Two companies, the same headline, and a difference that only shows up in month thirteen.
Inc Authority forms your LLC for $0 and includes a year of registered agent service. Bizee forms your LLC for $0 and includes a year of registered agent service. On the page where you decide, these two offers are close to indistinguishable.
The difference is that one of them tells you what year two costs and the other does not. That is the whole comparison, and it matters more than any feature either company lists.
What Both Give You for Nothing
| Inc Authority | Bizee | |
|---|---|---|
| Formation service fee | $0 plus state fee | $0 plus state fee |
| Registered agent, year one | Free, one year | Free with any package, stated explicitly |
| Registered agent, year two | Not published anywhere | $149 per year |
| EIN and tax ID | Included at $0 | Not confirmed on the pages I checked |
| Paid tiers | Two bundles, phone-only, no published prices | $199 and $299, published |
| Also included free | Name check, digital storage, tax consultation, funding analysis | The filing |
Read the third row twice. Everything above it is a tie and everything below it is detail. That row is the article.
The Difference That Decides It
Bizee publishes $149 a year for registered agent service. You can work out your three-year cost before you give anybody your name: nothing in year one, $149 in year two, $149 in year three. Two hundred and ninety-eight dollars, plus your state’s fees, decided in advance.
Inc Authority does not publish a renewal figure. I checked its homepage, its free LLC page, its premium packages page and its current upgrade promotion, and the price of the one service you cannot cancel does not appear on any of them. I wrote that up in more detail in my Inc Authority pricing guide.
So your three-year cost with Bizee is a number. Your three-year cost with Inc Authority is a range that depends on a figure you will learn later, and a registered agent is not a service you can quietly drop when the invoice arrives, because an entity without one falls out of good standing in most states.
A free year, and a published number for the year after
Bizee gives a year of registered agent service free with any formation package, including the $0 one, and publishes $149 for the years after that.
Three Years, One Known and One Not
State filing fees are excluded from everything below because they are identical whichever you choose and they vary enormously by state.
| Path | Year 1 | Years 2 and 3 | Three-year total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bizee, free package | $0 | $149 each | $298 |
| Inc Authority, if the renewal matches the cheapest in the market | $0 | $99 each | $198 |
| Inc Authority, if the renewal matches Bizee | $0 | $149 each | $298 |
| Inc Authority, if the renewal matches the most expensive I found | $0 | $249 each | $498 |
Those anchors are real prices from real vendors, verified at their own pages: $99 is what Harbor Compliance charges on a three-year prepay, and $249 is MyCorporation’s renewal. I am not suggesting Inc Authority charges either. I am showing you the width of the band you are agreeing to when you sign up without the number.
That spread is $300 over three years on an otherwise identical product. It is larger than any formation fee in this category and larger than most of the feature differences people spend hours weighing.
The defence, and it is a fair one, is that you can switch. Changing registered agent is a state filing with a modest fee, and if the renewal quote is poor you move. That works. It also means the free year is a trial rather than a purchase, and you should diary the renewal date the day you form the entity rather than finding out by card statement.
The Upsell Models Are Different Shapes
Both companies make their money after the free filing. How they do it differs in a way worth knowing before you start either checkout.
Bizee sells tiers. There is a $199 package and a $299 package above the free one, both with published prices. I could not retrieve the full inclusions from the pages I checked, so I am not going to tell you what is in them. What I can tell you is the shape: you see the ladder, you see the prices, and you choose on a page rather than on a call.
Inc Authority sells conversations. Its two bundles, STARTER and FAST TRACK, carry no published prices, and the packages page states they can only be ordered through its team of business startup experts, with a phone number and the line about saving hundreds by calling. There is also a live promotion offering 30 percent off upgrades, which is a percentage without a base attached.
Neither model is improper. Phone pricing lets a company vary the number by customer, which cuts in your favour if you negotiate and against you if you do not. Published tiers cut the other way: you cannot negotiate, but you also cannot be quoted worse than the person before you.
If you are the kind of person who enjoys a negotiation, Inc Authority’s model has upside you cannot get from Bizee. If the thought of a sales call makes you want to close the tab, that preference is a legitimate reason to choose and you should act on it.
The Referral Layer
Inc Authority’s free tier comes with more attached than Bizee’s: a tax planning consultation, a business credit and funding analysis, a custom website, and a bank bonus advertised at $300 to $800 through a Bank of America partnership.
Take those at face value and they are worth something. A new business does need a bank account, and a sign-up incentive is real money, though bonuses of that size normally carry conditions on opening deposit, spending or balance, so read them before counting it.
Take them structurally and they are the business model. Free formation plus a set of doors, several of which pay the company when you walk through them. That is how a $0 filing gets funded, and it is worth understanding rather than resenting.
The practical instruction is the same either way: treat every recommendation inside the flow as coming from an interested party. That includes this page, where both links are affiliate links.
Free filing, free EIN, free first year of agent
A reasonable way onto the register when capital is the constraint. Get the year-two renewal figure in writing before you start, because it is the one number the site does not carry.
Where Inc Authority Genuinely Wins
The free tier is fuller. EIN included at $0 is a real inclusion, even though you could get one free yourself. Name check, digital document storage and the consultations are more than Bizee’s free package puts on the table.
Negotiating room. If you will actually pick up the phone and push, phone-only pricing is an opportunity rather than an obstacle. Most people will not, which is presumably why it works.
The bank introduction. Opening a business account is a genuine early hurdle, particularly if your personal banking relationship is thin. Being handed a route with an incentive attached has value.
Where Bizee Genuinely Wins
You can price it. Three hundred dollars over three years, decided today, no call required. For anyone who plans before buying, this is decisive on its own.
The free year is stated in plain language. Bizee’s own page says any formation package includes a year of registered agent service free. No asterisk, no qualifier, nothing to confirm later.
Published tiers. Even if you never buy one, seeing the ladder tells you what the company thinks its services are worth, which is information Inc Authority withholds until you are on a call.
How to Actually Get the Missing Number
Telling you to ask is easy. Here is what has worked when I have chased pricing that a company has chosen not to publish, and none of it requires being difficult.
Ask by email rather than phone. A phone answer is not a record and you will not remember the exact wording in eleven months. Email gives you something to point at if the renewal invoice disagrees.
Ask for a number, not a range. “What will the registered agent service cost me in year two?” is answerable. “What are your registered agent prices?” invites a range you cannot budget against.
Ask what happens if you decline. Confirm you can move the agent to another provider at the end of the free year without penalty, and ask what notice they need. This is the answer that turns the free year from a commitment into a trial.
Ask before you enter your details, not after. Once you are a customer the conversation changes shape, and the leverage you have as a prospect is the only leverage you get.
If you get a clear number inside the market range, take the free year with confidence. If the answer is vague, or arrives as a range, or comes with a reason why it cannot be given until later, treat that as the answer. A company that will not price its own recurring service before you sign up has told you something useful about how the renewal conversation will go.
Which One to Pick
Pick Bizee if you want to know your three-year cost before you commit. This is most people, and it is the recommendation I would give a reader who asked me in one sentence.
Pick Inc Authority if the fuller free tier matters and you will get the renewal in writing first. The extra inclusions are real. The condition is not optional: ask what the agent renews at, get the answer by email, and only then proceed.
Pick Inc Authority if you will negotiate the bundles. Phone-only pricing rewards people who treat it as a negotiation. If that is you, you may do better here than any published tier would allow.
Pick neither if the agent fee is what you are actually optimising. Both of these are free in year one and then charge you, and there are cheaper places to hold an agent long term. Harbor Compliance publishes $99 for the first year renewing at $149, and $297 prepaid for three years holds the rate at $99, which I priced in my Harbor Compliance pricing breakdown. That costs me a commission to say and it is the right answer for someone whose only question is the annual fee.
Pick either and switch later, if you are comfortable with the admin. Take whichever free year you prefer, then move the agent in month eleven to whoever is cheapest. It is a state filing. Plenty of people should do this and almost nobody does.
What Neither One Fixes
Your state’s fees. Identical whichever you choose and mandatory. The recurring state obligation, an annual report fee or a franchise tax depending on where you file, matters more to your three-year cost than the difference between these two companies.
Your EIN, in the sense that it was never worth paying for. Inc Authority including it free is a genuine convenience. It is still worth knowing that a US person can apply directly through the IRS at no cost. Never pay either company for this, and be wary of any comparison that treats a free EIN as a major differentiator.
The annual report. Neither free package includes filing it. Most states require one, missing it eventually costs you good standing, and it is usually a short form you can complete yourself in about fifteen minutes.
Whether to form at all. A free filing is not a reason to file. The Small Business Administration guidance on business structures covers the choice itself. For how the entity is then taxed, start with the IRS guidance on LLCs.
Common Questions
Are both formations really free? Both service fees are genuinely $0. Your state filing fee is separate, mandatory, and charged by every service in this category. Neither is doing anything unusual here.
What does Inc Authority charge in year two? Not published on any page I checked. Ask before you sign up and get it in writing. This is the single most useful thing you can do in this decision.
Is Bizee’s $149 competitive? Mid-range. Northwest publishes $125, Harbor Compliance $99 on a three-year prepay, MyCorporation $249. Bizee sits closer to the cheap end than the expensive one.
Can I take the free year and leave? Yes, with both. Changing registered agent is a state filing. Nothing about accepting a free first year obliges you to buy a second.
Should I buy either company’s paid tier? Only if you can name what it does for you. On Bizee you can at least see the price before deciding. On Inc Authority you will need to ask, and asking before the call is better than asking during it.
Which gets my LLC filed faster? Neither company controls the main variable, which is your state’s processing queue. Ask each for a current estimate for your specific state rather than trusting a general claim.
Related Reading
The full breakdown of what Inc Authority publishes and what it does not is in my Inc Authority pricing guide.
For the comparison most people should run instead of this one, see Bizee against Northwest Registered Agent, which turns on a bundled business address rather than a formation fee.
For the wider field around Bizee, my roundup of the best Bizee alternatives covers who each competing service actually suits.
If you are wondering whether a paid formation fee ever buys anything, CorpNet against Bizee asks that question directly.
For registered agent fees priced across eight services from their own pages, see my Registered Agents Inc pricing guide, which carries the full verified table.
For the mechanics of forming the entity, how to form an LLC walks the sequence in order.
Once it exists, business formation for high-ticket dropshipping covers what a supplier will ask you to produce before they approve a dealer account.
Both are free today. Only one tells you about next year
If you want your three-year cost settled before you hand over your details, that is the one to take. If you take the other, get the renewal by email first.
Checked at each company’s own pages in September 2026. Inc Authority’s $0 filing, $0 EIN and one free year of registered agent, its list of included services, its two phone-only bundles, its 30 percent upgrade promotion and its advertised $300 to $800 bank bonus are from its homepage, free LLC page, premium packages page and upgrade promotion page. No registered agent renewal price appears on any of those pages. Bizee’s $0, $199 and $299 formation packages are from its homepage; its statement that any formation package includes one year of registered agent service free is quoted from its LLC page; its $149 standalone agent rate is from its registered agent page. Bizee’s higher-tier inclusions were not retrievable from the pages I checked and are deliberately not characterised here, and I could not confirm Bizee’s position on EIN filing either way. The $99 and $249 anchors used in the three-year table are Harbor Compliance’s three-year prepay rate and MyCorporation’s renewal rate respectively, both from those companies’ own pages, and are used only to show the width of the unknown band rather than to suggest what Inc Authority charges. State filing fees are excluded from every figure and vary by state. Disclosure: the Inc Authority, Bizee and Harbor Compliance links on this page are affiliate links, so this page earns a commission whichever you choose. Confirm all current pricing directly before you buy.
Trevor Fenner is an ecommerce entrepreneur and the founder of Ecommerce Paradise, a platform focused on helping entrepreneurs build and scale profitable high-ticket ecommerce and dropshipping businesses. With over a decade of hands-on experience, Trevor specializes in high-ticket dropshipping strategy, niche and product selection, supplier recruiting and onboarding, Google & Bing Shopping ads, ecommerce SEO, and systems-driven automation and scaling. Through Ecommerce Paradise, he provides free education via in-depth guides like How to Start High-Ticket Dropshipping, advanced training through the High-Ticket Dropshipping Masterclass, and fully done-for-you turnkey ecommerce services for entrepreneurs who want a faster, more hands-off path to growth. Trevor is known for emphasizing sustainable, real-world ecommerce models over hype-driven tactics, helping store owners build scalable, sellable, and location-independent brands.
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