Indiana Secretary of State
Indiana Business Entity Search
Last updated . Register data is refreshed nightly.
Check whether a business name is already on file with the Indiana Secretary of State. Free, no account, all entity types.
Indiana Business Entity Search
Search the state's official business records.
Indiana's register is INBiz, at bsd.sos.in.gov, run by the Secretary of State. Free, no account, one robot check on the form.
It is one of the few states that matches broadly out of the box.
Contains is already on
The match is set to Contains, with Starts With and Exact Match available if you want to narrow.
That is the thorough default and rarer than it should be: Michigan, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania all start narrow. Indiana does not need fixing before you use it.
The robot check sits on the form itself rather than appearing after you submit, so it has to be cleared before the search runs.
An advanced section adds entity type, status and name type.
The Name Type column
Every result is labeled: LEGAL NAME, ASSUMED BUSINESS NAME, FORMER NAME or FOREIGN LEGAL NAME.
That tells you what kind of thing you have hit before you open anything. A trading name, an abandoned name and the real one are different problems when you are checking availability, and Indiana distinguishes all four in the grid.
It also puts the principal office address and the registered agent in the results row, so (like Washington, Georgia and New Hampshire) you can scan a page without clicking through.
A search for Acme returns 425 records across 17 pages at 25 a page.
You can search for the person who set it up
Indiana lets you search by the incorporator or a governing person, so you can find what somebody has established as well as what a company is called.
Illinois offers four roles, Oregon and Arizona offer two. Indiana's incorporator search is the unusual one: it finds the person who filed the paperwork, who is often not an officer at all.
The record, and a table that counts wrong
Open an entity and Business Details gives the name, business ID, entity type, status, creation date, principal office address, jurisdiction, and a Business Entity Report Due Date, so you can see when the next filing falls rather than only when the last one did.
Then Governing Person Information, naming the president, secretary and CEO with addresses.
That table repeats. One record lists President twice (once as Scott Lee, once as Scott E Lee), then the same person again as Secretary, again as CEO, and again as the registered agent. Four rows, one person.
Read it as roles held, not as people counted.
Four buttons sit at the foot: Filing History, Name History, Assumed Name History and Certified Copies Request.
Who decides
Filings are recorded; acceptance is judged by the Secretary of State on examination, under the Indiana Business Flexibility Act, Ind. Code Title 23, Article 18.
Before you rely on it
Read the Name Type column before concluding what you have found.
Do not count the governing person rows as people.
Use the incorporator search if your question is about who set something up.
Indiana filing facts
| Filing | Fee | Form |
|---|---|---|
| Articles of Organization | $100.00 | State Form 49459 |
| Business entity report, every two years | $50.00 | State Form 48725 |
Indiana calls it a business entity report, not an annual report, and it is biennial, due in the anniversary month of the business forming, every other year. So the recurring cost is $25 a year.
One thing worth flagging: third-party sources report $90 on paper and $85 online for formation. The state's own form, revised January 2026, prints $100. We have gone with the state.
That is a small gap and a useful illustration: the secondary figures are not absurd, they are just out of date, and there is no way to tell from the outside which is current except by reading the form.
At $100 and $25 a year Indiana sits comfortably mid-table.
Whichever formation figure is right, the volume behind it is not in doubt: 100,440 applications over the 52 weeks to 26 September 2026, 402 a business day, up 14.2%, 20th of 51 by volume.
What the register will not tell you
Indiana has 36,916 live registered marks, and the list is unusually plain:
| word | live marks | times more common than nationally |
|---|---|---|
| indiana | 703 | 92x |
| flex | 257 | 4x |
| pro | 546 | 2x |
| university | 275 | 2x |
| plus | 343 | 2x |
| big | 330 | 2x |
Only the state's own name is contested. Everything below it sits at two to four times normal. Pro, plus, big and university are the generic words that turn up mildly over-represented in every state in the country.
There is no city name on the list at all, which is rare: Indianapolis files 29.3% of Indiana's marks and yet the word itself does not crack the top six. Compare Illinois, where Chicago appears in 2,783 marks, or Georgia, where Atlanta matches the state name outright.
No industry cluster either: nothing like Kentucky's bourbon, Tennessee's music or Pennsylvania's health.
The practical reading: if your name avoids the word Indiana, the state register is unlikely to be what stops you. The federal one still might.
What the Indiana portal looks like
Captured from the live register. Personal names and addresses are blacked out; everything else is as the state publishes it.
Indiana Secretary of State business services
Business registrations in Indiana are held by the Indiana 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 | bsd.sos.in.gov/publicbusinesssearch |
|---|---|
| Phone | (317) 234-9768 |
| Address | Business Services Division, 302 W. Washington Street, Room E018, Indianapolis, IN 46204 |
| Office hours | 8:00 a.m.-4:30 p.m. |
| LLC filing fee | $100 |
| Processing | 7-10 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 Indiana business entity searches
How do I check if an LLC exists in Indiana?
Search the name on this page or on the state's own portal. What Indiana does by default is worth knowing before you read the result: contains. 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 Indiana?
Search the name, then open the record rather than reading the results line. Business Details: name, business ID, entity type, status, creation date, inactive date where one applies, principal office address, expiration date, jurisdiction of formation, and a Business Entity Report Due Date giving the…. 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 Indiana business name is approved?
Not on its own. A no-match result means the name is not on the Indiana register today, which is a preliminary answer rather than approval: Indiana Secretary of State decides when it reviews the filing. Worth knowing about Indiana in particular: it is one of the few that matches on Contains by default, so the search is thorough from the start. The robot check sits on the form, so it has to be cleared before every search rather than once per visit.
Can I look up who owns a business in Indiana?
Indiana names the governing persons (president, secretary, CEO) with addresses, in a table on the record. It also names the registered agent separately, though in small companies these are often the same person.
How much does it cost to register a business name in Indiana?
Indiana Secretary of State charges $100 to file the Articles of Organization, which is the document that forms the company, and currently takes 7-10 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
- Indiana business entity search, the official register this page queries.
- Filing fees and processing times: Indiana Articles of Organization, State Form 49459 (R12 / 01-26), verified 2026-09-10. Current schedules are published by the Indiana 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: Indiana Secretary of State, confirmed against the office’s own contact page.
- Naming statute: Ind. Code 23-0.5-3-2, full text via Justia.
- State seal: public domain image via Wikimedia Commons.