Mississippi Secretary of State
Mississippi Business Entity Search
Last updated . Register data is refreshed nightly.
Check whether a business name is already on file with the Mississippi Secretary of State. Free, no account, all entity types.
Mississippi Business Entity Search
Search the state's official business records.
Mississippi's register is at corp.sos.ms.gov, run by the Secretary of State's Business Services Division. Free, no account.
It is also not a search. That is the first thing to understand about it, and everything else follows from it.
There is no search box
Open the page and you do not get a field to type into. You get the entire Mississippi register as a grid: every registered business in the state, sorted by name, twenty rows to a page.
You narrow it by clicking the funnel icon on a column heading and setting a filter. Business name, business ID, city, county, postal code, NAICS code, status, formation date, whether the company is domestic or foreign: each column filters independently, and you can stack them.
This is closer to a spreadsheet than to a search engine, and if you are expecting a search box you will conclude the site is broken. It isn't.
The consequence: your match is only as wide as your filter
In a state with a search box you get a match mode, and the risk is that it defaults to something too narrow. Here the risk is different: you get exactly what you asked for and nothing else.
Filter the name column for "Acme" and you see names containing Acme. Nothing suggests near misses, sound-alikes, or the same name with different spacing. The grid will not help you the way a search would.
So filter wide, then read. Use the fewest distinctive letters you can, take the longer list, and go through it.
What the grid gives you that other states bury
The unusual thing about Mississippi is that the columns carry information most states hide inside a record you have to open one at a time:
- Other Names Used, showing previous legal names against the current one
- NAICS codes, up to three per business
- County, address, city and postal code
- Formation date
- Status and whether the entity is domestic or foreign
There is no record page. Nothing in the grid is clickable through to an entity, because everything the service publishes is already in the row. For checking a name that is genuinely faster than a portal that makes you open each result.
It is worth being clear about what that costs you, though. This is all Mississippi puts online. If you need more than the grid holds (the filed documents, the detail behind a status), that means telephoning Business Services on (601) 359-1633. Most states let you read a full record at two in the morning. Mississippi does not.
The Other Names column is the one to notice, and it does more than list them: it says what kind of name each one is. Acme Brick Tile & Stone is marked DBA (Fictitious Name); ACME COMPANY INC. is marked (Previous Legal). A trading name and an abandoned legal name are different problems, and almost no other register tells them apart.
In most states a company that changed its name is invisible unless you search deliberately for old names. Here it sits in a column next to the current one, labeled.
The status tells you why
Most registers give you a word. Mississippi gives you the word and the cause. Alongside Good Standing, Dissolved, InActive and Revoked you will see Intent To Dissolve (AR) and Intent To Dissolve (Tax): a company the state is moving to dissolve, and whether it is over a missed annual report or over tax.
That matters when you are checking a name. A company sitting at Intent To Dissolve still holds its name today, but it is further down the road than one merely in Good Standing with an overdue report.
You can take the whole thing
Mississippi will export up to 300,000 rows to Excel, and says so on the page. Very few states offer that at all, and none of the others we have looked at offer it from the search screen.
Past that ceiling the page gives you a telephone number: "For a full export, please contact Business Services at: (601)-359-1633."
If a name really matters, this is the state where you can genuinely check it against the whole register rather than against the first page of results.
What the register will not tell you
Trademarks. The entity grid covers registered businesses. Mississippi has 5,719 live registered trademarks, and the words concentrated in them are narrow and specific:
| word | live marks | times more common than nationally |
|---|---|---|
| mossy | 225 | 642x |
| mississippi | 348 | 498x |
| oak | 237 | 56x |
| southern | 260 | 35x |
Those first three are worth pausing on. Mossy at 642x and oak at 56x is the steepest concentration of any state we have measured, Hawaii included, and the two words plainly belong to the same cluster of marks. If you are naming a Mississippi business and either word is on your list, assume the ground is taken and check the federal register before you go further.
After those the list flattens out fast: life, you, home and health all sit at two or three times the national rate, which is to say barely above normal. Mississippi's naming landscape is a handful of very crowded words and then open country.
Unlike most states, the filing itself is not concentrated in one city. Jackson accounts for only 12% of Mississippi marks, against Honolulu's 45% of Hawaii's.
Other agencies' consent. Some words need clearance before the Secretary of State will accept a name. Anything containing "insurance" or "assurance" normally needs the Mississippi Insurance Department to sign off first, and a name implying legal services runs into Mississippi Bar restrictions. Neither appears in the entity grid.
The grid does not decide
A filter that returns nothing has told you one thing only: nothing matching those characters is currently on file.
Acceptance is a separate judgment, made under Miss. Code Title 79, Chapter 29 when the filing is examined. The spreadsheet on your screen has no view on it, and because the grid does no fuzzy matching for you, an empty result here is weaker evidence than an empty result in a state whose search suggests near misses.
Before you rely on it
Filter wide and read the list. The grid does no fuzzy matching for you.
Read the Other Names column, not just the name column. A name in use as a previous legal name is still spoken for.
Consider exporting if the name matters. You can have all 300,000 rows.
Check the federal trademark register if your name uses mossy, oak, mississippi or southern.
Mississippi filing facts
| Filing | Fee |
|---|---|
| Certificate of Formation of MS LLC | $50.00 |
| Application for Name Reservation | $25.00 |
| Transfer of Name Reservation | $25.00 |
Mississippi charges $50 to form, which puts it among the cheapest states, with expedited handling at $50 and routine processing of three to five business days.
Annual reports are due by 15 April and can be filed any time from 1 January. We are not quoting a fee for that filing: the state's own fee schedule was ambiguous on it when we checked, and we would rather leave it out than print a number we are not certain of. Take it from the Secretary of State directly.
Mississippi ranks 32nd of 51 for new business formation, with 63,330 applications in the 52 weeks to 26 September 2026, about 253 a business day.
Growth is the thing to notice: up 29.8% year on year, which is the fastest rise of any state we have measured. Whatever the grid shows you today, this is a register filling up quickly.
What the Mississippi portal looks like
Captured from the live register. Personal names and addresses are blacked out; everything else is as the state publishes it.
Mississippi Secretary of State business services
Business registrations in Mississippi are held by the Mississippi 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 | corp.sos.ms.gov/corpreporting/Corp/BusinessSearch3 |
|---|---|
| Phone | (601) 359-1633 |
| Address | 660 North Street, Jackson, MS 39201 |
| LLC filing fee | $50 |
| 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 Mississippi business entity searches
How do I check if an LLC exists in Mississippi?
Search the name on this page or on the state's own portal. What Mississippi does by default is worth knowing before you read the result: no match mode at all, only column filters on the grid. 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 Mississippi?
Search the name, then open the record rather than reading the results line. You get nothing separate; everything Mississippi publishes is in the grid itself. 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 Mississippi business name is approved?
Not on its own. A no-match result means the name is not on the Mississippi register today, which is a preliminary answer rather than approval: Mississippi Secretary of State decides when it reviews the filing. Worth knowing about Mississippi in particular: because you are filtering rather than searching, the match is only as wide as the filter you set. Mississippi will also export up to 300,000 rows to Excel, so checking a name across the whole register is genuinely practical here.
Can I look up who owns a business in Mississippi?
Mississippi's grid carries no officer or member column, and there is no record page behind it to open.
How much does it cost to register a business name in Mississippi?
Mississippi Secretary of State charges $50 to file the Certificate of Formation of MS LLC, 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
- Mississippi business entity search, the official register this page queries.
- Filing fees and processing times: Mississippi Secretary of State, Services & Fees Schedule (revised October 2024), verified 2026-09-10. Current schedules are published by the Mississippi 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: Mississippi Secretary of State, confirmed against the office’s own contact page.
- Naming and reporting rules: Mississippi Secretary of State, Services & Fees Schedule (revised October 2024).
- Naming statute: Miss. Code 79-29-109, full text via Justia.
- State seal: public domain image via Wikimedia Commons.