Hi everyone, I built this. I'm a non-US founder who runs a US LLC, and I kept hitting the same advice everywhere: "just form in Wyoming (or Delaware) to save money." When I actually ran the numbers it was backwards for most people, so I put the real cost of all 50 states and DC into one searchable table.
TLDR;If you form in Delaware or Wyoming but run the business from your home state, you still have to register at home as a foreign LLC. So you pay two states, not one. For an LLC, defaulting to Delaware adds about $2,235 over five years on top of what you would pay anyway and may not be worth it.
Delaware and Wyoming genuinely make sense in specific cases: raising venture capital, real privacy needs, or having no fixed home state (the one situation where "form in Wyoming" is usually right). The tool I built is completely free, no signup needed as well, I really have tried to be as objective and honest about finding the "cheapest state."
Obviously that are DOZENS if not hundreds of other considerations when finding a jurisdiction, but if it's a relatively straightforward business, this may help
incorpassist•1h ago
TLDR;If you form in Delaware or Wyoming but run the business from your home state, you still have to register at home as a foreign LLC. So you pay two states, not one. For an LLC, defaulting to Delaware adds about $2,235 over five years on top of what you would pay anyway and may not be worth it.
Delaware and Wyoming genuinely make sense in specific cases: raising venture capital, real privacy needs, or having no fixed home state (the one situation where "form in Wyoming" is usually right). The tool I built is completely free, no signup needed as well, I really have tried to be as objective and honest about finding the "cheapest state."
Obviously that are DOZENS if not hundreds of other considerations when finding a jurisdiction, but if it's a relatively straightforward business, this may help