Best US LLC formation services for non-US residents, 2026 — an honest comparison, written by one of them

If you are outside the United States and hold no Social Security Number, the decision is not really about who files your paperwork. All seven of these providers will form a company for you. Three things separate them:

How long you wait for the EIN, and whether they will tell you. The EIN is the company's tax identity, and almost everything else waits behind it — the bank account, the payment processor, the marketplace registration, the first client contract. The published spread between these providers is one business day at the fast end and fifty business days at the slow end, and the slow end is not the IRS being slow for one company and fast for another. It is the provider.

What year two costs. Formation is a one-off; being a US company is not. Some of these prices are one-time fees with cheap renewals, and some are annual subscriptions that recur in full every year — and some include the state's own filing fee while others add it on top. A $99 headline can be the most expensive option on this page by year three. The tables below price all of it on one worked example so the comparison is like for like.

Whether they file Form 5472 with a pro-forma 1120. Whether your LLC has to file depends on its ownership and on the transactions it had during the year. Where a filing is due, the deadline is 15 April for the previous calendar year, and IRS penalties for failing to file start at $25,000. Three of the seven providers here do not offer this filing at all, which means finding an accountant separately in your second year.

Everything below is organised around those three questions.

Comparing headline prices in this market is close to meaningless, because they include different things. Some include the state's own filing fee and some do not. Some bundle the registered agent and some sell it separately. Some are one-off fees with a cheap renewal and some are annual subscriptions that recur in full every year.

So instead of headline prices, everything below prices the same company: a single-member Wyoming LLC owned by one non-US resident, with an EIN. Wyoming's own fees are public — $100 to file the Articles of Organization and $60 a year for the annual report (or two-tenths of one mill on Wyoming assets, whichever is greater), plus a 2.4% card fee if you pay the state online. Those fees are the same whoever you buy through, so they are added to every provider below that does not already include them.

One rule this exposes straight away: a Wyoming LLC must have a registered agent. It is not optional and it is not a nice-to-have, so any year-one price that leaves it out is not a price you can actually buy. Two of the providers below quote one anyway.

Stripe Atlas is not in these tables because it forms in Delaware only and cannot form a Wyoming LLC at all. It is covered separately further down.

Year one — formation, EIN and registered agent

Year two — what it costs to still exist

Read those two tables together rather than separately. The cheapest first year here is Northwest at $339 and the most expensive is LegalZoom at $598 — a spread of $259, which is not much. The recurring number is where the real money is, because it repeats: $185 against $409 is a $224 gap every year, forever, and it goes the opposite way to what the year-one table suggests for two of the six.

Northwest is cheaper than us in both years, and we would rather say so. $339 against our $399, and $185 against our $200. What you give up for the $60 is a US business address, which they charge $29 a month for and we include; a published EIN turnaround, which they do not offer at all; and the filing in the next section, which they do not do. If none of those three matter to you, buy from Northwest.

doola at $397 in year one is level with us to within two dollars, once Wyoming's fee is added to their $297. Their headline looks $100 cheaper and is not. The difference between us and doola is not price in year one — it is that their published EIN time for a non-US resident is four to six weeks against our one business day, and that year two is $357 against $200.

Year two, if the annual federal filing is due

If your LLC is foreign-owned there may also be a federal filing each year — Form 5472 with a pro-forma 1120, covered in full in the next section. Where it is due, the same year two looks like this.

This is the table that decides it, and it is the one no comparison list publishes. For a foreign-owned Wyoming LLC that has to make this filing, the spread is not tens of dollars. It is $350 against $1,128, $1,258 and $2,059 — and against two providers who do not offer it at all, where the honest number is $350 plus whatever an accountant charges you.

Over three years — form the company, then two full years including the filing — that compounds to $1,099 with us, $2,705 with Clemta, $3,014 with Firstbase and $4,515 with doola.

And the honest counterweight, because it cuts the other way. If that federal filing does not apply to your LLC, or you already have an accountant who handles it, the same three years cost $709 with Northwest and $1,216 with LegalZoom — Northwest being well under us, because you are buying less: no US business address, no published EIN turnaround, and no filing. Which of those two situations you are in is the single biggest factor in this decision, and it is a question about your own company that no comparison page can answer for you.

We are aware how the first set of numbers reads on a page we wrote. Every figure in both is a link. Add them up yourself.

This is the row that decides it for most people reading this, and it is the row the listicles leave out.

Read the middle column before the price column. Four of these providers publish a number for applicants with no SSN, and the four numbers are 4–6 weeks, 20–30 business days, 15–50 business days and 6–8 weeks. Those are not different companies dealing with a different IRS. They are different companies putting your application at the front or the back of their own queue.

Two of them publish nothing at all. Northwest sells the service and states plainly that they get non-citizens EINs every day, which we would rather see than silence — but they publish no turnaround for it, and the only timings on that page are the generic IRS ones, including an "instant" figure for the online application that an applicant without an SSN cannot use.

Clemta's two figures need a question asked. Their EIN page states 6–8 weeks normally and 2–4 weeks with their expedited service. Their pricing page lists "expedited services" as a Premium feature. Whether the entry plan gets the 2–4 weeks or the 6–8 weeks is not published anywhere we could find. Ask before you buy, and get the answer in writing.

LegalZoom is the one to be careful with. They have no non-resident EIN product. The purchasable EIN page lists each owner's Social Security number among the information required, and states that the business must be located in the US or a US territory to apply online. A LegalZoom article does say they can help foreigners get an EIN — but there is no product and no price attached to that claim, and a second LegalZoom article restates the SSN requirement with no guidance for applicants who have none. If you have no SSN, you are relying on a blog post.

And the honest note about our own row. One business day is what we sell and what we are measured on. It is Monday to Friday — weekends and US public holidays are excluded, and we make no same-day promise.

If your US LLC is foreign-owned, there is an annual federal filing that has nothing to do with whether you made any money. We prepare and file IRS Form 5472 together with a pro-forma Form 1120 for your LLC's tax year. Whether your LLC has to file depends on its ownership and on the transactions it had during the year. Where a filing is due, the deadline is 15 April for the previous calendar year, and IRS penalties for failing to file start at $25,000.

If this filing applies to you, it dominates everything else in the comparison, which is why it is priced into the year-two table above. If you form with Northwest or Stripe Atlas and the filing turns out to be due, you are finding and paying an accountant for it separately. That may be entirely fine — plenty of people already have an accountant — but it belongs in the comparison, and it is missing from every list we have read.

Firstbase is worth singling out for the opposite reason: $899 a year is more than four times what we charge, and they publish it plainly as a named product for exactly this situation. A published price you can object to is worth more than a bundle you cannot price.

These are real, and we would tell you the same thing on the phone.

If you are raising venture capital: Stripe Atlas. A Delaware C corporation, legal documents developed with Cooley, automatic 83(b) election filing including a flow built for non-US founders, $2,500 in Stripe credits, and the ability to take card payments and open a bank account before the IRS has assigned the EIN. Nobody else on this page can offer that last one. Atlas is $500 one-off with the Delaware state fee included and $100 a year afterwards, plus Delaware's own $300 annual LLC tax. It forms in Delaware only, offers no US business address, and does not file Form 5472 with a pro-forma 1120. If investors are in your first eighteen months, this is not a close call and we are not the answer.

If you need a state we do not serve: Northwest Registered Agent. We form in Wyoming and Colorado only. Northwest covers all fifty states, DC and Puerto Rico. As the tables above show they are also cheaper than us on a plain Wyoming LLC in both year one and year two, provided you do not need a US business address and are content that they publish no EIN turnaround. They are the strongest of the seven on privacy too — they use their own address on your public filings by default rather than making you opt in, and they say plainly that they do not sell customer data and do not outsource filings.

If you want bookkeeping: doola. We do not offer bookkeeping at all, in any plan, at any price. doola's standalone Pulse product is $300 a year after a 30-day trial, which is a genuinely cheap entry point for a small company that wants its books kept without hiring anyone. If you want bookkeeping and the federal filing in one subscription, doola's Tax and Compliance at $1,999 a year and Clemta's Pro at $1,068 a year both do that and we do not.

If you want a lawyer on the other end of it: LegalZoom. Attorney consultations, 150-plus document templates, eSignatures and a compliance calendar in one account. We are not a law firm, we do not offer legal advice, and there is no version of us that competes here.

And one thing we would concede to Firstbase specifically: they publish EIN turnaround split by whether you hold an SSN — 2–3 business days if you do, 20–30 if you do not. That is more transparency than most of this market offers, and it is the number we would want if we were buying rather than selling.

Three things, stated narrowly.

The EIN, when you have no SSN or ITIN. One business day against a published field of four to six weeks, twenty to thirty business days, fifteen to fifty business days, six to eight weeks, and two providers who publish nothing at all. Every one of those is linked above.

The annual federal filing. $200 on its own, or inside the $350 Compliance Plan, against $899, and against two subscriptions at $1,068 and $1,999 that are the cheapest way to reach the filing through those providers, and against three providers who do not offer it.

One vendor, one renewal date, one invoice — for compliance. The Compliance Plan is a single $350 annual charge covering the registered agent, the US business address, the state annual report and the Form 5472 with pro-forma 1120. That is the whole compliance year in one line on your card statement. Clemta and doola offer the single-subscription shape too, at $1,068 and $1,999, and theirs include bookkeeping where ours does not — so if the books are part of what you want bundled, buy theirs. If it is compliance you want in one price, ours is a third of the cheaper of them.

One thing that supports all three: our price includes the state filing fee for Wyoming and Colorado, which of the seven only Stripe Atlas also does.

Everything else about us is ordinary, and some of it is worse than the alternatives above.

If investors are coming, Stripe Atlas. If you need Texas or Florida or New York, Northwest. If you want your books done as well, doola or Clemta. If you want a lawyer, LegalZoom. If you want the cheapest plain Wyoming LLC and you do not need a US address, a published EIN date or the federal filing, Northwest again — $339 and then $185 a year.

If you are a founder outside the United States with no Social Security Number, you want a Wyoming or Colorado LLC, and something is waiting on the other side of the EIN — a bank appointment, a Stripe or PayPal application, a marketplace registration, a client who cannot pay you until you can invoice as a US company — then the date is the product, and that is the one we sell. Company formed and the EIN issued in one business day, $399 all in with the state filing fee included for Wyoming and Colorado, registered agent and US business address included for the first year, and $350 a year after that for the whole compliance year in one payment.

Separately from that, there is a 72-hour money-back guarantee running from the point we have everything we need from you, covering the company and the EIN together. Those are two different things and we would rather you did not merge them: one is what we deliver, the other is a refund window.

If you already have the company and only need the EIN, we do that on its own for $100, and you pay only once the EIN has actually been issued.

If your timeline is soft and the filing does not apply to you, buy the cheap one and wait. That is a real answer and we would rather give it than pretend otherwise.

This page is general information about published prices and services, not tax or legal advice. Every competitor figure was read from that competitor's own website on 8 September 2026 and is linked above. Prices and turnaround times change; we re-check every figure on this page quarterly and the next check is due 1 December 2026.