Georgia will hand you this document in seconds and tell you almost nothing about what it says.

The Bottom Line for Georgia LLCs

Ordering this in Georgia takes minutes through eCorp and the document comes back while you are still at the screen. The harder question is what the state will and will not confirm about it.

Georgia publishes a fee schedule, a records order form and an online ordering page for this document, and between them they tell you exactly how to buy it. What we could not find anywhere on a Georgia site was a description of what the certificate attests to, or any statement that the Corporations Division will refuse one to a company whose annual registration is overdue. The nearest thing in Georgia's own rules defines an active LLC as one that is on file with the Secretary of State and in compliance with the filing requirements of the Code, and that describes a status rather than the certificate. Reading it as the certificate's meaning would be filling a gap with a guess, so this page leaves the gap open.

What Georgia Actually Calls It

Georgia issues this as the Certificate of Existence, through Georgia Secretary of State, Corporations Division. Ask a bank or another state's filing office for a certificate of good standing and this is what you send them.

Georgia also uses Certificate of Entity History (Long Form) for documents in this family.

Why You Need One

The reasons are the ordinary ones and the ranking is worth having. Registering the LLC in another state leads, and Georgia's own practice illustrates why timing matters: when an out-of-state corporation registers here, Georgia asks for a current certificate from the home state, issued recently. Recency rules of that kind are why a certificate ordered months ago is usually the wrong one to send. After foreign registration, banks and lenders ask at underwriting, a buyer's counsel asks during diligence, and now and then a large customer or a landlord makes one a contract condition. Georgia also sells a longer version carrying the entity's history, which is what a lawyer tracing a chain of filings would rather have.

What It Costs in Georgia

Georgia charges $20 for the Certificate of Existence. A Certificate of Entity History (Long Form) costs $50.

Where this fee comes from: Form CD 700, Business Entity and Registration Records Order Form, order details: "c. Certificate of Existence $10 per certificate + $10 service charge". The Corporations Division Filing Fees schedule effective September 6, 2025 shows the same $10 fee plus $10 service charge, totalling $20.00, in both the Online Filing and the Paper Filing column.

How to Order It

You can order the Certificate of Existence online, by mail and in person.

Immediate when ordered online; expedited tiers priced for paper orders.

Order it on the Georgia site

Ordered through eCorp. "In order to view the certificate, you must have a PDF viewer such as Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer."

Use eCorp. The Division states that certificate requests submitted online are processed immediately with no expedite fee required, which means the priced expedited tiers exist for paper orders and are wasted money on an online one. Paper still has its uses, since the records order form is the route to a raised-seal copy and to collecting the document at the counter, and collection is only offered when expedited handling has been paid for. You also need a PDF reader on the machine you order from or the certificate will not display. One warning comes from the Secretary of State's own office: Georgia has publicly alerted new business owners to mailed solicitations offering to obtain this certificate for them at a markup. The state sells it directly and eCorp is the counter.

1. 1

   Look your LLC up in eCorp and read its status

   The entity record is what any certificate is drawn from. Check it before you pay, and check the exact spelling of the company name while you are in there.

2. 2

   Clear an outstanding annual registration first

   Georgia administratively dissolves LLCs that skip the registration, so an overdue one is worth filing on its own merits before you go looking for a certificate.

3. 3

   Order through the eCorp certificate page

   An online order is processed on the spot and needs no expedited handling. Have a PDF reader installed on the machine you are using or the document will not open.

4. 4

   Use the paper order form only for what it uniquely offers

   The records order form is the route to a raised-seal copy or to picking the document up in person, and pickup is available only on an expedited order.

5. 5

   Bin the letters offering to fetch it for you

   The Secretary of State has warned owners about mailed solicitations for this certificate. Anything arriving by post asking you to pay a third party to obtain one is not the state, and the state's own counter is cheaper.

What Puts You Out of Standing in Georgia

We could not confirm what Georgia requires to be current before it will issue the Certificate of Existence.

Georgia LLCs must file an annual registration between January 1 and April 1 each year, and "An LLC that does not submit its annual registration as required is subject to administrative dissolution." The Division also sells a separate Certificate of Noncompliance at $10, which implies the two documents report different states of the record, but no Georgia page read here says in terms that a Certificate of Existence will be refused to a company whose annual registration is late.

Georgia requires an annual registration each year and administratively dissolves LLCs that skip it, so an overdue registration is a live problem whatever you need from the record. What no Georgia page we could read settles is whether the Corporations Division will still issue this certificate to a company whose registration is late. Two guesses are on offer and neither is safe to rely on. The Division sells a separate certificate of noncompliance, which shows the record can describe a company as out of compliance, not that the ordinary certificate is refused. And assuming Georgia behaves like the states that do refuse would have you fixing the registration for the wrong reason. Fix it because the dissolution risk is real and because the record is what any certificate is drawn from, and read your entity's status in eCorp before you order rather than after.

How Long It Stays Good in Georgia

Georgia publishes nothing about how long the Certificate of Existence stays current. Whoever asked you for it does: banks, lenders and other states' filing offices each set their own recency rule, and that window is theirs, not Georgia's. Ask what it is, and order the certificate once you know.

The state's silence on how long its own certificate stays current settles less than it seems to, because Georgia's posture as a recipient shows what actually happens: when another state's certificate arrives here for a foreign registration, Georgia applies its own recency rule to it. Filing offices elsewhere apply their own rules to a Georgia certificate the same way. So the practical answer is to order close to the day you send. That is easy here, since an online order comes back on the spot, and there is correspondingly little reason to keep a copy in a folder for later use.

What We Could Not Confirm for Georgia

These pages only state what a primary source establishes. For Georgia we could not confirm the following, so this page does not answer it:

• what must be current before the state will issue it
• whether the state will apostille it for use abroad

Who to Ask in Georgia

The Corporations Division of the Georgia Secretary of State's office, in the West Tower on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in Atlanta, keeps the entity record, takes the annual registration and issues the certificate, online through eCorp and on paper through its records order form. Registration questions and certificate questions therefore go to one place. State tax accounts belong to the Georgia Department of Revenue, a separate agency. One thing to ask the Division directly rather than plan around: whether it will authenticate this certificate for use outside the United States, and by what route. We could not confirm Georgia's process for that from its own pages, so this page describes none.

Sources

• sos.ga.gov/sites/default/files/forms/Reference%20-%20Filing%20Fees%20(Effective%209.6.2025).pdf
• sos.ga.gov/sites/default/files/forms/Form%20-%20Business%20Entity%20&%20Registration%20Records%20Order%20Form%20(CD%20700).pdf
• sos.ga.gov/how-to-guide/filing-fees-and-expedited-processing-document-filings
• ecorp.sos.ga.gov/CertificateOfExistence
• sos.ga.gov/page/business-division-faq
• sos.ga.gov/sites/default/files/forms/Filing%20Procedure%20-%20Limited%20Liability%20Company.pdf
• rules.sos.ga.gov/GAC/590-7-24
• rules.sos.ga.gov/GAC/590-7-19
• sos.ga.gov/news/new-business-owner-alert-misleading-certificate-existence-solicitations-sent-out-statewide

Every figure on this page was read from a Georgia government source, not from a formation service. Confidence in this record: medium. See our editorial policy for how these are verified and corrected.