Rocket Lawyer Alternative — Rocket Lawyer vs Mainstay Filing

Rocket Lawyer sells three annual membership tiers, each with a seven-day free trial. Standard is $149/yr and includes unlimited AI-assisted "Rocket Copilot" help, unlimited legal reminders, unlimited documents and e-signature, twelve written "Ask an Attorney" questions a year, and access to only three of nine "Premium Legal Services" categories. Plus, their "Most Popular" tier, is $249/yr and adds thirty-six attorney questions, twelve live phone consultations, and access to six of the nine categories. Pro, at $349/yr, unlocks unlimited attorney questions and consultations and all nine categories.

New business registration — an LLC, nonprofit, or corporation — is one of those nine "Premium Legal Services" categories: the first registration is free, and each one after that is $99 plus the state fee, at the same price regardless of which membership tier you hold. In other words, the low headline price you see for "form your LLC" is really a feature of the membership you're already paying for, not a standalone formation fee the way it is at a pure formation competitor.

Every Premium Legal Service carries the same price no matter which tier you're on — the tier only controls how many of the nine categories you're allowed to use at all. The published list: new business registration at $99 plus the state fee after the first free one, an EIN at $70, a registered agent at $125/year, trademark services starting at $350, annual-report filing at $100 per filing, a DBA at $100, and articles of dissolution at $125. Tax preparation is offered through a partner at up to 20% off rather than a set price.

This is the detail easiest to miss on a first read of Rocket Lawyer's pricing page: the entry-level Standard tier only unlocks three of the nine Premium Legal Service categories. A real LLC owner who wants registered- agent service, annual-report filing, and EIN access all at once — a fairly normal combination for a first- year business — likely needs three of those nine categories simultaneously, which may require stepping up to the $249/yr Plus tier just to be allowed to buy all three, before paying for any of them individually. It's an easy detail to overlook when comparing the $149/yr headline price against a flat formation service, and it's a meaningful cost driver once you actually need more than a couple of the nine categories in the same year.

Putting the pieces together for a simple LLC that needs a registered agent and an annual report: the Plus membership renews at $249/yr, the registered agent adds $125/yr, and an annual-report filing (if due that year) adds roughly $100 — together, a realistic ~$474 per year, as advertised on their site, July 2026. An owner whose needs fit entirely inside the three categories the Standard tier unlocks could land closer to ~$274/yr (membership plus the registered agent alone) — a wide range that depends less on usage than on which services you happen to need access to.

Mainstay's $199/yr doesn't have a membership tier gating which services you're allowed to buy. The registered agent and the annual report are simply included, every year, for every entity type.

Rocket Lawyer is the one company in this entire comparison series with a real, ongoing legal-help value proposition that goes past the initial filing: unlimited legal document templates and e-signature, an AI contract-review assistant, and live attorney phone access at the higher tiers. For a landlord managing leases, a freelancer sending contracts, or a growing business that regularly needs a document reviewed, that membership can be worth its price in a way a one-time formation fee never will be. Their content library — a deep /business-and-contracts/{category}/{subcategory} taxonomy branded "The Briefing Room" — is also genuinely the most granular of any competitor covered in this series.

If your business regularly needs contracts drafted, reviewed, or signed — not just once at formation, but on an ongoing basis — Rocket Lawyer's membership model addresses a real, recurring need that a registered- agent-and-annual-report specialist like Mainstay isn't built to cover. Live attorney phone access at the Plus and Pro tiers is a genuine benefit for a business that expects to need that kind of help regularly.

For an owner whose need is specifically the registered agent and the annual report, without a legal membership and its tier-gating sitting in front of them, the flat $199/yr line reaches the same formation outcome more directly — no membership fee to maintain, and no category-count to track before you're allowed to buy the service you actually came for.