Certificate of Good Standing: What Each State Calls It and What It Costs

The naming problem is the whole problem

Every state issues a document that certifies your LLC exists and is authorized to do business. Only 21 of the 50 states here print the words “good standing” on it. We could not confirm the official name in 2 states, and those are excluded from both counts rather than assigned to one.

The alternatives are not 50 one-offs. They cluster into a short list, so once you know which family your state belongs to, you know what to search its site for.

All of these are accepted interchangeably. A receiving bank or filing office that asks for a certificate of good standing means the document your state issues under whatever name it uses.

All 50 states: name, price, channel, turnaround

Every figure read from the state's own fee schedule or filing office guidance. Where a state publishes nothing, the cell says so rather than carrying an estimate.

31 of 50 states publish a turnaround we could pin to a source. “None published” means we checked and the state commits to nothing, which is an answer rather than a gap. “Not confirmed” means we could not check, usually because the state's own pages were unreachable, and those two are not the same thing.

What it costs

Across the 49 states with a confirmed price, the median is $15. Colorado and Wyoming issue it at no charge. The most expensive, all at $50, are Connecticut, Delaware, Nevada, and New Jersey. The cheapest that charge anything, all at $5, are California, Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Montana, New Hampshire, and Ohio.

Excluded from those figures because we could not confirm a price: Alaska. A median over an unstated denominator is not a median, so these are named rather than folded in.

Be careful comparing this to what a formation service quotes you. Their price is a service fee layered on top of the state charge in this table, and in most states you can order the document yourself in a few minutes.

Where filing with the Secretary of State is not enough

In Tennessee, a separate revenue agency has to clear your tax account before the certificate will issue. Filing every report with the business filing office and paying every filing fee does not get you there on its own, which is why an owner whose entity record looks perfectly current can still be refused.

We could not confirm the position in 8 states, so this count is a floor rather than a total.

How long one stays good

In every state where we could confirm it, the certificate carries a date of issue and no expiry date. It is not a licence that lapses. What expires is the recipient's tolerance: banks, lenders and other states' filing offices each set their own recency rule, and that window belongs to them, not to the issuing state. Ask the person who asked you what theirs is.

The practical consequence is that ordering one in advance wastes the fee. Order it once you know who is asking and what recency they want.

What it does not prove

The certificate says your entity exists and has filed what the filing office requires of it. It says nothing about whether you hold the licences your trade needs, whether you are current with the IRS, whether you are registered in other states you operate in, or whether you have insurance. Readers regularly treat it as a general clean bill of health for the business. It is a narrow statement from one office about one set of filings.

Your state, in detail

Each state page names the exact document, the current fee, the ordering channels, what has to be current first, and the primary source behind every figure.