New Hampshire's statutes describe this certificate clearly. The state's own websites would not let us read anything else

The Bottom Line for New Hampshire LLCs

The certificate exists, the legislature names and prices it, and a longer version reciting every filing your LLC has made exists alongside it. How you order it, how long the office takes and what has to be current first are things you will need to get from the Corporation Division directly.

This page is built only from sources that could be read, and in New Hampshire that came down to the legislature. Every host in the state's executive web estate refused: the Secretary of State's site, the QuickStart filing system and the Department of Revenue Administration all returned access denied to every request, from a fetch tool and from a direct request alike. So the agency pages that would describe ordering channels, turnaround and prerequisites are not behind this page, and nothing here pretends otherwise. Two statutes do corroborate each other on price, which is why a figure appears at all. RSA 304-C:191, II(j) and RSA 5:10 set the same charge for an ordinary certificate of the secretary of state and the same higher charge for the long form. The caution attached to that is real: RSA 304-C:191, III authorises the Secretary of State to publish its own schedule of specific fees, and that schedule could not be opened. If the office quotes you something else, the schedule is the reason, and the office is right.

What New Hampshire Actually Calls It

New Hampshire calls it a Certificate of Good Standing, issued by New Hampshire Department of State, Corporation Division.

New Hampshire also uses certificate pertaining to the existence of a corporation, trade name, or other business entity (the wording used in RSA 5:10) for documents in this family.

Why You Need One

The reasons are the ordinary ones and they hold here as much as anywhere. Foreign qualification is the biggest: another state's filing office will not register your New Hampshire LLC without the home state confirming it exists. Lenders ask at underwriting rather than at account opening. A buyer's counsel asks during diligence on a sale. Vendor onboarding at a large customer sometimes asks. What is different in New Hampshire is a prior question you should settle before ordering anything, which is which document the requester actually means. The Department of Revenue Administration publishes material on certificate statements covering withdrawal, dissolution and good standing, and because that page could not be opened, the relationship between it and the Secretary of State's certificate is genuinely unresolved. A request that mentions tax accounts may point at Revenue rather than at the Corporation Division. One email to the requester resolves in a minute what no amount of reading resolves here.

What It Costs in New Hampshire

New Hampshire charges $5 for the Certificate of Good Standing. A long form certificate (a certificate of the secretary of state that recites all of a limited liability company's filings with the secretary of state) costs $10.

Where this fee comes from: RSA 304-C:191, II(j): "For issuing any certificate of the secretary of state, including a certificate of good standing, other than a certification of a copy under subparagraph II(g), a fee in the amount of $5, except that for issuing any certificate of the secretary of state that recites all of a limited liability company's filings with the secretary of state, a fee of $10 shall be paid for each such certificate."

How to Order It

We could not confirm how New Hampshire takes orders for the Certificate of Good Standing.

We could not confirm whether New Hampshire publishes a turnaround time for the Certificate of Good Standing.

New Hampshire’s own ordering instructions could not be reached when this page was built, so the available channels are not described here. State law directs the secretary to permit online filing of formation documents, which is about filing rather than about ordering certificates and does not establish that this document can be ordered online.

The most useful thing you can do in New Hampshire is call the Corporation Division and ask four questions in one go, because the pages that would answer them are unreadable and a single call replaces all of them. Ask whether the certificate can be ordered online or only on paper. Ask what the office's current turnaround is. Ask whether an outstanding annual report will stop the order. And ask whether the ordinary certificate or the long form is what your requester's language describes, since the long form recites all of the LLC's filings rather than stating status, and it is a different document sold at a different price. While you have someone on the phone, ask what the office currently charges, because the statutory figures above are from the legislature rather than from the agency's own schedule, and the statute permits the Secretary of State to publish a schedule of its own.

1. 1

   Ask the requester which document they mean

   New Hampshire has a Corporation Division certificate and Revenue Administration material using overlapping language. A request mentioning tax accounts may not point at the Secretary of State at all. Settling this first is worth more here than it looks.

2. 2

   Call the Corporation Division before you plan around a date

   Ask about ordering channel, turnaround, the current charge and whether an unfiled annual report blocks the request. The state's published pages could not be read, so the phone is the primary source rather than a fallback.

3. 3

   Bring the annual report current

   RSA 304-C:194 sets a January to April window and the chapter carries a late fee for missing it. Whether a late report stops the certificate is unconfirmed, but a current record is what produces a document nobody has to explain.

4. 4

   Decide between the ordinary certificate and the long form

   The long form recites all of the company's filings with the Secretary of State rather than stating its status, and it costs more. Order it only if the requester asked for filing history, and the ordinary certificate otherwise.

5. 5

   Check the issue date and the entity name on what arrives

   The issue date is the only date your recipient will care about, and a name that does not match the one on their paperwork will send the document back regardless of what it says.

6. 6

   Request an apostille separately for use outside the United States

   RSA 5:10 provides for apostilles under the Hague Convention through the Department of State. That is a second request made after the certificate is in hand, and it lengthens the timeline.

What Puts You Out of Standing in New Hampshire

We could not confirm what New Hampshire requires to be current before it will issue the Certificate of Good Standing.

Unconfirmed. New Hampshire’s LLC act contains no provision conditioning issuance of this certificate, but the Department of Revenue Administration publishes a page on certificate statements of withdrawal, dissolution and good standing that could not be reached. Whether that is a prerequisite or an entirely separate tax document is open, and this page does not guess.

Here the honest answer is narrow. RSA 304-C:194 requires an LLC to file an annual report between the first of January and the first of April each year, and RSA 304-C:191 carries a late fee for missing that window, so the report obligation itself is clear and dated. What the chapter does not do is connect report status to the issuance of a certificate. The two subjects sit in the same chapter without touching, and the agency guidance that would say whether the Corporation Division declines to issue for a delinquent company is exactly what could not be reached. Treat that as unknown rather than as permission. The practical posture is unchanged either way: bring the annual report current, pay anything owed, and then order, because any status document keys off the record, and a clean record is the only thing that reliably produces a clean certificate.

How Long It Stays Good in New Hampshire

We could not confirm whether New Hampshire prints an expiry on the Certificate of Good Standing. Whoever asked you for it will have its own recency rule, so ask what it is and order close to when you need it.

Nothing readable establishes whether New Hampshire prints an expiry date on the document, so this page will not tell you one way or the other. The part that is dependable is the same everywhere: the recency requirement you are actually working to belongs to the bank, the lender or the filing office that asked, and it runs from the date the certificate was issued. Order close to that deadline rather than in advance. Add more slack than you would in a state with a published turnaround, because here the turnaround is unknown and the ordering channel is unconfirmed, so a phone-only paper process is a live possibility. If the certificate is going overseas, the apostille is a further request to the Department of State after you hold the certificate, and it needs its own room in the schedule.

Using It Outside the United States

For use abroad, New Hampshire Department of State will authenticate the certificate with an apostille for $10 per document.

What We Could Not Confirm for New Hampshire

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

• which ordering channels the state offers
• how long the state takes to issue it
• what must be current before the state will issue it
• whether the state prints an expiry date on it

Who to Ask in New Hampshire

The Corporation Division of the New Hampshire Department of State in Concord maintains the LLC record and issues the certificate, and given the state of the public pages it is the only reliable source for how to order one, what it currently costs and how long it takes. Its QuickStart system is where New Hampshire LLC filings are made, and if you or your registered agent have filed an annual report you already have an account there worth asking about. Apostilles and authentications for documents used abroad are handled by the Department of State under RSA 5:10, as a separate request after the certificate is issued. The office to ask about anything tax-flavoured is the New Hampshire Department of Revenue Administration, which publishes its own material on certificate statements of withdrawal, dissolution and good standing; whether that is a separate document or a step ahead of the Secretary of State's certificate is precisely the question no readable source settles, so ask them.

Sources

• gc.nh.gov/rsa/html/XXVIII/304-C/304-C-191.htm
• gc.nh.gov/rsa/html/i/5/5-10.htm
• gc.nh.gov/rsa/html/XXVIII/304-C/304-C-mrg.htm

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