Our test
The table method
Inputs
On the state side: official schedules, forms and laws, cited line by line and dated by month. Service prices are read from each company's own pricing pages on the date printed beside the table.
The sums
Cumulative cost = year one + (years - 1) x renewal. For the state, three years covers the filing fee, two reports and any minimum tax. Publication costs are not added in. Break-even is the first year in which one entry's cumulative cost passes another's, tested out to ten years.
How entries are sorted
- Three-year row total (40%). The first-year price plus two renewals for every row. The state fee is identical in each row, so it is shown beside the table and left out of the weighting.
- Filing work per row (30%). The recurring tasks a row's price already pays for: agent duty, the state report, the EIN application and use in more than one state.
- Renewal gap (12%). The difference between the first-year cell and the renewal cell. Small gaps rank higher.
- Row crossover (9%). The year a row's running total passes another row's.
- Cell clarity (9%). Whether every cell in a row, first year, renewal and state fee, can be read on the company's own pages.
If two rows land close together, the page says which column made the difference and what the lower row offers instead.
Row order is LLC Price Tables' own editorial reading of these columns and is not a customer rating.
Listed services
The tables hold Mainstay Filing and each state's agent services, and only for services with a published price.
What the tables leave out
The order is editorial instead of a customer rating, and the tables give general information, not legal advice.