Montana's annual report is free when you file it between January 1 and April 15 and costs $35 after that. Here are the deadlines, the real price of being late, and how to file.
Montana LLC annual reports are due April 15 and cost $0 to file. See details below.
Filing the Montana annual report, with the state's own fee and deadline. Source: Montana Secretary of State.
Annual Report at a Glance
Due Date
April 15
Fee
$0
Filing Method
Online or mail
Late Penalty
$35 (the report's price after April 15; it is free on or before April 15)
Sos Filing Url
https://sosmt.gov/business/
How to File
1
Gather Required LLC Information
Collect your Montana LLC's registered agent name and address, principal office address, member or manager details, and anything that changed since last year's filing.
2
Access the Montana Secretary of State Website
Go to the Montana Secretary of State at https://sosmt.gov/business/ and open the annual report filing service. You can look your LLC up by name or filing number from the same place.
3
Complete the Annual Report Form
Confirm or correct every required field: current principal office and mailing addresses, registered agent name and address, and member or manager details. Read it back before you submit, because a correction filed later is a separate document.
4
File Free Before April 15, or Pay $35 After
The report costs nothing when it is filed between January 1 and April 15. File after April 15 and the same report costs $35. Montana prices the filing rather than charging a penalty, so there is no separate late fee and no interest. Pay online by credit or debit card, or by check or money order made out to the Montana Secretary of State if you file on paper. The waiver on the pre-April 15 filing is a Secretary of State policy rather than a statutory rate, so confirm the current amount at sosmt.gov each January.
5
Submit and Save Confirmation
Submit the report and save the confirmation receipt with your LLC records as proof of the filing date. Montana publishes no standard turnaround for business filings, though the office does sell 24-hour priority handling for $20 and 1-hour expedite for $100 on documents generally.
Ready to file your annual report?
Go directly to the Montana Secretary of State portal.
This guide is general information, not legal or tax advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. It reports what each state publishes about filing deadlines, fees, and the consequences of missing them, with the sources this page cites. It cannot tell you what your own company owes: the date turns on when and where you formed, states change these rules between our reviews, and in several states an entity-level tax falls due in a year when no report does. Confirm your own dates with the filing office named on this page before you rely on one here, because the penalty for missing a deadline can be administrative dissolution of the company.
Frequently Asked Questions
Montana does not charge a late fee. It charges a different price for the same report: nothing at all if you file between January 1 and April 15, and $35 if you file after April 15. There is no interest and no monthly penalty on top, so a report filed on April 16 and one filed on December 16 cost the same $35.
The real risk is time, not money. Under MCA 35-8-209 the Secretary of State may involuntarily dissolve an LLC that has failed for 140 days to file its annual report. Dissolution ends the company's registered status, and reinstating an involuntarily dissolved LLC costs $35 plus an additional $35 for each year of delinquent annual reports, so a lapse that runs several years compounds. File through the Secretary of State's online service at sosmt.gov as soon as you notice the miss, and set a calendar reminder for early April so next year's filing lands inside the free window.
File through the Montana Secretary of State's business filing service at sosmt.gov. Sign in, find your LLC, and open its annual report. You confirm or update the principal office and mailing addresses, the registered agent name and address, and the current members or managers.
The report is free when filed between January 1 and April 15 and costs $35 after April 15. Pay online by credit or debit card at submission, or by check or money order made out to the Montana Secretary of State if you file on paper.
The window runs January 1 to April 15 each year. MCA 35-8-208 requires the first annual report between January 1 and April 15 of the year following the calendar year in which the LLC is organized, so an LLC organized in 2026 files its first report in the January 1 to April 15, 2027 window and nothing before then.
Filing online gives you an immediate confirmation. Print or save the receipt and keep it with your business records, because it is the only proof of the date you filed.
Nothing, provided you file on time. The Montana Secretary of State waives the fee for annual reports filed between January 1 and April 15, so an on-time filer pays $0. A report filed after April 15 costs $35. That $35 is the price of the filing, not a penalty added to a base fee, and Montana charges no interest on it. Pay by credit or debit card in the online filing service, or by check or money order made out to the Montana Secretary of State if you file on paper. The waiver is an administrative policy of the Secretary of State rather than a statutory rate, so check the current fee at sosmt.gov at the start of each filing season rather than assuming $0 forever. Other filings around the report are priced separately: a name reservation is $10, a certified copy is $10, and a Certificate of Existence is $5.
Montana's filing window opens January 1 and closes April 15, and the same window applies to every LLC on the register regardless of the month it was formed. One qualification matters for new companies: MCA 35-8-208 requires the first annual report between January 1 and April 15 of the year following the calendar year in which the LLC is organized, so an LLC organized in 2026 files its first report between January 1 and April 15, 2027.
The report is free inside that window and $35 after April 15. There is no separate late penalty and no interest.
Missing the deadline is survivable, but not indefinitely. MCA 35-8-209 allows the Secretary of State to involuntarily dissolve an LLC once its annual report is 140 days overdue, and reinstatement then costs $35 plus another $35 for each year of delinquent reports.
File at sosmt.gov a couple of weeks before April 15 so there is room to correct a rejected submission while the filing is still free.
No, Montana exempts no active LLC from filing. Every LLC on the register files an annual report between January 1 and April 15 each year to stay in good standing, regardless of revenue, activity level, or whether it has one member or twenty. An LLC with no income and no operations files the same report as a trading company. The one timing exception is the first year: an LLC organized in 2026 does not file in 2026, because MCA 35-8-208 puts the first report in the January 1 to April 15 window of the following year. The report is free inside the window and $35 after April 15. Skipping it altogether is what causes trouble: under MCA 35-8-209 the Secretary of State may involuntarily dissolve an LLC whose report is 140 days overdue, and reinstatement costs $35 plus an additional $35 for each year of delinquent annual reports. Put April 15 in your calendar now and file at sosmt.gov.
Sources
Each entry below is a document recorded in our verified Montana sources, and each entry says what the document is. Some statutory text is read from an accurate mirror rather than from the state's own host, and those say so.
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Edmond Hui is a software engineer and serial entrepreneur based in New York who has founded multiple online businesses across e-commerce, media, and information publishing. Before transitioning into tech, he spent years as a commercial real estate professional closing deals totaling over 100,000 square feet, giving him firsthand experience with business formation and entity structuring. He built MyStateLLC to provide the free, state-specific LLC guidance he wished existed when forming his own companies.
