What Is the Cheapest Way to Start an LLC in Florida? An Honest Ranking

The cheapest way to start an LLC in Florida is to file the Articles of Organization yourself on Sunbiz and pay the state $125. That’s it. No service, no upsell, no subscription — $100 for the filing itself plus a $25 registered agent designation fee, which the state bundles into every new LLC filing whether you name yourself, a friend, or a paid service as your agent.

That’s the floor. Nothing legitimate goes below it, and anyone advertising “free LLC formation” is adding the $125 at checkout and making money somewhere else — usually on a registered agent renewal that auto-charges in twelve months.

The more useful question is what the second cheapest option costs, and whether the gap is worth it. Below is the honest ranking, with real numbers and the renewal costs that most comparison articles quietly skip.

The floor: $125 direct to Sunbiz

Here’s exactly what the state charges a new Florida LLC:

Item	Cost	When
Articles of Organization filing fee	$100	At formation
Registered agent designation	$25	At formation, mandatory
Total to form	$125
Certified copy (optional)	$30	At formation or later
Certificate of Status (optional)	$5	At formation or later
Annual report	$138.75	Every year by May 1

You file at sunbiz.org, the Florida Division of Corporations’ portal. Online filings typically process in 3–5 business days. There is no paid expedite option for online LLC filings in Florida — you cannot buy your way to the front of the line, which is worth knowing because several national services sell “expedited processing” tiers that, for Florida, just mean they submit your paperwork faster on their end.

The information the state actually wants is short: your LLC name (with “LLC,” “L.L.C.,” or “Limited Liability Company” at the end), the principal office address, the mailing address, your registered agent’s name and a Florida street address, the agent’s signature, and the names and addresses of managers or authorized members. Florida does not require you to file an operating agreement, list your ownership percentages publicly, or submit a business purpose statement.

So if you have an hour, a Florida street address for service of process, and no complicating factors, $125 is genuinely the cheapest path. We say that plainly because it’s true, and because the whole point of a comparison article is to tell you where the money actually goes. The full fee-and-deadline breakdown — including the ones that bite later — is on our verified Florida LLC facts page.

What makes the $125 route more expensive than it looks

Three things, in order of how often they cost people money:

1. The registered agent address becomes public and permanent. Your agent’s street address goes into the Sunbiz public record, searchable by anyone, scraped by marketing lists, and used by process servers. If you list your home, that’s your home address on a public database. If you’re running the business from an apartment, a co-working desk you might leave, or you travel, you also have to be reliably available at that address during business hours. Florida law (Chapter 605, Florida Statutes — the Florida Revised Limited Liability Company Act) requires the agent to maintain that address and accept service there.

2. The annual report is where DIY filers get hurt. Florida’s annual report costs $138.75 and is due by May 1 every year after the year you form. The filing window opens January 1. Miss May 1 and the state adds a $400 late fee — not a percentage, not a warning, a flat $400 that more than quadruples the cost of a five-minute form. Keep ignoring it and your LLC is administratively dissolved after the fourth Friday in September. Reinstatement then costs more and interrupts your good standing with banks, landlords, and anyone running a due diligence check.

That $400 is the single largest avoidable expense in the life of a Florida LLC, and it’s not a filing fee — it’s a calendar problem. Whatever you decide about formation, put May 1 in two places.

3. Name rejections and refiling. Sunbiz will reject a filing for a name that isn’t distinguishable from an existing Florida entity, for a missing agent signature, or for an improper suffix. The state does not refund the $125 when a filing is rejected for substantive reasons in most cases — you fix and resubmit. Search the Division of Corporations database for your exact name and close variants before you pay.

Where the national brands actually land

This is where “cheapest” gets slippery. The headline price on a national formation site is almost never the twelve-month cost, because registered agent service renews at a separate, higher number and the trial year is bundled into the intro offer.

Here’s how the math typically works out over the first two years for a Florida LLC, state fees included:

Option	Year 1 total	Year 2 (recurring)	Notes
DIY on Sunbiz	$125	$138.75 annual report	You’re the agent; your address is public
$0 “free” formation + agent	$125 + agent fee	Agent renewal commonly $199–$299	The free tier is the hook; the agent is the product
Mid-tier national package	$125 + $199–$349	Agent renewal + upsells	Operating agreement and EIN often cost extra
Premium national package	$125 + $299–$399	Highest renewals	Compliance alerts, expedite that Florida doesn’t offer
Our Basic plan	$164.99 all-in	$69/yr	State fee included; renewal is the lowest here
Our Standard plan	$204.99 all-in	$99/yr	Includes a year of registered agent service

Prices at LegalZoom and ZenBusiness move with promotions, so we keep a current side-by-side on our LegalZoom and ZenBusiness price comparison rather than freezing numbers in a blog post that ages. The pattern, though, is stable: the intro price is competitive and the renewal is where the margin lives. Before you sign up anywhere, find the renewal number in the fine print and multiply it by three years.

Where $164.99 all-in actually sits

Our Basic plan is $164.99 with the $125 state fee already inside it. That makes the service portion $39.99 — the gap between doing it yourself and having the filing prepared, name-checked against the Sunbiz database, and submitted correctly the first time.

Is $39.99 worth it? Honest answer: it depends entirely on your situation.

Probably not, if you have a clean single-member LLC, a distinctive name you’ve already searched, a Florida street address you’re comfortable publishing, and an hour to read the Sunbiz form carefully. Save the $39.99. Use our free 10-step Florida LLC checklist to make sure you don’t miss the post-filing steps — EIN, bank account, operating agreement, local licensing — and file it yourself.

Probably yes, if any of these apply: you don’t want your home address in a public database, you’re forming with partners and need the manager/member listing right, you’ve had a name rejected before, you’re out of state and need a Florida agent anyway, or your time is worth more than $40/hour and you’d rather not read a statute today.

The renewal number matters more than the formation number. Our Basic renews at $69/yr and registered agent service renews at $99/yr — both below what the national brands charge on renewal, which is the part of the bill you’ll pay every year for as long as the business exists. If you want to model your own numbers including the annual report, the Florida LLC cost calculator will run the three-year total for any combination.

Costs you can genuinely skip in Florida

Part of finding the cheapest route is knowing what you don’t have to buy. Florida is friendlier than most states here:

No general state business license. Florida does not issue a statewide “business license” every LLC must hold. Some national services sell a “license research package” that, for a lot of Florida businesses, returns very little. What does apply is county and municipal: most Florida counties and cities require a local business tax receipt, and the cost, name, and process vary by jurisdiction. Professional and regulated trades (contractors, cosmetology, real estate, food service, childcare) have their own state-level licensing through DBPR or other agencies. Check with your county tax collector and city clerk directly — the answer genuinely varies, and we won’t guess at your number.
No state personal income tax. Florida doesn’t tax individual income, so pass-through profits from a single-member or partnership-taxed LLC aren’t hit at the state level the way they would be in Georgia or New York. (Florida does impose a corporate income tax on entities taxed as corporations, and sales tax applies if you sell taxable goods or services — register with the Department of Revenue if that’s you.)
No publication requirement. Unlike New York and Arizona, Florida does not make you run newspaper notices. That’s a few hundred dollars you don’t spend.
No expedite fee, because there’s no expedite. Online LLC filings process in roughly 3–5 business days. Nobody can sell you faster state processing. What a service can do is submit same-day rather than sitting in a queue — that’s what our Pro tier’s same-day Sunbiz submission means, and it’s a difference of hours on the submission end, not days at the state.
A free operating agreement is fine for simple setups. Florida doesn’t require you to file one, and Chapter 605 supplies default rules when your agreement is silent. For a single-member LLC, a solid template is usually adequate. For two or more members with unequal contributions, buyout terms, or different roles, those defaults are rarely what you’d have chosen — that’s when a tailored document earns its cost.
The EIN is free from the IRS. You can get one yourself at irs.gov in about fifteen minutes. If you’d rather not deal with the IRS portal — which has hours, times out, and rejects applications for reasons it doesn’t explain well — we file it for $49. But “free direct from the IRS” is the true cheapest answer, and you should hear it from us.

The actual ranking, start to finish

$125 — DIY on Sunbiz. The cheapest way to start an LLC in Florida, full stop. Your address is public, your calendar is your own responsibility.
$164.99 — Basic, state fee included. $39.99 for prepared and submitted paperwork, renewing at $69/yr.
$204.99 — Standard. Adds a year of registered agent service so your home address stays off the public record; renews at $99/yr.
$200–$400+ — national brand packages. Competitive in year one, consistently more expensive by year two or three once agent renewals kick in.
$525 — any of the above plus a missed May 1 deadline. $125 formation + $400 late fee. This is the most expensive “cheap” option there is, and it’s the one people actually end up paying.

If cost is your only criterion, file it yourself and set a calendar reminder for January 15 every year to handle the annual report well before May 1. If you’d rather hand off the filing and keep your address private, start a Florida LLC filing here and compare the renewal column, not the headline.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is $125 really the total cost to start an LLC in Florida? Yes — $100 for the Articles of Organization plus the mandatory $25 registered agent designation is the complete state charge to form. Optional add-ons at filing are a $30 certified copy and a $5 Certificate of Status, neither of which is required to operate. Your next unavoidable cost is the $138.75 annual report the following year.

Can I be my own registered agent in Florida to save money? Yes. You need to be at least 18, have a physical Florida street address (not a P.O. box), and be available there during normal business hours to accept service of process. The tradeoff is that the address becomes part of the public Sunbiz record, which is why many owners who work from home pay for agent service instead.

What happens if I miss the May 1 annual report deadline? Florida adds a flat $400 late fee, bringing the total to $538.75 — and unlike many state penalties, it isn’t waived for first-time filers. If the report is still unfiled by the fourth Friday in September, the state administratively dissolves the LLC, and getting it back costs more and creates a gap in your good standing.

Do “free LLC formation” offers actually work out cheaper? Rarely, over a full year. The $125 state fee is always added at checkout, and the free tier is typically paired with registered agent service that renews at $199–$299 after the first year. Read the renewal price before you compare, not the signup price.

Does a Florida LLC need a state business license? Florida has no general statewide business license requirement. However, most counties and many cities require a local business tax receipt, and regulated professions have separate state licensing — both vary by location and industry, so confirm with your county tax collector, your city, and the relevant state agency.

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