Your Montana LLC Is Doing Business in Another State
The short answer. You keep one LLC. It stays registered in Montana, which charges no recurring state filing fee, though the LLC keeps whatever obligations Montana 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. All 47 other states that have one figure to compare cost more in year-one registration than Montana's own first-year total of $35. 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 Montana
When the Annual Report is due. Between January 1 and April 15 of each year
Every Montana fee behind these figures is broken out on what an LLC costs in Montana.
What a second state adds
These are the states closest to Montana’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 ($35) |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Dakota | $750 | $55/yr | $715 more |
| Texas | $750 | None | $715 more |
| Massachusetts | $500 | $520/yr | $465 more |
| Colorado | $100 | $25/yr | $65 more |
| Iowa | $100 | $15/yr | $65 more |
| Ohio | $99 | None | $64 more |
| Kentucky | $90 | from $190/yr | $55 more |
| California | $70 | $810/yr | $35 more |
| Utah | $59 | $18/yr | $24 more |
| Hawaii | $50 | $12.50/yr | $15 more |
| Michigan | $50 | $25/yr | $15 more |
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 Montana's own costs
Our notes, from Montana's published fee schedules and statutes.
Montana is the cheapest of these five states both to open and to keep open: $35 to file Articles of Organization and, at present, $0 for the annual report when it is filed between January 1 and April 15. The Secretary of State's published fee schedule (effective 7-1-2022) still prints $20 for an on-time annual report and $35 for one filed after April 15, but the live fee page now shows the pre-April 15 amount as "WAIVED" and the help center confirms the office waives the fee for every report filed between January 1 and April 15. A series LLC pays an extra $50 for each series member named in the Articles. Optional add-ons are $20 for 24-hour priority handling, $100 for 1-hour expedite, $10 for a name reservation, $5 for a Certificate of Existence, and $10 for a certified copy.
The report fee jumps from $0 to $35 on April 16. Montana's annual report fee is entirely deadline-conditional: waived if filed January 1 through April 15, $35 if filed after April 15. Missing the deadline by a single day is the whole cost.
The waiver is administrative, not statutory. The $20 on-time annual report fee is still printed on the Secretary of State's own fee schedule and is waived at the Secretary's discretion (a 2020s-era policy announced year by year), so budgeting $0 forever is not safe.
140 days late means involuntary dissolution and stacked back fees. MCA 35-8-209 allows involuntary dissolution once an annual report is 140 days overdue, and reinstatement then costs $35 plus $35 for every year of missed reports.
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.