Updated August 10, 2026. Quick answer. Forming an LLC in Alabama costs $200 to file, and no periodic report is required. Five-year total: $450 over five years, every component verified.
What it actually costs
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Formation filing fee | $200 |
| Annual/biennial report | none for LLCs — no periodic report is filed with the Secretary of State |
| Franchise / minimum tax | $50 minimum Business Privilege Tax (per Ala. Dept. of Revenue, taxable years beginning after Dec. 31, 2022) |
| Publication requirement | No newspaper publication requirement was found. |
Five-year cost of ownership: $450 over five years, every component verified. Publication cost is excluded from this figure — it’s county-driven where it applies, not state-driven, so a single number would be wrong for most filers.
The trap worth knowing before you file
Formation fee is statute-tier (verbatim codified text of Ala. Code 10A-1-4.31). Business privilege tax figures are from the Alabama Department of Revenue’s own page (official tier) because the codified mirror is stale. Access failure, recorded rather than worked around: https://www.sos.alabama.gov/business-entities/fees blocks outside readers, and the Wayback copy is the same block page; expedite pricing and the SOS’s own LLC checklist therefore went unread.
Source
Ala. Code 10A-1-4.31 (filing fees); Ala. Code 40-14A-21 to -29 (business privilege tax). Read 2026-08-06 from statute. Formation-service sites were not used as a source for this figure.
Once the LLC exists, an operating agreement is what actually runs it
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If the LLC already exists somewhere else
Everything above prices forming a new Alabama LLC. A company that already exists in another state does not have to be dissolved and re-formed: Alabama takes it in as the same legal entity by the route its own code captions conversion, Ala. Code §§ 10A-1-8.01 to 10A-1-8.04, and the entity-law filing fee for it is $100 — a separate filing from the formation costs above. Going the other way, an Alabama LLC may leave for another US state under Ala. Code § 10A-1-8.04(a)(2); § 10A-1-8.01. Either way the move needs both ends to allow it — the state being left as well as the state being joined — which is where most published advice goes wrong.
How to Move an LLC to Another State · LLC Domestication by State: All 51 Jurisdictions, With the Statute
What letting it lapse costs in Alabama. The catch-up bill is only half the story — in Alabama there is no administrative dissolution in the LLC Act to reinstate from, and the document a tax-delinquent LLC actually needs comes from the Department of Revenue. The figures, and the statute they come from, are on the Alabama non-answer.
Looking for the annual-report due date and fee instead? See Alabama LLC annual report.
Electing S-corp status for this LLC changes the tax picture too. Alabama requires its own S-corp filing, Form 20S, on top of the federal one. See what Alabama charges at the entity level.
Related: Alabama’s registered agent requirements, including who can serve and what happens if you don’t have one.
Related: Alabama’s LLC Certificate of Good Standing cost, including who issues it and how fast you can get one.