Updated August 10, 2026. Quick answer. Forming an LLC in Hawaii costs $50 filing fee + $1 State Archives fee ($51 out of pocket) to file, and an ongoing report requirement ($15 (paper/fee-schedule rate); $12.50 filed online). Five-year total: At least $126 over five years — one or more components (commonly the franchise/minimum tax) is unverified, so treat this as a floor, not a total.
What it actually costs
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Formation filing fee | $50 filing fee + $1 State Archives fee ($51 out of pocket) |
| Annual/biennial report | $15 (paper/fee-schedule rate); $12.50 filed online |
| Franchise / minimum tax | none found in the sources searched |
| Publication requirement | No newspaper publication requirement was found. |
Five-year cost of ownership: At least $126 over five years — one or more components (commonly the franchise/minimum tax) is unverified, so treat this as a floor, not a total. 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.
Expedited filing: $25 expedited review (per document)
The trap worth knowing before you file
cca.hawaii.gov returns HTTP 403 to the fetch tool but serves normally to curl with a browser user-agent; the fee schedule PDF was read with pypdf. Formation/expedite text also confirmed at https://cca.hawaii.gov/breg/registration/dllc/ . Quarterly due-date basis, $12.50 online report fee and $10/year late fee come from DCCA’s own release at https://cca.hawaii.gov/breg/release-first-quarter-hawai%CA%BBi-annual-business-reports-due-3/ . The statutory fee text (HRS 428-1301) could not be read: https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol09_Ch0431-0435H/HRS0428/HRS_0428-1301.htm returned HTTP 403
Source
HRS ch. 428 (Uniform Limited Liability Company Act); DCCA BREG Form Fee Schedule Rev. 12/2022. Read 2026-08-06 from official. Formation-service sites were not used as a source for this figure.
If the LLC already exists somewhere else
Everything above prices forming a new Hawaii LLC. A company that already exists in another state does not have to be dissolved and re-formed: Hawaii takes it in as the same legal entity by the route its own code captions conversion, Haw. Rev. Stat. § 428-902.5(b), and the entity-law filing fee for it is $100 as the agency last published it (that fee page carries no date) — a separate filing from the formation costs above. Going the other way, a Hawaii LLC may leave for another US state under Haw. Rev. Stat. § 428-902.5(a). 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
Once the LLC exists, an operating agreement is what actually runs it
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