Indiana renamed this certificate, and what you pay depends on how you order it

The Bottom Line for Indiana LLCs

Order it through INBiz, the state's business portal, where it costs less and arrives by email within minutes. The mailed route costs more and earns its place only for the long form, which the portal does not sell.

Two things set Indiana apart from its neighbours. The first is the channel split: the online price and the mailed price are genuinely different amounts for the same certificate, and the Secretary of State itself tells companies to order online for the fastest service and the lowest cost. The second is the long form, a version that lists every document ever filed for the company rather than a single status line. Hardly anybody needs it, but when a buyer's lawyer or a foreign registry asks for a complete filing history, that is the one they mean, and it lives on the paper request form.

What Indiana Actually Calls It

The document is officially the Certificate of Existence, issued by Indiana Secretary of State, Business Services Division, though Indiana's own pages also call it a certificate of good standing. The two names mean the same paper. Ask a bank or another state's filing office for a certificate of good standing and this is what you send them.

The Secretary of State says a Certificate of Existence contains the business name, the date of incorporation or qualification, whether the most recent report has been filed, the fact that no notice of withdrawal, dissolution or expiration has been received, and the Seal of the Secretary of State. The Long Form adds a list of all documents that have been filed for the business.

Indiana also uses Certificate of Good Standing, Certificate of Existence Long Form for documents in this family.

Why You Need One

Registering the LLC in another state is the most common reason, followed by a bank or an SBA lender assembling a file for a company it cannot simply look up. Indiana adds an unusual entry to the list. The Secretary of State publishes a warning about misleading solicitations that arrive by post offering an Indiana certificate of status, a name the state issues no document under, and companies do pay private outfits far more than the state charges for paper the state never issued. If a letter arrived unrequested asking you to send money for a certificate, treat that as the tell: nobody has actually asked you for one. The requests that are real come from counterparties who identify themselves, such as a lender, a filing office, a franchisor or a large customer's onboarding portal.

What It Costs in Indiana

Indiana charges $26 for the Certificate of Existence ordered online and $30 on paper. A Certificate of Existence Long Form costs $30.

Where this fee comes from: The Indiana Secretary of State's own INBiz Fee Calculator returns, for Agency "Secretary of State" and Order Type "Certificate of Existence": "TRANSACTION TYPE | TRANSACTION FEE" then "Certificate of Existence | $26.00", with "$ 26.00 Transaction Amount" and the notice "A processing fee will be added upon checkout, minimum of $1, will not exceed 2.15%." The mail route is priced separately on the state's Information Request Form: "Certificate of Existence (special instructions): $30".

How to Order It

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

Emailed within minutes when ordered on INBiz.

Order it on the Indiana site

An INBiz account is required. "Sign into INBiz or create an account. Once you have successfully logged in, you will be navigated to the screen where you can order a Certificate of Existence." A payment processing fee is added on top of the $26 at checkout: "A processing fee will be added upon checkout, minimum of $1, will not exceed 2.15%." The calculator itemises that fee as $1.00 when the credit card option is selected and $1.50 when it is not, so the amount actually charged online is $27.00 by card.

You need an INBiz account before you can buy anything, which catches out owners who expected a public search-and-pay flow like the one in the states next door. Sign in or create the account, and the order screen appears once you are authenticated. The certificate is emailed to you and also lands in the documents area of your dashboard, which is worth remembering the day you lose the email. Budget for a payment processing charge added at checkout on top of the price, stated by the state as a minimum amount with a percentage cap. Two traps around price. The mailed request and the online order are priced differently, so a total copied from one route will not match the other. And the state's own alert about certificate scams, still live and still linked from its site, quotes an online price from an older fee and surcharge regime that no longer applies. Read the current price in the ordering flow itself, not from a linked PDF, whatever date the PDF carries.

1. 1

   Create or sign in to an INBiz account

   There is no anonymous checkout for this. The account is also where the certificate is stored after purchase, so use one you will still have access to next year.

2. 2

   Decide whether you need the standard certificate or the long form

   The standard version states the company's status. The long form adds the full list of documents filed for the company, and it is only worth ordering when a lawyer or a registry has asked for filing history.

3. 3

   Order from the dashboard once you are signed in

   The ordering screen appears after authentication. This is the cheaper of the two routes and the only one the state publishes a turnaround for.

4. 4

   Check the total at checkout, not the price on a linked PDF

   A processing charge is added at checkout on top of the certificate price. Some still-live state PDFs quote a superseded online total, so trust the ordering flow.

5. 5

   Save the emailed certificate and note where the copy lives

   The certificate arrives by email and also appears in the documents area of your INBiz dashboard. Download the file rather than relying on the message staying in your inbox.

6. 6

   Use the paper information request form only for the long form or special instructions

   Post it to the certification clerk with a check or money order for the total. This is the slower and dearer route, and Indiana publishes no timing for it.

What Puts You Out of Standing in Indiana

We found no separate tax clearance requirement from a revenue agency, though Indiana does not publish a statement either way, so treat that as no requirement found rather than an assurance. What Indiana requires to be current with its own filing office is not something the state publishes, so this page does not answer it.

Indiana does use a Department of Revenue Certificate of Clearance, but for reinstatement, not for a Certificate of Existence. INBiz routes reinstatement through a Certificate of Clearance step at https://inbiz.in.gov/BOS/SOS.Reinstatement/CertificateOfClearance .

Indiana's certificate reports on your report status rather than gating on it. The Secretary of State publishes what the document contains, and one of the listed items is whether the most recent business entity report has been filed. That line can come back either way, which means a certificate can be issued and still tell a bank something you would rather it did not. Indiana has not published a rule about whether it will refuse a certificate to a company with a report outstanding, so do not count on either outcome. What is clearly documented is what happens further down the road: a company that has been administratively dissolved comes back through reinstatement, and Indiana routes reinstatement through a clearance step with the Department of Revenue before the Secretary of State will restore it. That is a much longer road than filing a late report, which is the argument for filing the report now.

How Long It Stays Good in Indiana

The Certificate of Existence carries a date of issue and no expiry date. Indiana does not set a shelf life for it. 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 Indiana's. Ask what it is, and order the certificate once you know.

Because the online order is emailed within minutes, buy it after the request arrives rather than before. The date on the certificate is the date you bought it, and a certificate already in your files cannot be refreshed. Read the recipient's freshness rule before you order rather than after, since banks and other states' filing offices usually have one. This matters more if you are going by post, because Indiana publishes a turnaround for the online route only, so the mailed route leaves you with a deadline and no timing you could plan against.

Using It Outside the United States

For use abroad, Indiana Secretary of State, Business Services Division, Authentications will authenticate the certificate with an apostille for $2 per document.

What We Could Not Confirm for Indiana

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

• what must be current before the state will issue it

Who to Ask in Indiana

The Business Services Division of the Indiana Secretary of State issues the certificate, and a mailed request goes to its certification clerk at the division's Indianapolis office. The same division handles authentication for documents going overseas, so an apostille is a second request but not a second agency, which saves a step. The Department of Revenue matters only if the company has been administratively dissolved, since its clearance forms part of getting reinstated, and it plays no part in an ordinary certificate order. INBiz is the front door to all of it, and the account you create there is what connects the ordering, the filings and the documents you have already bought.

Sources

• inbiz.in.gov/Inbiz/FeeCalculator/Index
• inbiz.in.gov/business-filings/information-requests
• inbiz.in.gov/Assets/INSOS_Information_Request_Form.pdf
• in.gov/sos/business/files/Certificate-of-Existence-Alert-2022.pdf
• faqs.in.gov/hc/en-us/articles/360034159551-How-can-I-get-a-Certificate-of-Existence-or-Good-Standing
• faqs.in.gov/hc/en-us/articles/115005046687-Where-do-I-find-a-Certificate-of-Existence-or-Good-Standing
• in.gov/sos/business/apostilleauthentication/

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