Wyoming hands you this certificate online for nothing. The signed original is the slow one.

The Bottom Line for Wyoming LLCs

Generate the electronic certificate on the state's business portal. It costs nothing, it is immediate, and it carries a validation number the recipient can check on the same page it came from.

Free and instant covers almost every reason anyone asks. The exception is the manually signed original, and it is a genuine exception rather than an upsell: some foreign registries and some institutions will not take a certificate the applicant printed at home, however verifiable it is. That version is a paper request, mailed, paid by check, money order or a prepaid account with the office rather than by card, and the Secretary of State says outright that expedited service is not available for it. So Wyoming's cheap route is the fast one and its paid route is the slow one, which is the reverse of what most people expect and the reason to work out which you need before you are up against a deadline.

What Wyoming Actually Calls It

Wyoming calls it a Certificate of Good Standing, issued by Wyoming Secretary of State, Business Division.

By statute the certificate of existence states the company's name, that it was duly formed under the laws of the state and the date of formation, whether all fees, taxes and penalties due to the Secretary of State have been paid, whether the most recent annual report required by W.S. 17-29-209 has been filed, whether the Secretary of State has administratively dissolved the company, whether articles of dissolution have been delivered, and any other facts of record the requester specifies.

Wyoming also uses Certificate of Existence, Certificate of Existence/Evidence/Good Standing, electronic certificate of good standing for documents in this family.

Why You Need One

Wyoming LLCs get asked for this more than most, because so many of them are owned from elsewhere and operate elsewhere. Registering to do business in another state is the biggest single trigger, since the receiving office wants proof from the state that formed you. Banks ask at account opening, and they ask harder where the LLC has no local presence and the file is the only thing the bank has to look at. Lenders ask at underwriting, buyers ask in a sale, and the occasional landlord or enterprise customer asks during diligence. Because the online certificate costs nothing, requesters ask for it casually, and there is no reason to treat the request as unreasonable.

What It Costs in Wyoming

Wyoming issues the Certificate of Good Standing online at no charge, and charges $20 for a paper original.

Where this fee comes from: Business Division Filing Fee Schedule, effective July 1st, 2026, note at the head of the schedule: 'Certificates of Good Standing may be obtained online at no cost at the following URL: https://wyobiz.wyo.gov'

How to Order It

You can order the Certificate of Good Standing online and by mail.

Free instant certificate online, or up to 15 business days for a signed paper original.

Order it on the Wyoming site

The online certificate is generated from the entity's Filing ID and carries a validation number that can be checked back on the same page.

The online generator keys off the entity's filing ID rather than its name, so pull that from the record in the portal before you start. What it produces is an electronic certificate with a validation number, and the same page will validate a number back, which is the answer to a recipient who says they can only accept something issued by the state itself: send them the number and the page, not just the PDF. The paper original is a different process from end to end. It runs on the certified copy and certificate request form, goes by post, and does not take card payment. A check or money order made out to the Secretary of State, or a prepaid account with the office, are the options, and only the prepaid account route can be sent in by email. A certificate that needs authentication for use in another country runs on a third form again, so do not order a plain paper original and then discover it has to go back for an apostille.

1. 1

   Find the entity's filing ID in the state's business records

   Look the LLC up on the portal and copy the filing ID from its record. The certificate generator asks for that, not for the company name, which is the step most people are missing when they say the page will not work.

2. 2

   Generate the electronic certificate from the portal's certificate page

   Enter the filing ID and the page produces the certificate straight away. Save the PDF and note the validation number printed on it.

3. 3

   Send the recipient the certificate and the validation number together

   The number lets them confirm on the state's own site that the document is genuine. Sending it unprompted heads off the objection that you produced the file yourself.

4. 4

   Before paying for a paper original, ask whether one is genuinely required

   Foreign registries and a few institutions insist on a manually signed certificate. Many requesters who ask for an original are happy with the validated electronic one once they know it can be checked.

5. 5

   If you do need the original, mail the certificate request form with payment

   Complete the certified copy and certificate request form and post it with a check or money order payable to the Secretary of State. Card payment is not accepted, and there is nothing to buy that will make it move faster.

6. 6

   For use abroad, use the apostille and authentication form instead

   Authentication is its own request to the same office, on its own form, with its own fee and return postage. Do not start with a plain certificate order and try to add it afterwards.

What Puts You Out of Standing in Wyoming

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

No revenue agency clearance appears in W.S. 17-29-208, on the Secretary of State FAQ, or on the certificate request form. Wyoming's annual report license tax is paid to the Secretary of State itself, not to a separate revenue department, so there is no third agency in the path. The state did not publish an explicit statement that no clearance is required, so this is a not found rather than a published absence.

The Certified Copy/Certificate Request Form notes that a certificate needed for use abroad goes through a different form: 'If you need a certified copy or certificate apostilled or authenticated (for use in another country), please use the Apostille/Authentication form.'

Wyoming ties good standing to the annual report in its own guidance: every entity, domestic and foreign, files one and pays either a fee assessed on assets located and employed in Wyoming or a flat filing fee. The statute comes at it from a different angle. It requires the certificate to state whether fees, taxes and penalties due to the Secretary of State have been paid, and whether the most recent annual report has been filed, which describes a certificate capable of issuing while reciting a shortfall. No Wyoming page we could read settles whether the online generator will produce one for an entity that has fallen behind, so this page does not claim it either way. The practical answer is the same regardless: file the report, then generate the certificate, and the question never arises.

How Long It Stays Good in Wyoming

Wyoming publishes nothing about how long the Certificate of Good Standing stays current. 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 Wyoming's. Ask what it is, and order the certificate once you know.

The electronic route makes recency a non-problem. Generate one the morning you send it, and generate another if the deal slips a week. Do not forward a saved PDF because it looks identical; it carries the date it was originally generated, and a recipient who checks the validation number will see exactly when that was. The paper original is where timing and recency collide. It travels by post in both directions, its processing window is an upper bound rather than a promise, and with no expedited tier available there is nothing to buy if you are running late. If a counterparty has a dated-within rule and also insists on a signed original, work back from their deadline generously, and ask them first whether the validated electronic certificate will do. For a lot of them it will, and asking costs nothing.

Using It Outside the United States

For use abroad, Wyoming Secretary of State, Apostilles and Authentications will authenticate the certificate with an apostille for $20 per document.

What We Could Not Confirm for Wyoming

These pages only state what a primary source establishes. For Wyoming 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 Wyoming

The Wyoming Secretary of State's Business Division issues both versions. Its WyoBiz portal is where the electronic certificate is generated and where a recipient validates one. Mailed certificate requests go to that division in Cheyenne, and the request form is the same one used for certified copies. The same office runs apostilles and authentications on a separate form, which is the route for anything headed overseas. No separate revenue agency sits in the path here: Wyoming's annual report license tax is paid to the Secretary of State itself, so the office that issues your certificate is also the office that holds the money question the certificate speaks to.

Sources

• sos.wyo.gov/business/docs/businessfees.pdf
• sos.wyo.gov/Forms/Business/General/CertifiedCopy-CertificateRequest.pdf
• sos.wyo.gov/faqs.aspx?root=BUS
• wyobiz.wyo.gov/Business/ViewCertificate.aspx
• sos.wyo.gov/Forms/WyoBiz/Wyoming_Limited_Liability_Company_Act_and_Close_LLC_Supplement.pdf
• sos.wyo.gov/services/authentication.aspx

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