Florida LLC Fees: Every Real Cost in 2026

Here is the short answer. Forming a Florida LLC costs $125 paid to the Florida Division of Corporations. Keeping it alive costs $138.75 every year, due May 1. Everything else — changing your registered agent, filing a fictitious name, amending your articles — is a small, optional, one-off charge that most LLCs never touch in a given year.

That is the entire structure of Florida LLC fees. There is no franchise tax, no publication requirement, no annual state business license, and no state personal income tax on your share of LLC profits. If you’ve been reading comparisons that make Florida sound complicated, they were probably describing California or New York.

Below is every state fee that actually exists, what triggers it, and the local costs the state has nothing to do with.

The complete Florida LLC fee table

All of these are paid directly to the Florida Department of State, Division of Corporations, through its filing portal at Sunbiz.org.

Filing	Fee	When it applies
Articles of Organization (new LLC)	$125	Once, at formation
Annual Report	$138.75	Every year, due May 1
Annual Report filed after May 1	$538.75	$400 late penalty added
Change of Registered Agent / Registered Office	$25	Only when you change agents
Articles of Amendment	$25	Changing your LLC’s name, members, or managers mid-year
Fictitious name (DBA) registration	$50	Per trade name, renews every 5 years
Certificate of Status	$5	Proof of good standing (banks, lenders)
Certified copy of your filed documents	$30	Banks, foreign qualification, some licenses
Reinstatement after administrative dissolution	$100 + all unpaid annual report fees	Only if you miss the September deadline
Articles of Dissolution (closing the LLC)	$25	Once, when you shut down
Foreign LLC qualification (out-of-state LLC registering in FL)	$125	Once, for non-Florida LLCs doing business here

That’s it. Those line items cover the overwhelming majority of what a Florida LLC will ever pay the state. The full list, including less common filings like mergers and conversions, is maintained on our verified Florida LLC facts page.

Why the formation fee is $125, not $100

A lot of outdated articles still say Florida LLC formation costs $100. It doesn’t, and it hasn’t for a long time. The $125 is actually two charges bundled into one payment:

$100 — the filing fee for the Articles of Organization
$25 — the registered agent designation fee

The $25 isn’t optional and it isn’t a service charge from a third party. Under the Florida Revised Limited Liability Company Act (Chapter 605, Florida Statutes), every Florida LLC must continuously maintain a registered agent with a physical Florida street address — no P.O. boxes — and the state charges to record that designation. You pay it whether you appoint yourself, a family member, or a commercial agent.

Two things are worth knowing about this fee in practice. First, there is no paid expedite option for online LLC filings in Florida. The Division processes online submissions in roughly 3–5 business days, and no amount of money moves you to the front of the line. Any service promising “rush Sunbiz filing” is promising to submit your paperwork quickly, not to make the state work faster. Second, if you serve as your own registered agent, your name and street address become part of the public record and are searchable on Sunbiz forever.

The $138.75 annual report is the fee that actually matters

Formation is a one-time event. The annual report is the recurring obligation that catches people, and Florida’s penalty structure is unusually harsh.

Here’s the calendar, exactly:

January 1 — the annual report filing window opens on Sunbiz
May 1 — the report is due; $138.75
May 2 — a $400 late fee attaches automatically. Total: $538.75
Fourth Friday of September — any LLC still unfiled is administratively dissolved

The $400 is not discretionary. The Division of Corporations does not waive it for first-year filers, for LLCs with no revenue, or for anyone who says they never received the reminder email. It is the same $400 whether you file on May 2 or September 15.

And note what the report actually is: a confirmation of your LLC’s current address, registered agent, and managers or authorized members. It is not a financial statement. The state is not asking what you earned. A correctly filed report for an unchanged LLC takes about five minutes.

Administrative dissolution is the outcome worth avoiding. Your LLC loses its active status, your name becomes available for someone else to register, and contracts signed afterward sit on shaky ground. Reinstatement costs $100 plus every unpaid annual report fee, so an LLC that skips one year entirely is looking at $638.75 to come back — and the liability gap in between doesn’t retroactively close.

If you’d rather not track it yourself, our annual report filing service handles the May 1 deadline for $199/year including the $138.75 state fee. Filing it yourself on Sunbiz is genuinely straightforward, though; the service buys you a deadline you don’t have to remember, not access you don’t have.

The occasional fees: $25 agent changes and $50 fictitious names

Changing your registered agent costs $25. You’ll trigger this if you started as your own agent and later hired a commercial one, if you move out of Florida, or if you switch providers. One useful piece of timing: if you’re already filing your annual report, you can update the registered agent within that report at no extra charge. The standalone $25 Statement of Change only applies when you make the change outside the annual report window. Changing agents mid-year in March, when you could have handled it on the annual report in April, is a $25 mistake.

A fictitious name registration costs $50. This is Florida’s version of a DBA. You need one if you operate under a name different from your LLC’s registered name — “Gulf Coast Pressure Washing” when your LLC is legally “Martinez Holdings LLC.” Three details people get wrong:

Florida requires you to publish a notice of the fictitious name at least once in a newspaper in the county of your principal place of business before registering. Newspaper legal notice rates vary widely by county; budget somewhere in the tens of dollars and check with the paper directly.
The registration expires on December 31 of the fifth year and must be renewed for $50.
A fictitious name is not a trademark and gives you no exclusive right to the name. Multiple businesses can register the same fictitious name in Florida.

If you can simply name your LLC what you want to be called, you skip the $50 and the publication entirely. That decision is worth thinking about before you file your Articles.

Costs the state doesn’t charge — but someone might

Florida has no general state business license. There is no statewide license you must buy to operate an LLC. What exists instead sits at two other levels:

Local business tax receipt. Most Florida counties and many municipalities require a local business tax receipt (the old “occupational license”). Fees are typically modest — often in the $20–$100 range — but they vary substantially by county, by city, and by business category, and some jurisdictions have eliminated them. There is no statewide schedule. Check your county tax collector’s office and your city, because you may owe both.
Professional and industry licensing. Contractors, real estate brokers, cosmetologists, CPAs, insurance agents, food service, and child care all have their own licensing bodies and fee schedules, usually through the Department of Business and Professional Regulation or the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. These have nothing to do with your LLC filing and vary enormously by profession. Verify requirements with the specific licensing board before you assume you’re clear.

A few other line items worth pricing honestly:

EIN: free. The IRS charges nothing. You can apply online and have it in minutes. We offer EIN filing for $49 if you’d rather not deal with the IRS interface, but there is no government fee hiding behind it.
Florida sales tax registration: no fee to register online with the Department of Revenue. If you sell taxable goods or services, you’ll collect and remit — but registering doesn’t cost you.
Operating agreement: $0 from the state. Chapter 605 does not require you to file one, and Florida recognizes oral and implied operating agreements. That said, a written one is what tells a bank, a partner, or a court how your LLC actually works. Single-member LLCs that skip it are the ones who regret it.
Registered agent service: $0 if you do it yourself, or roughly $99–$199/year commercially. Our renewal rate is $99/year.

What year one actually costs

Three realistic scenarios, all-in:

Scenario	Year 1	Year 2+
Solo consultant, own registered agent, no DBA, DIY everything	$125	$138.75
Same, but using a formation service with a year of registered agent included	~$205	~$238 (report + agent renewal)
Retail/service business with a trade name and county business tax receipt	$125 + $50 DBA + publication + local receipt	$138.75 + local receipt renewal

The honest takeaway: a Florida LLC is cheap to start and cheap to maintain. The expensive version is the one that forgets May 1.

If you want to model your own numbers — including whether a DBA, EIN service, or registered agent makes sense for your situation — the Florida LLC cost calculator runs the math in about a minute.

Where a filing service fits

You do not need one. Sunbiz is a public portal and anyone can file their own Articles of Organization for $125.

What you’re buying from a service is accuracy on the fields that cause rejections, a commercial registered agent address instead of your home address on the public record, and someone tracking the annual report. Our Basic plan is $164.99 with the $125 state fee included (renews $69/yr); Standard is $204.99 and includes a full year of registered agent service. Whether that’s worth roughly $40–$80 over filing it yourself depends entirely on how much you value not thinking about it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the $125 Florida LLC filing fee a one-time charge? Yes. The $125 Articles of Organization fee is paid once, at formation, and never again. Your only recurring state obligation is the $138.75 annual report each May 1.

Can I pay to have my Florida LLC approved faster? No. Florida does not offer a paid expedite option for online LLC filings, and processing runs about 3–5 business days regardless of what you pay. The only variable anyone controls is how fast your paperwork reaches Sunbiz — our Pro plan submits the same day, but the state’s queue is the state’s queue.

What happens if I file my annual report on May 2 instead of May 1? A $400 late penalty attaches immediately, bringing your total to $538.75. There is no grace period and the Division of Corporations does not waive it, including for first-year LLCs.

Do I need a Florida business license on top of my LLC? Florida has no general state business license. However, most counties and many cities require a local business tax receipt, and regulated professions need licensing from the relevant state board — both vary by location and industry, so check with your county tax collector and your profession’s licensing authority.

Is a registered agent service required, or can I be my own agent? You can be your own registered agent if you have a physical Florida street address and are available during business hours. The $25 designation fee is charged either way; a commercial agent simply keeps your home address off the public record and makes sure service of process doesn’t arrive while you’re out.

This article is general information about Florida LLC fees and filing requirements, not legal or tax advice; consult a licensed Florida attorney or CPA about your specific situation.