Updated August 10, 2026. Quick answer: forming an LLC yourself is filling in a form on your Secretary of State’s website and paying the state’s fee. That is the whole thing. A formation service does not do anything you cannot do — it does it for you, and sells you a subscription alongside. An attorney is a different purchase entirely, and there are cases where it is the right one. Disclosure: we have a paid affiliate relationship with one formation service, Bizee, named and linked in the comparison below; we have none with the other two named services, Northwest Registered Agent and ZenBusiness, whose applications to the same program are pending.
What filing yourself actually involves
Every state runs its own filing portal. You supply the company name, the registered agent and address, sometimes the members or a management structure, and you pay the state’s fee. Most filings are approved in days, and many states offer expedited processing for a small surcharge.
The parts people expect to be hard mostly are not: the name check is a search on the same site; the registered agent can be you if you have a street address in the state and are there during business hours (and the two real reasons to pay someone else); and an EIN comes free from the IRS in a few minutes online.
If you pay for one thing, be clear it is convenience. That is a legitimate thing to buy. It is not a legal outcome you could not otherwise get.
What a formation service actually adds
Honestly assessed, three things: they do the typing, they usually bundle a registered agent (a recurring fee, which is where the economics of the industry sit), and they keep a compliance calendar and remind you about annual reports.
The third is the one with genuine value, because forgetting an annual report is how an entity quietly falls out of good standing — and how an abandoned one keeps accruing: the walk-away trap.
What to watch: the low or free first year that renews higher, bundles that include an operating-agreement template you may not need in your state, and “compliance” packages priced against a fear rather than a filing. The state fee itself is never discounted — it is the state’s.
Comparing the routes, side by side
| Route | What it costs | What it actually buys |
|---|---|---|
| DIY, direct with your state | Your state’s fee only — see the full table | Everything above — the filing itself, an EIN, being your own registered agent |
| Bizee (affiliate link) | $0 formation fee + your state’s fee, then an upsell ladder for everything after | The typing done for you, a bundled first-year registered agent (renews at their price after year one), a compliance-reminder calendar |
| Northwest Registered Agent, ZenBusiness | Named, not linked — both have applications pending with the same affiliate program | Comparable $0-tier formation services; we’ll link whichever gets approved, without reshuffling this table’s order for it |
| An attorney | Not linked — we don’t have a referral relationship in this category | Judgment on the cases named above (a second owner, a mortgaged property, outside money, a regulated trade) — not typing |
If you want the typing done for you
Bizee’s base formation package is $0 plus your state’s filing fee, and you still pay the state directly either way. What you’re paying Bizee for is the form filled out correctly and a bundled first-year registered agent.
Bizee’s BBB rating, verified directly against BBB’s own listing on August 10, 2026: a C, not accredited, with 84 complaints filed and BBB’s own finding that the business “has failed to resolve underlying cause(s) of a pattern of complaints.” Most complaints we found described difficulty canceling recurring services and strict refund policies, worth knowing before you hand over a card for the year-two renewal. Check BBB’s current listing yourself before you buy; a rating we didn’t just verify is worse than none.
We earn a commission if you purchase through this link, between $20 and $175 depending on which service you buy, disclosed here rather than left vague. This does not change the price you pay. We are not a law firm and this is not legal advice. Affiliate Disclosure.
Opens on Bizee’s site in a new tab.
When an attorney is the right purchase
Not for a single-member consulting LLC. Genuinely, for these:
- More than one owner. The operating agreement is the document that decides what happens when partners disagree, one wants out, or one dies. A template cannot allocate control between real people who have not yet fallen out.
- Property with a mortgage moving into the entity — the due-on-sale question the federal statute does not answer.
- Outside money, or an eventual sale.
- A regulated trade, where the entity interacts with licensure.
The pattern: pay a lawyer for judgment, not for typing. If the question is which box to tick, that is not what they are for.
The honest order
- Decide whether you need an entity at all — often you do not.
- Form in your own state — not Delaware.
- File it yourself unless you are buying convenience knowingly.
- Get an attorney if there is a second owner, a mortgage, or investors.
- Diary the annual report the day you form, whoever files it.
Update, August 10, 2026: this changed, exactly as promised above. We now have a paid affiliate relationship with one formation service, Bizee, disclosed in the comparison table above where it belongs. We still do not form LLCs ourselves, and everything else on this page was written before that relationship existed and remains our actual position.
Sources and limits
Honest gap. Filing procedure, processing times and what a state requires in its articles vary by state, and none is set out for a specific state here beyond the fees in our cost table. This page now names and, in one case, links a formation service — see the disclosure at the top and the comparison table above for exactly what that relationship is and is not. We have not tested these services ourselves; the comparison states each service’s cost and role, not a quality ranking.
See methodology and corrections. General information, not legal or tax advice. One paid relationship exists on this page, disclosed at the top and in the comparison table — everywhere else, we earn nothing from what this page recommends.
The same upsell reappears one step later, and there the IRS has settled it for you: a federal EIN is free and issued immediately — “Beware of websites that charge for an EIN,” in the IRS’s own words.
We’ve since reviewed three of the formation services this comparison names, verified against their own current pricing pages: ZenBusiness, LegalZoom, and Rocket Lawyer.