pay to expedite.
One more thing you should know before you sign up. Bizee currently holds an F rating with the Better Business Bureau, with complaints clustering around strict refund policies and difficulty cancelling recurring subscriptions. That does not match the strong Trustpilot score, and the gap tells you something: people are happy with the filing and frustrated with the billing. If you go with Bizee, set a calendar reminder before your free agent year ends so the $119 renewal does not surprise you, and decline the add-ons you did not come for. Do that, and Bizee is a defensible, genuinely cheap choice.
LegalZoom: you are paying for the name and the lawyers
LegalZoom offers a $0 Basic formation plan plus your state fee, with a Pro plan around $249 and a Premium plan around $299. But the real cost driver is the registered agent service, and this is where it gets expensive. LegalZoom charges $249 a year for registered agent, it is not included in any formation plan, and you pay it every single year. That is the highest registered agent price among the major services, roughly double Northwest’s $125. Over three years that is $747 in agent fees alone, before you add one upgrade.
Where LegalZoom earns its premium is the legal layer. The Premium tier includes a 30-minute attorney consultation, and their Business Attorney plan gives you ongoing access to a lawyer for contract review and the like. No other major formation service offers that. If you are a consultant who signs complex client contracts, or you expect real legal questions in year one, that access can be worth the money.
For a writer, designer, or developer who just needs the LLC filed and a registered agent, LegalZoom is the expensive way to get the same outcome. You are paying for advertising spend and brand recognition, not a better filing. Users also report billing surprises and a checkout that feels like a sales funnel, so read every line before you confirm.
What about ZenBusiness?
ZenBusiness comes up in almost every “best LLC service” list, so it is worth saying why it is not one of my three picks. The formation is $0 plus your state fee, same as Bizee, and the platform is genuinely beginner-friendly with a clean, guided setup. The problem is the registered agent fee. ZenBusiness charges $199 a year for it, and unlike Northwest and Bizee, the free tier does not include the first year. That puts its three-year cost around $398, well above both of my picks, and it does not give you Northwest’s privacy advantage. If you find the guided dashboard worth a premium, it is a fine service. On pure cost for a freelancer, Northwest and Bizee both beat it.
Do not forget the state fee, which is often the biggest number
Every service charges its own fee on top of your state’s filing fee, and that state fee is mandatory no matter who files for you. It runs from $35 to $500. In several states the state fee is far larger than the $39 you pay Northwest, so it pays to know your own number before you panic at the total. We break the numbers down further in our guide to how much freelancers pay in taxes by state.
Here are the states where freelancers most commonly form, plus the cheapest and most expensive in the country. The average US LLC filing fee in 2026 is about $132.
One California note, because the rules changed and old guides have it wrong. California used to waive the $800 minimum franchise tax for an LLC’s first year, under AB 85. That waiver covered LLCs formed between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2023, and it has expired. Any California LLC formed on or after January 1, 2024 owes the full $800 in year one, due by the 15th day of the fourth month after formation. So budget $890 in California year one: $70 to file, $20 for the Statement of Information, and $800 in franchise tax. If a site tells you the first year is free, it is out of date.
One trap worth flagging. Do not form your LLC in a cheap state like Montana or New Mexico if you actually live and work somewhere else. You would then be doing business in your home state without registering, which forces you to file a second foreign LLC and pay two sets of fees. Form in the state where you actually run your business. The “incorporate in Wyoming to save money” advice you see on social media almost always costs a single-state freelancer more, not less. Check your own state’s current fee at your Secretary of State website before you file, since these numbers do shift.
An LLC does not lower your taxes by itself. Here is what actually does.
This is the mix-up I see most, and it costs people money in the wrong direction. A single-member LLC is a “disregarded entity” for federal tax purposes. The IRS taxes it exactly like a sole proprietorship. You still file a Schedule C. You still pay 15.3% self-employment tax on your net profit. Forming the LLC changes none of that on its own.
The 20% Qualified Business Income deduction (Section 199A) is the one a lot of freelancers think the LLC unlocks. It does not. The OBBBA, signed July 4, 2025, made the QBI deduction permanent, and it is available to sole proprietors and single-member LLCs on identical terms. You get the same 20% deduction with no LLC at all. So do not form an LLC expecting a tax cut. Form it for liability protection, privacy, and a more professional footing with clients.
The tax move that does change your bill is electing S-corp taxation once your profit is high enough to justify it, usually somewhere north of $80,000 in net profit. That is a separate decision from forming the LLC, and we cover the math in the sole prop vs LLC vs S-corp guide. File the LLC first. Decide on the S-corp election later, with a real number in front of you.
The 5-minute decision: which service should you actually pick
Answer these in order and stop at the first one that fits.
- Do you want your home address kept off the public filing? If yes, go Northwest. Their address goes on the record instead of yours, and Bizee does not match this. For most home-based freelancers, this alone settles it.
- Is the lowest three-year cost your only priority? If yes, go Bizee. Free formation, free first-year agent, $119 a year after. Just put the renewal in your calendar, click “no thanks” through the upsells, and expect some marketing email.
- Will you actually use attorney consultations in the next year? If yes, LegalZoom Premium can pay for itself. If you are only saying “maybe,” the answer is no, and you should pick one of the two above.
- Still unsure? Default to Northwest. The $51 over three years buys privacy and a checkout that does not fight you, and the $125 agent fee is still less than half of LegalZoom’s. It is the safe pick that almost no freelancer regrets.
Whatever you pick, get your EIN yourself at irs.gov for free, and skip the operating agreement add-on if you are a single-member LLC with no partners. Once the LLC is approved and you have your EIN, open a dedicated business account so your finances stay separate, which is what keeps the liability protection intact. Our guide to the best bank accounts for freelancers covers which ones are worth it.
Free: the freelancer LLC cost checklist
I built a one-page checklist that lays out the true first-year and three-year cost of forming an LLC, including the registered agent fee everyone forgets and your specific state filing fee. It also lists which add-ons to decline at checkout so you do not overpay. Drop your email and I will send it over, plus the occasional honest tool review. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best LLC formation service for freelancers?
For most solo freelancers, Northwest Registered Agent at $39 plus your state fee. It includes a free first year of registered agent service, renews at $125 a year, puts their address on your public filing instead of your home address, and does not push upsells at checkout. Bizee is cheaper over three years at $238 if you do not mind a heavy checkout and a manual cancellation. LegalZoom makes sense only if you will actually use its attorney consultations.
Is Bizee’s free LLC really free?
The formation is genuinely $0 plus your state fee, and the first year of registered agent service is included for real. The cost shows up later. You pay $119 a year for the agent from year two, and that renewal is automatic, so you have to put a card on file and cancel manually if you ever switch. The checkout also pushes paid add-ons like a $70 to $99 EIN you can get free from the IRS. Free to start does not mean free to run.
Why is Northwest usually recommended over LegalZoom?
Cost and privacy. Northwest is $39 in year one with a free registered agent. LegalZoom’s registered agent runs $249 a year, the highest of the major services, and is not included in any plan. Over three years that is $747 against Northwest’s $289. Northwest also keeps your home address off the public filing and does not sell your data. LegalZoom is worth its premium only if you want ongoing attorney access, which is the one thing Northwest does not offer.
Can I be my own registered agent and skip the fee?
Yes, in every state, for free. The trade-offs are that your address goes on the public record, and you have to be available at that address during business hours to accept legal mail. If you work from home and value privacy, or you travel and might miss a delivery, paying a service is usually worth the $119 to $125 a year. If your business address is already public and you are always around, acting as your own agent saves real money.
Does forming an LLC lower my taxes?
Not on its own. A single-member LLC is taxed identically to a sole proprietorship: you file a Schedule C and pay 15.3% self-employment tax on your net profit. The 20% QBI deduction is available to you with or without an LLC. The tax savings come later, if and when you elect S-corp taxation once your profit is high enough, usually above roughly $80,000 net. Form the LLC for liability protection and privacy, not for a tax cut.
How much does it cost to form an LLC in total?
Add two numbers: the service fee and your state filing fee. With Northwest that is $39 plus a state fee between $35 (Montana) and $500 (Massachusetts), with an average around $132. So a typical first-year total runs $70 to $170 in most states, plus the $125 registered agent fee starting in year two. California is the outlier with an $800 minimum franchise tax every year regardless of which service you use.
Should I form my LLC in Wyoming or Delaware to save money?
Almost certainly not, if you are a solo freelancer working from one state. Forming out of state means you are still doing business in your home state, which forces you to register a second foreign LLC there and pay two sets of fees and two registered agents. The “form in Wyoming” advice applies to specific situations like real estate holding companies, not a freelance writer or developer. Form in the state where you actually live and work.
Form your LLC with Northwest Registered Agent
This article is for general information only and is not tax or legal advice. Tax laws and state filing fees change, sometimes mid-year. Verify current figures with your state’s Secretary of State and at IRS.gov, and check with a CPA or attorney before making a decision based on your own situation.
About the author
Gareth is the founder of Freelancer Profit, a Dubai-based entrepreneur with a business consulting and leadership coaching background. He built the site to give freelancers honest, affiliate-free reviews of finance and tax tools, every one researched from official documentation, current pricing, and hundreds of real user reviews across Trustpilot, the BBB, and the app stores. It’s independent research, not professional tax advice, so check your own situation with a CPA.
