Updated August 10, 2026. Quick answer. Forming an LLC in Ohio costs $99 to file, and no periodic report is required. Five-year total: At least $99 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 | $99 |
| Annual/biennial report | none — Ohio requires no annual or biennial report from LLCs |
| Franchise / minimum tax | Not verified — see notes |
| Publication requirement | No newspaper publication requirement was found. |
Five-year cost of ownership: At least $99 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.
The trap worth knowing before you file
ACCESS FAILURE, recorded not routed around: https://www.ohiosos.gov/businesses/filing-forms–fee-schedule/ returns HTTP 403 with a JavaScript/cookie security interstitial (‘Enable JavaScript and cookies to continue… This page conducts a brief security check’) to both the fetch tool and curl with a browser user-agent, and the Wayback Machine’s capture of that URL is itself the block page rather than the fee schedule. That is why the expedite tiers are null: the only place Ohio publishes them is the page that blocks. Ohio’s fees being codified in § 111.16 is what saved the formation-fee and no
Source
Ohio Rev. Code § 111.16(F) (SOS fee schedule); § 111.23 (expedited filing); ch. 1706 (Ohio Revised LLC Act). 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 Ohio LLC. A company that already exists in another state does not have to be dissolved and re-formed: Ohio takes it in as the same legal entity by the route its own code captions conversion, Ohio Rev. Code § 1706.72(A), and Ohio does not publish that filing as a single fee, so this page gives no number for it — it is in any case separate from the formation costs above. Going the other way, the same section carries the company back out to another US state. 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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