Louisiana LLC Costs: What You'll Actually Pay

Forming and maintaining a Louisiana LLC involves a handful of state fees paid to the Secretary of State's Commercial Division. Act 921 of the 2026 Regular Session raised them effective October 1, 2026, and the figures below are the new ones.

Formation filing fee: $125

To create your LLC, you file the Articles of Organization (Form 365) with the accompanying Initial Report (Form 973), through the geauxBIZ portal or on paper. The state fee is $125, up from $100 before October 1, 2026. Credit card payments carry an additional statutory convenience fee of $5, so a card payment comes to $130. It's a one-time charge: once it's paid and the filing is processed, your LLC officially exists and appears in the state's records.

Expedited processing (optional): $35 or $60

Louisiana doesn't publish a standard processing time. If you're up against a lease signing, a loan closing, or a contract deadline, you can pay $35 to have documents processed within 24 hours, or $60 for priority processing while you wait. Those are the new amounts; older transmittal forms still show $30 and $50. This is entirely optional (most owners don't need it), but it's there when timing is tight.

Annual report fee: $35

Every year, your Louisiana LLC files an annual report on or before the anniversary of its formation, and the fee is $35, plus the $5 convenience fee if you pay by card. Unlike the one-time formation fee, this one comes around every year. It's a modest, predictable cost, and the price of keeping the entity active and compliant. Louisiana charges no late fee, but a late report puts the LLC out of good standing until it's filed.

Between formation and each year's report, those are the mandatory state fees. Everything else on this page is either optional or specific to your particular business.

It helps to separate what you pay once from what you pay every year, because they affect your budget differently.

One-time costs

• Formation filing (Articles of Organization plus Initial Report): $125, paid once at formation
• Expedited processing: $35 or $60, optional, and only if you choose to rush the initial filing
• Name reservation: $25 for 120 days, optional; if you convert a geauxBIZ reservation into your filing, the $25 is applied toward it
• EIN from the IRS: free (the IRS never charges for an EIN)
• Operating agreement: free if you draft it yourself; a cost only if you hire an attorney to prepare it
• Notary: a paper filing is acknowledged before a notary, and each registered agent signs a notarized acceptance

Recurring costs

• Annual report: $35 every year, due on or before your formation anniversary, to keep the LLC in good standing
• Changing your registered agent: $30 on Form 983 whenever you switch, not yearly
• Registered agent service: if you use a commercial service, this is a yearly fee
• Local occupational licenses: many parishes and municipalities require an annual local business license
• Professional licenses: certain trades renew state licenses on their own cycle

The takeaway: after the one-time formation cost, the ongoing baseline for a simple Louisiana LLC is the annual report plus, if you use one, registered agent service. Both are predictable, so you can plan for them.

Beyond the core state fees, your total depends on choices you make and the nature of your business.

Registered agent service

You can serve as your own registered agent at no cost if you're a Louisiana resident with a municipal address in the state and accept that your address becomes public. A commercial service charges a yearly fee in exchange for keeping your address private, providing a dependable place for papers to land, forwarding documents promptly, and tracking your annual report deadline. When Mainstay Filing forms your LLC, registered agent service is included in the single flat yearly price. It never appears as a charge of its own.

Trade name (DBA) registration

If you'll operate under a name different from your LLC's legal name, you register a trade name. In Louisiana a trade name runs for a ten-year term and can involve both the state and the parish Clerk of Court. This is optional. You only need it if you're branding under a different name.

Licenses and permits

Louisiana doesn't have a single statewide general business license, but most parishes and municipalities require a local occupational license, and many professions require state licensing through their boards. These vary widely by location and industry, and they're separate from your Secretary of State filings.

Professional help

An attorney or accountant is an optional expense, but a worthwhile one for complex ownership, tax elections, or industry-specific compliance. Their fees aren't state costs. They're professional services you choose based on your needs.

When you form through Mainstay Filing, you pay one flat yearly service price on top of the state's fees, which pass through at cost. Here's what that price covers and why owners choose it over filing solo.

What the service fee covers

• Preparing and submitting the complete packet: both the Articles of Organization and the easy-to-miss Initial Report, filed correctly on geauxBIZ
• Catching errors before they cause rejections: a rejected filing costs you days and sometimes re-filing effort
• Included registered agent service: your address stays off the public record and documents have a dependable place to arrive
• Your EIN application: we apply for the EIN with the IRS, which issues it free
• Annual report filing: we prepare and file your annual report each year within the same price, so the anniversary doesn't slip past
• A single point of contact: one place that keeps your Louisiana filings straight

Displayed price equals charged price

The fees you see on the receipt are the fees you pay, with no padded "processing" surcharges buried in the checkout and no bait-and-switch on the state fee. The state fee is the state's; the service fee is ours; both are shown plainly. For many owners, the value is simply not having to learn Louisiana's portal, decode the Initial Report requirement, or worry about a rejected filing when there's a lease or client waiting.

To plan realistically, think in two buckets: what it costs to get formed, and what it costs to stay compliant.

Getting formed

Your upfront outlay is the $125 state formation fee ($130 by card, plus $35 or $60 if you expedite), any service fee if you use a filing service, and free items like the EIN. If you draft your own operating agreement and skip a name reservation, there's nothing else required to get the LLC created.

Staying compliant, year after year

Each year, plan for the $35 annual report fee ($40 by card) and, if you use one, registered agent service. Layer in any local occupational license renewal and professional license fees specific to your business. None of these are large individually, and they're all predictable, which makes an LLC an inexpensive structure to maintain once it's up and running.

The bottom line: a Louisiana LLC is affordable both to start and to keep. The mandatory state costs are modest, the recurring obligations are light, and the main variable is whether you choose to pay for conveniences like a registered agent service or professional advice. Just make sure any guide you budget from reflects the October 2026 fee increase.