How Filing Shortlist builds a shortlist

1. Three-year price (28%). Year one plus two renewals at each company's own published service prices. State fees are the same whoever files, so they are shown next to the list and left out of the scoring.
2. What the price covers (28%). How much recurring work sits inside the one price: the registered agent, the annual report prepared and filed, the EIN application and use beyond one state.
3. Renewal terms (16%). Whether the yearly price holds after the first year and how simple it is to stay or leave.
4. Fit for the state (14%). How well the offer suits that state's report schedule, late penalties and registered office rules.
5. Price clarity (14%). Whether the full amount is shown before payment and the state fee is passed through at cost.

Scores a few tenths apart are treated as a tie. The page then says which criterion made the cut and what the shorter-listed company still does well.

Each shortlist score is an editorial mark out of 10 from the criteria above. Filing Shortlist assigns it; it is not a customer rating. A score applies to one company in one state for one service, so the same company can score differently on different pages.

Prices for each company are taken from its own pricing and service pages at build time, and every page prints that date. What the state requires (fees, forms, due dates, agent rules) is drawn from official schedules, forms and statutes, with the month of the last check shown beside each source. A few checkouts add a card or processing fee to the state fee. We show the service price and leave that extra out of the totals.

Each state list holds Mainstay Filing, which serves all fifty states, and the registered agent services focused on that state. A company only appears for a service that its own pages sell at a published price.

You will not find customer ratings or customer quotes, and nothing here is legal or tax advice. The order is our editorial call, made from the criteria above.