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The Startup JudgeRankings of registered agents, LLC formation and foreign registration services in all 50 states.

Standards

How The Startup Judge reaches its rulings

The Startup Judge hears each service on the same evidence: what it charges over three years, how much work the price takes off the founder and how the renewal is handled. Every order comes from five weighted criteria, and each page names the one that decided it.
The Startup Judge editorial team

What each ruling weighs

  1. Charge over three years (31%). The first-year price plus two renewals, taken from each company's own pricing pages. The state's fees are identical for every filer and appear beside the ruling, not inside the score.
  2. Work taken off the founder (31%). Whether the price includes the registered agent, the yearly report filing, the EIN application and service in more than one state.
  3. Renewal conduct (14%). Whether the price stays put at renewal and how easily a customer can renew or walk away.
  4. Fit with local rules (14%). How the offer lines up with the state's report deadlines, penalties and agent address requirements.
  5. Pricing in plain sight (10%). Whether the total is stated before checkout and state charges are itemized at cost.

Split decisions

When two rulings land within a few tenths, the page calls it a split decision, names the criterion that tipped it and says what the runner-up does better.

What the scores mean

Rulings carry an editorial score out of 10 set by The Startup Judge from the criteria above. They are not customer ratings. A score applies to one provider, in one state, for one service, so the same company can score differently from page to page.

The record behind the figures

Provider charges are taken from each company's own pricing and service pages at build time, and every ranking page shows the date. State fees, forms, deadlines and agent rules come from official schedules, forms and statutes, each shown with the month it was last confirmed. Where a checkout tacks a card or processing surcharge onto the state fee, the surcharge is left out; the totals here carry the service charge alone.

Which providers are heard

Every state ranking hears Mainstay Filing, which serves all fifty states, and the registered agent companies that concentrate on that state. A provider is ruled on for a service only if its own pages sell that service at a published price.

What this site does not do

It carries no customer ratings or customer quotes, and nothing on it is legal or tax advice. The order is the editorial team's judgment, applied through the criteria above.