Montana Secretary of State
Montana Business Entity Search
Last updated . Register data is refreshed nightly.
Check whether a business name is already on file with the Montana Secretary of State. Free, no account, all entity types.
Montana Business Entity Search
Search the state's official business records.
Montana's register is at biz.sosmt.gov, free and without an account. It offers a match mode no other state has, and it is the cheapest place in the country to start and keep an LLC.
The third match mode nobody else has
Most registers give you two ways to match: starts-with and contains. Montana gives you three, and the extra one is the useful one.
- Starts with: the default, and too narrow
- Contains: matches your letters anywhere, including inside other words
- Word Contains: matches your word anywhere, as a word
That third option is the one to use. Searching Acme on Contains returns ACMECHANICAL and anything else where the letters happen to fall together. Word Contains finds companies with Acme in the name and leaves the fragments out.
Nowhere else offers it. In states that only do Contains (Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota), you get the fragments and have to read past them.
It tells you the results are limited
A warning sits at the top: results are limited, and you should use Advanced to narrow them.
That is more honest than most and slightly the wrong advice for your purpose. If you are checking whether a name is free you want more results, not fewer. So widen the match first (Word Contains) and only then narrow by entity type or status if the list is unmanageable.
Previously Known As
Results carry the name with its filing number and entity type, the status, the registration date, and the registered agent. Montana also prints Previously Known As against companies that have changed name.
That puts it with Tennessee, South Carolina and New Hampshire in the group that warns you when your hit is on an abandoned name, and against Hawaii, which matches on dropped names and says nothing.
The record
The filing number, entity type and sub-type, status, whether it is member managed or manager managed, previous entity names, where it was formed, and the principal address.
Notaries, liens, trademarks and CRA filings each have their own tab beside the business search.
Who decides
Word Contains will find you everything the register holds. Whether the state accepts your filing is judged separately, under the Montana Limited Liability Company Act, Mont. Code Ann. Title 35, Chapter 8.
Before you rely on it
Use Word Contains. It is the best match mode any state offers and it is not the default.
Ignore the advice to narrow until you have widened first.
Read Previously Known As before concluding a name is in use by the company you are looking at.
Montana filing facts
| Filing | Fee |
|---|---|
| Articles of Organization | $35.00 |
| Each series member named | +$50.00 |
| Annual report, filed before 15 April | no charge |
| Annual report, filed after 15 April | $35.00 |
| Name reservation | $10.00 |
| Expedited, 24 hour | $20.00 |
| Expedited, one hour | $100.00 |
$35 to form, and the annual report is free if you file it on time.
That makes Montana the cheapest state we have verified on both counts. Set it against the range: Iowa and Arizona charge $50 to form, Texas $300, Alaska $250. On the recurring side Montana charges nothing where Delaware and Rhode Island each take $400 a year.
The $35 is not a discount for being late. It is a penalty. File before 15 April and you pay nothing at all; miss it and the same report costs the same as forming the company did.
Two things to watch. Each named series member adds $50, so a series structure gets expensive quickly. Wyoming charges $10 per series, Illinois $400 flat for the whole thing. And one-hour expediting costs $100, nearly three times the formation fee, which tells you what Montana thinks your urgency is worth.
For the cheapest state in the country the register is busier than you would guess: 32,830 applications in the 52 weeks to 26 September 2026, 131 a business day, up 12.7%. 40th of 51.
What the register will not tell you
Montana has 5,940 live registered marks, and the state's own name dominates them:
| word | live marks | times more common than nationally |
|---|---|---|
| montana | 672 | 471x |
| edible | 172 | 169x |
| sky | 153 | 23x |
| mountain | 203 | 18x |
| big | 215 | 9x |
| brewing | 95 | 6x |
Montana at 471 times the national rate puts 672 marks in a register of under six thousand, more than one in nine.
Big and sky appearing separately at 9x and 23x is Big Sky arriving as two words, the same way Rhode Island's name splits into rhode and island. Between them and mountain at 18x, Montana's trademark register describes Montana.
Edible at 169x is the odd one, and Montana shares it with New Mexico, where it runs at 349x. Two states with legal cannabis markets and a word that means something specific in them. We are not going further than the observation.
Bozeman files 22.1% of Montana's marks, Missoula 16.2%, Billings 12.0%: unusually even for a small state, and notable for Bozeman leading rather than the largest city.
What the Montana portal looks like
Captured from the live register. Personal names and addresses are blacked out; everything else is as the state publishes it.
Montana Secretary of State business services
Business registrations in Montana are held by the Montana 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 | biz.sosmt.gov/search/business |
|---|---|
| Phone | (406) 444-3665 |
| Address | State Capitol, Room 260, 1301 6th Avenue, Helena, MT 59620 |
| LLC filing fee | $35 |
| Processing | 2 weeks |
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 Montana business entity searches
How do I check if an LLC exists in Montana?
Search the name on this page or on the state's own portal. What Montana does by default is worth knowing before you read the result: starts with. 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 Montana?
Search the name, then open the record rather than reading the results line. You get the filing number, entity type and sub-type, its status, whether it is member managed or manager managed and previous entity names. 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 Montana business name is approved?
Not on its own. A no-match result means the name is not on the Montana register today, which is a preliminary answer rather than approval: Montana Secretary of State decides when it reviews the filing. Worth knowing about Montana in particular: it warns at the top that results are limited and tells you to use Advanced to narrow them. The match starts on Starts with, so widen it before you narrow anything else.
Can I look up who owns a business in Montana?
The Montana 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 Montana?
Montana Secretary of State charges $35 to file the Articles of Organization, which is the document that forms the company, and currently takes 2 weeks to process. Reserving a name beforehand is a separate and smaller fee. Confirm the figure with the state before you file: schedules move.
Sources
- Montana business entity search, the official register this page queries.
- Filing fees and processing times: Montana Secretary of State, business fee schedule, verified 2026-09-10. Current schedules are published by the Montana 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: Montana Secretary of State, confirmed against the office’s own contact page.
- Naming and reporting rules: Montana Secretary of State, business fee schedule.
- Naming statute: Mont. Code Ann. 35-8-103, published by the state.
- State seal: public domain image via Wikimedia Commons.