Updated August 10, 2026. Quick answer. Forming an LLC in Illinois costs $150 standard; $400 for a series LLC to file, and an ongoing report requirement ($75 (+$50 per series)). Five-year total: At least $525 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 | $150 standard; $400 for a series LLC |
| Annual/biennial report | $75 (+$50 per series) |
| Franchise / minimum tax | none found for LLCs in the sources searched |
| Publication requirement | No newspaper publication requirement was found. |
Five-year cost of ownership: At least $525 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: $250 total for 24-hour service on articles of organization ($100 over the $150 standard fee); $500 for a series LLC
The trap worth knowing before you file
ACCESS FAILURE RECORDED, NOT ROUTED AROUND. The Illinois Secretary of State site is unreachable from this machine: https://www.ilsos.gov/departments/business_services/organization/llc_instructions.html and https://www.ilsos.gov/departments/business_services/publications_and_forms/llc.html both returned no response at all (curl exit 92, ‘HTTP/2 stream was not closed cleanly: INTERNAL_ERROR’, 0 bytes) over both HTTP/2 and HTTP/1.1 with a browser user-agent; the Wayback CDX index shows ilsos.gov itself returning status 403 on its 2026-07-18 capture. Working route used instead: the fee statute on
Source
805 ILCS 180/50-10 (fees); 805 ILCS 180/50-1 (annual report); 805 ILCS 180/50-15 (penalty). Read 2026-08-06 from statute. 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 Illinois LLC. A company that already exists in another state does not have to be dissolved and re-formed: Illinois takes it in as the same legal entity by the route its own code captions domestication, 805 ILCS 415/301(b), and the entity-law filing fee for it is $100 — a separate filing from the formation costs above. Going the other way, an Illinois LLC may leave for another US state under 805 ILCS 415/301(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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