Your Missouri LLC Is Doing Business in Another State
The short answer. You keep one LLC. It stays registered in Missouri, which charges no recurring state filing fee, though the LLC keeps whatever obligations Missouri attaches to it, and a state that finds you are doing business there adds its own registration and its own filings on top. Whether your activity counts is decided by that state's own rule, not by this page. Of the 47 other states that have one figure to compare, 45 cost more in year-one registration than Missouri's own first-year total of $50, and 2 cost the same. Tennessee and Washington are outside those figures: Tennessee's fee scales with member count from $300, and Washington's $180 is before back fees, so neither has one figure to compare.
What you keep paying in Missouri
Every Missouri fee behind these figures is broken out on what an LLC costs in Missouri.
What a second state adds
These are the states closest to Missouri’s own cost line, plus the three dearest to enter. Each figure is that state’s first-year registration cost for an out-of-state LLC, beside what it charges every year after. Whether your activity counts as doing business there depends on the facts, and each state defines it differently.
| State | Year one to register | State charges, each year after | Against your year one ($50) |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Dakota | $750 | $55/yr | $700 more |
| Texas | $750 | None | $700 more |
| Massachusetts | $500 | $520/yr | $450 more |
| Colorado | $100 | $25/yr | $50 more |
| Ohio | $99 | None | $49 more |
| Kentucky | $90 | from $190/yr | $40 more |
| California | $70 | $810/yr | $20 more |
| Montana | $70 | None | $20 more |
| Utah | $59 | $18/yr | $9 more |
| Hawaii | $50 | $12.50/yr | the same |
| Michigan | $50 | $25/yr | the same |
A state charge of None is not a tax of none. The column is the recurring charge our fee dataset records, and a state that asks for no recurring filing may still levy an entity-level tax that sits outside it.
What we verified about Missouri's own costs
Our notes, from Missouri's published fee schedules and statutes.
Missouri is one of the cheapest states to maintain an LLC in. There is no annual report and no franchise tax, so after formation the state charges nothing recurring. But the formation fee more than doubles if you file on paper: $50 online versus $105 by mail, a $55 gap the Secretary of State itself advertises. Only domestic online filings get the $50 rate; the fee schedule prices paper filings at $105 for domestic and foreign alike. Ancillary fees are low: $25 to reserve a name, $10 for a certificate of good standing, $10 for an online certified copy (or $10 certification plus 50 cents per page on paper). Two quirks from the fee schedule worth knowing: electronic payments carry an added convenience fee not retained by the state, and under Startup for Soldiers, active-duty military in Missouri including the National Guard may create new businesses without paying a filing fee.
Paper filing costs more than double. Missouri charges $50 for Articles of Organization filed online but $105 on paper, the Secretary of State's own FAQ frames it as a $55 saving for filing online. Mailing the LLC-1 form is the single most common way to overpay for a Missouri LLC.
Foreign LLCs get no online discount. The fee schedule's $50 rate is explicitly "(domestic)(online)" only. A foreign LLC registering in Missouri pays the $105 paper rate, so an out-of-state LLC should not budget $50.
Card payments add a convenience fee. The fee schedule states that electronic payments, credit cards and echecks, incur an additional convenience fee that is not collected or retained by the State of Missouri, so the $50 online filing costs slightly more than $50 at checkout.
Frequently Asked Questions
Edmond Hui · Founder, MyStateLLC
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.