Alabama Secretary of State
Alabama Business Entity Search
Last updated . Register data is refreshed nightly.
Check whether a business name is already on file with the Alabama Secretary of State. Free, no account, all entity types.
Alabama Business Entity Search
Search the state's official business records.
Alabama's register is at arc-sos.state.al.us, run by the Secretary of State. Free, no account.
It is the only state that files business records by county.
Place of formation is a county, not a state
Open an Alabama record and the place of formation reads Jefferson County, not Alabama.
Every other register in this project treats formation as a state-level fact. Alabama does not: companies are filed with the probate judge of a county, and the register keeps that. So the filter beside the search is place of formation and its values are Alabama's 67 counties.
For anyone checking a name that mostly does not matter. For anyone trying to understand where a company actually sits, it is more precise than any other state will give you.
Old names are in the list, not hidden
The status filter does not just cover live and dead companies. It includes name reservations and previous names as their own values.
So a search can return a reserved name nobody has built a company around yet, and a name a company used to hold, both flagged for what they are, both still claims on the name.
Maryland does something similar by giving old names their own rows. Alabama does it through the status vocabulary.
All three filters (entity type, status and place of formation) default to All Records, which is the right way round and rarer than it should be.
It tells you how current it is
Printed on the search page. On 10 September it had completed filings through 8 September, a two-day lag.
Tennessee, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Mexico all publish the same figure; Alabama's is among the tightest. The last couple of days of new companies will not be there yet, and the page tells you exactly how much is missing rather than leaving you to guess.
Reading a result
The entity ID, the entity name, the city, the entity type and the status.
The record adds the entity ID number, entity type, principal address, principal mailing address, status, the county of formation and the formation date.
Who decides
Filings are recorded; acceptance is judged on examination under the Alabama Limited Liability Company Law of 2014, Ala. Code Title 10A, Chapter 5A.
Alabama cites its fee authority precisely, Ala. Code 10A-1-4.31, against the schedule itself, which makes the prices checkable against the law that sets them.
Before you rely on it
Leave all three filters on All Records. They arrive correct.
Read the status values properly. A name reservation or a previous name is still a name in use.
Allow two days before concluding a very recent company is absent.
Alabama filing facts
| Filing | Fee |
|---|---|
| Certificate of Formation | $200.00 |
| Application for Registration (foreign LLC) | $150.00 |
| Foreign late penalty | $150.00 per year |
| Name reservation: new, duplicate, correction, renewal or transfer | $25.00 |
| Certificate of existence | $25.00 |
At $200 to form, Alabama is among the dearer states: four times Kentucky's $40, five times Montana's $35, though well below Massachusetts's $500.
The foreign late penalty of $150 per year is the one to note. An out-of-state company that traded in Alabama without registering does not pay a flat fine; it pays $150 for every year it was late. That compounds quietly and is a bigger number than the registration itself after two years.
We are not quoting an online convenience fee or a name-reservation-before- formation requirement. A figure of $208 online (an $8 convenience fee) and a claim that reservation is mandatory both circulate, and neither is on the state's fee schedule.
All of that is filed county by county, and it adds up: 78,390 applications over the 52 weeks to 26 September 2026, or 314 a business day spread across 67 probate offices. up 21.5%, 28th of 51 by volume.
What the register will not tell you
Alabama has 15,662 live registered marks, and a bank sits at the top of them:
| word | live marks | times more common than nationally |
|---|---|---|
| regions | 245 | 224x |
| alabama | 527 | 199x |
| southern | 477 | 21x |
| living | 276 | 5x |
| red | 224 | 4x |
| power | 204 | 2x |
Regions at 224 times the national rate is Regions Bank, headquartered in Birmingham, and Birmingham files 28.1% of the state's marks. It is the same one-company pattern as Arkansas's walmart, Kansas's coleman and Kentucky's valvoline, and it is now frequent enough across this project to be a rule rather than a curiosity: in a register under about 20,000 marks, one local corporation will usually own the most contested word.
Southern at 21x is the regional identifier, running harder here than in North Carolina (6x) or South Carolina (10x).
Below those three, nothing. Living, red and power sit at two to five times normal, which is ordinary.
What the Alabama portal looks like
Captured from the live register. Personal names and addresses are blacked out; everything else is as the state publishes it.
Alabama Secretary of State business services
Business registrations in Alabama are held by the Alabama Secretary of State, which maintains the public register this page searches, accepts new filings, and issues the certificates a bank or a counterparty may ask you for. Contact them directly for anything that has to be official.
| Business entity search | arc-sos.state.al.us/cgi/corpname.mbr/input |
|---|---|
| Phone | (334) 242-5324 |
| Address | 770 Washington Avenue, Suite 580, Montgomery, AL 36104 |
| Office hours | 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. |
| LLC filing fee | $200 |
| Processing | 3-5 business days |
The office handles registration, not disputes. If a name is already taken, they will tell you it is unavailable but not who holds it beyond what the public record shows, and they will not advise on whether your name infringes someone’s mark.
Common questions about Alabama business entity searches
How do I check if an LLC exists in Alabama?
Search the name on this page or on the state's own portal. What Alabama does by default is worth knowing before you read the result: no match toggle; all three filters default to All Records. A match means the entity is on file, and its status line tells you whether it is still active.
How do I verify a company is registered in Alabama?
Search the name, then open the record rather than reading the results line. You get entity ID number, entity type, principal address, principal mailing address and status. The status on the record is the one to trust: a dissolved company still appears in a search and still holds its name.
Does a clear search mean my Alabama business name is approved?
Not on its own. A no-match result means the name is not on the Alabama register today, which is a preliminary answer rather than approval: Alabama Secretary of State decides when it reviews the filing. Worth knowing about Alabama in particular: it prints how current it is on the search page. On 10 September it had completed filings through 8 September, so the last couple of days of new companies are not in there yet.
Can I look up who owns a business in Alabama?
The Alabama register shows the registered agent and, depending on the filing type, officers or organizers. It does not list members or shareholders for every entity, so the register identifies who accepts legal service rather than who owns the company.
How much does it cost to register a business name in Alabama?
Alabama Secretary of State charges $200 to file the Certificate of Formation, which is the document that forms the company, and currently takes 3-5 business days to process. Reserving a name beforehand is a separate and smaller fee. Confirm the figure with the state before you file: schedules move.
Sources
- Alabama business entity search, the official register this page queries.
- Filing fees and processing times: Alabama Secretary of State Fee Schedule, Ala. Code 10A-1-4.31, verified 2026-09-10. Current schedules are published by the Alabama Secretary of State.
- Formation activity: Census Bureau Business Formation Statistics, retrieved via FRED at the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis.
- Federal trademark data: United States Patent and Trademark Office, 3,374,058 live registrations cross-referenced against the state registers. Live excludes both abandoned applications and cancelled registrations.
- Office contact details: Alabama Secretary of State, confirmed against the office’s own contact page.
- Naming and reporting rules: Alabama Secretary of State Fee Schedule (PDF), fees cited to Ala. Code 10A-1-4.31.
- Naming statute: Ala. Code 10A-1-5.06, published by the state.
- State seal: public domain image via Wikimedia Commons.