Two LLCs for Less Than One

How much does it cost to form a Wyoming LLC? Anywhere from $100 to several thousand dollars, and every price in that range is real. The spread is not gouging. It is an industry selling very different things under nearly identical names, which is why comparing quotes here is so miserable and why so many people give up and either overpay badly or file something that does not do what they wanted.

The honest way to answer how much does it cost to form a Wyoming LLC is to lay out the whole ladder and show which rung buys what. That is what this is. Our prices are on here next to everyone else's, including the rungs where somebody is cheaper than we are and the situations where you should not buy from us at all.

The floor: what Wyoming itself charges

The floor is $100. That is what Wyoming charges to file articles of organization, and you can pay it yourself this afternoon. Add a registered agent at roughly $50 to $200 a year, plus an annual report carrying a minimum license tax starting around $60. That is the true bottom of the market. Anyone selling you a Wyoming LLC is selling something stacked on top of a $100 government form, and you should know that before you read anybody's price list, ours included.

Commodity filing services, and the renewals they don't advertise

Commodity filing services sit on the next rung, generally $0 to $300 for a formation, with the national brands clustering around $100 to $300. Watch the renewals, because that is where this tier earns. Registered agent and compliance renewals commonly run $250 to $400 a year and the advertised formation price often excludes them entirely. A $0 formation is a customer acquisition cost, not a gift. You get a filing and nothing that tells you whether the filing was the right move.

What the commodity tier leaves out is the part that decides whether your privacy actually works. You get paperwork. You do not get advice on which state to file in, whether you need one entity or two, whose name appears on what, or how to hold property once the company exists. The operating agreement is generic or missing. That gap is precisely where the failures we catalogued in our post on common DIY anonymous LLC mistakes come from.

The attorney route: $1,000 to $1,500 for a single LLC

Now the attorney route, which is where the numbers jump. Hiring a lawyer to form a single LLC commonly runs $1,000 to $1,500, with the broader market falling somewhere between $500 and $2,500 and climbing past $3,000 for anything with real complexity. Firms that specialize in asset protection and multi entity structuring generally start at $1,500 and run to $3,000 or beyond. For that you typically get one company, articles filed, an operating agreement, and an EIN.

The sticker is only half of it, because most legal work runs on a meter. Attorneys commonly bill $150 to $450 an hour for anything beyond the formation package, and much of the profession bills in tenths of an hour, meaning six minutes is the smallest unit you can be charged. The intake call is billable. The email asking what a clause means is billable. The revision after you read the draft is billable. The question you ask eight months later when you buy a second property is billable. You cannot know the total when you sign.

Consider what a single document costs on its own. An attorney drafted operating agreement, purchased separately, commonly runs somewhere around $500 to $700. That is one document for one company. It is more than double our entire entry tier, and it is well over half of what our two layer package costs, and in both of those you are also getting the filings, the registered agent, and everything else on the list below.

Our entry tier: $299 to form, $149 a year

Our entry tier is $299 to form and $149 a year. That covers one Wyoming LLC, the state filing, a generic operating agreement template, an EIN, dashboard access, and Wyoming registered agent service included in the formation year and every renewal year. There is no attorney time at this tier and we will not pretend otherwise. Against $1,000 to $1,500 for the same single company from a law firm, you are paying roughly a third to a fifth, and against the $100 do it yourself route you are paying for it to be done right.

Our privacy package: $849 for two entities

Our privacy package is $849 to form and $299 a year, and this is where the comparison stops being close. That price includes two LLCs, not one: a Wyoming holding company and a property-state company, structured the way we described in our post on how to hold property in an anonymous Wyoming LLC, plus a custom operating agreement drafted by an attorney rather than pulled from a template, EINs for both entities, removal from more than 30 data broker sites, and registered agent service for both entities in the formation fee and every renewal.

Read that against the attorney number again, because it is the whole argument. Two entities with attorney drafted documentation, for $849. One LLC from a law firm, commonly $1,000 to $1,500, frequently more, with the meter still running afterward. You are getting twice the structure for less than the going rate for half of it, and the second entity is not an upsell. It is the layer that keeps your name off the state filing, which was the entire point of doing this.

Why the second entity is the whole point

The two entity structure is also where the actual protection lives, which matters when you are comparing prices. A single LLC that lists you as its member simply relocates your name from the county recorder to the secretary of state. Two layers end the trail, and they separate the property from the entity you personally own, so a problem attached to one does not automatically reach the other. Paying $1,200 for one company that still names you is worse value than paying $849 for two that do not.

Renewals, where the real cost hides

Renewals deserve the same scrutiny. Ours are $149 a year at the entry tier and $299 at the privacy tier, both including registered agent service. Commodity services commonly bill $250 to $400 a year and often add the agent separately. With an attorney there is frequently no renewal product at all, which sounds cheaper until you need an amendment, a second property added, or a question answered, and every one of those goes back on the clock at hourly rates.

When you should not buy from us

There are situations where you should not buy from us, and we would rather say so on our own pricing page. If you only want a company on file, with no privacy goal and no property to hold, commodity services will do a bare formation for less than our $299, and doing it yourself for $100 is cheaper still. If your situation involves an operating business with employees, partners, outside investors, or unusual tax questions, you want a business attorney and our packages are not a substitute for that.

You should also go straight to a lawyer, today, if you are already in litigation, already have a known creditor, or already have unresolved tax problems. Nothing on this page fixes any of that, and forming an entity in the middle of it can make your position worse rather than better. That is not a sales caveat, it is the honest answer, and the reasons are laid out in our post on what a Wyoming LLC does not protect you from.

What none of these prices include

What none of these prices include is worth stating plainly. State filing fees and annual report taxes go to Wyoming, not to us, and the state sets them. County recording fees for deeds are separate and typically run $12 to $20 for a first page plus a few dollars per page after. Your own taxes are unchanged by any of this. And legal advice about your specific circumstances requires an attorney licensed where you live. We also offer a trust based structure for people whose situation calls for it, and we will break down what that costs in a separate post rather than bury it here.

The whole ladder, in one place

So here is the ladder for forming a Wyoming LLC. $100 if you file it yourself and accept the risk of getting it wrong. $0 to $300 at a commodity service, plus renewals they did not advertise. $1,000 to $1,500 at a law firm for one company, more if anything is complicated, with hourly billing on everything after. $299 with us for one company done properly. $849 with us for two companies, attorney drafted, which is less than most attorneys charge for one. Every renewal printed. No meter, no retainer, no asterisks.

This article is for general educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or tax advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship with apocalypsetitle.com, NewTech Partners LLC, or their staff. Laws vary by jurisdiction, consult a licensed attorney or tax professional for advice specific to your situation.