LegalZoom Alternative — LegalZoom vs Mainstay Filing

LegalZoom's LLC formation is sold in three tiers. Basic is $0 plus the state fee for the core filing only. Pro is $249 plus the state fee, and bundles a 30-day free trial of a "Business Attorney Plan" that auto-renews at roughly $49/mo if it isn't cancelled, plus a tax consult from a partner service. Premium is $299 plus the state fee, and adds a simple website along with a 180-day free trial of "LZ Books" bookkeeping software that auto-renews at roughly $9.99/mo. None of the three tiers include the registered agent or an ongoing compliance plan — those are separate purchases layered on top, regardless of which formation tier you pick.

Beyond formation, LegalZoom runs one of the largest per-product catalogs in the category: EIN filing at $79, a standard operating agreement at $99 (or $199 for a rush version), business license research, virtual mail, a dissolution service, a business credit builder, and a full trademark, patent, and copyright product line — each sold individually, each with its own page in a Register/Run/Protect mega-menu rather than folded into one flat price.

LegalZoom is a public company (Nasdaq: LZ), and its own investor filings publish a number worth sitting with alongside any sales-page tier price. LegalZoom defines "average revenue per subscription unit" (ARPU) as trailing-twelve-month subscription revenue divided by the average number of subscription units outstanding — its own company-defined metric for what a subscriber actually pays over a year, blended across every subscription product it sells, including the registered agent and compliance plans. LegalZoom's 10-K for fiscal year 2025 (period ended December 31, 2025, filed with the SEC on February 23, 2026) reports ARPU of $266/year. Its most recent 10-Q (quarter ended March 31, 2026, filed May 6, 2026) shows ARPU at $263/year, up roughly 4% year-over-year — a rise the filing attributes directly to "pricing initiatives on our registered agent subscriptions." Source: SEC EDGAR, CIK 0001286139.

That figure isn't a marketing number pulled from a landing page — it's a blended average reported to federal regulators and public shareholders, spanning everyone from a $0 Basic filer up through a $999/yr Business Manager subscriber. By LegalZoom's own accounting, in other words, the average subscriber already pays more per year than Mainstay's entire $199/yr price covers every service the company offers.

Whichever formation tier you chose, the registered agent renews on its own schedule at $249/year, auto- renewing unless you cancel it. Staying compliant is its own separate subscription on top of that: $199/yr covers annual-report filing plus amendments and alerts, $299/yr adds business-license research and help, and $999/yr buys a dedicated "Business Manager." All three compliance tiers auto-renew and can be cancelled anytime, but none of them are included in the up-front formation price.

Add those together for a typical single-state LLC and a realistic year two runs roughly $450 to over $1,000 per year — $249 for the agent plus $199 or more for a compliance plan, before counting anything left running on a $49/mo or $9.99/mo trial that converted because nobody cancelled it in time. That range is wide because the actual total depends heavily on which tier you picked and how carefully those trials were managed.

The part of LegalZoom's model worth calling out by name is the trial design itself. The Pro tier's Business Attorney Plan is free for 30 days, then becomes a real monthly charge — roughly $49/mo, or close to $600/yr — unless it's actively cancelled before the trial ends. The Premium tier's LZ Books bookkeeping software runs the same play over 180 days at roughly $9.99/mo. Neither is disguised; both are disclosed on the pricing page. But a free trial that silently becomes a recurring monthly charge is a structurally different thing than a flat annual price, and it's the single biggest swing factor in what a LegalZoom customer actually pays in year one and year two.

Mainstay doesn't run trials of any kind into anything. There's one price, it's the same price whether you form an LLC, a corporation, or a nonprofit, and there's no month-two charge waiting behind a 30- or 180-day countdown.

LegalZoom earns its brand recognition. It's the broadest one-stop shop in this comparison set by a wide margin — the same account that files your LLC can also handle a will, a trust, or a real-estate document, which is a real convenience for an owner who wants business and personal legal paperwork under one roof. Their attorney network is real, not just marketing copy, and their AI Doc Assist and library of guides, state-specific LLC information, and free tools (business name search, name generator, a compliance health check, trademark search, and more) are genuinely the largest, most built-out resource library of any company in this dossier. Phone support at their scale is also a real asset for anyone who wants a human on the line rather than a help-center article.

If personal legal documents — a will, a trust, a real-estate closing packet — matter to you as much as the business filing itself, LegalZoom's combined personal-and-business account is a real advantage that a formation-and-agent specialist like Mainstay doesn't try to replicate. Their attorney-network access and trademark, patent, and copyright product line are also genuine, if separately priced, services that go beyond what a flat-fee registered-agent model is built to cover.

For a business owner whose actual need is forming the company and keeping the registered agent and annual report current without a menu of tiers, add-ons, and trial conversions to manage, that's the specific problem the $199/yr line is built to solve instead.