Nevada Secretary of State
Nevada Business Entity Search
Last updated . Register data is refreshed nightly.
Check whether a business name is already on file with the Nevada Secretary of State. Free, no account, all entity types.
Nevada Business Entity Search
Search the state's official business records.
Nevada's register is searched inside ORION (orion.nv.gov), the Secretary of State's business portal, which took over from SilverFlume after a planned outage from 9 to 14 September 2026. The search is free, but it now needs an account.
The number you will see quoted for forming here is $75. The number you will actually pay in your first year is $425.
Where the other $350 comes from
Nevada has the widest gap between headline and real cost of any state in this project, and it is not a hidden fee. It is two separate filings that happen to be compulsory:
| Amount | When | |
|---|---|---|
| Articles of Organization | $75.00 | On formation |
| Initial list of managers or managing members | $150.00 | With or just after formation |
| State business license | $200.00 | On formation, then every year |
| First-year total | $425.00 | |
| Annual list | $150.00 | Anniversary month |
| Business license renewal | $200.00 | Anniversary month |
| Every year after | $350.00 |
So Nevada reads as middling to form in and is in fact, at $350 a year, the second most expensive state in this project to keep a company alive, behind only Massachusetts, which charges $500 to form and $500 every year after.
Compare the recurring side properly: Kentucky $15, Michigan $25, Minnesota free, Missouri nothing at all, North Carolina $200, Nevada $350.
Where the $75 figure comes from is the Articles of Organization line on the state's own fee schedule, which is accurate and incomplete. The initial list and the business license sit on different pages. Nothing is being concealed; the figure simply gets quoted alone.
The license is the part people miss
The state business license is not a city permit or an industry license. It is a flat $200 that nearly every Nevada entity owes the Secretary of State annually, independent of revenue, activity or whether the company ever trades.
An LLC formed in Nevada and left dormant still owes $350 a year until it is formally dissolved. A company that stops trading in Minnesota or Missouri stops costing anything; one that stops trading in Nevada does not.
What it costs to move fast
Expedited handling is $125 on top of a formation or list filing, a 24-hour service against Montana's $20, Oklahoma's $25 and Idaho's $40 for comparable turnaround. Nevada also charges $50 for a certificate of good standing.
Standard processing runs 2 to 3 weeks, which is slow for a state that markets itself on being easy to form in.
Getting to the search
Nevada now asks you to create an account before it will run a name search. Before that, nvsos.gov puts a security check in front of the site: an hCaptcha box, over a warning that automated traffic is prohibited.
Registration asks for your name, email, phone number, a business or company name, a full mailing address, a password and two security questions, plus a reCAPTCHA and a terms checkbox. ORION then emails an activation link, and the account works once you click it.
Signed in, Record Search opens the business search, with separate tabs for notaries, marks and registered agents. You can search by entity name, entity number or NV Business ID. Search Type starts on Starts With; switch it to Contains before you decide a name is free. A Contains search for "Acme" returned 414 records, 25 to a page.
Each result shows the name, the NV Business ID, the entity number, the type, the registered agent, a date and a status: Active, Dissolved, Default, Revoked, Permanently Revoked, Merged Dissolved, Withdrawn or Reserved. Name reservations sit in the same list as companies, and a reserved name is not free while the reservation lasts.
Opening a record adds the formation date, the annual renewal due date, any accounting, administrative or compliance hold, whether it is a series LLC, how it is managed, the registered agent, the officers with their addresses, and the filing history.
Who decides
Filings are recorded; acceptance is judged by the Secretary of State on examination, under the Nevada Limited-Liability Companies Act, Nev. Rev. Stat. Chapter 86.
Before you rely on it
Budget $425, not $75. The headline figure is one of three compulsory payments.
Diarise the anniversary month. Both recurring items fall there, together.
Dissolve anything dormant. The $350 does not stop because the company did.
The $425 has not slowed anyone down. 68,640 applications over the 52 weeks to 26 September 2026: 275 a business day, up 7.1%, 30th of 51 by volume.
What the register will not tell you
Nevada has 38,645 live registered marks, and one city owns them:
| word | live marks | times more common than nationally |
|---|---|---|
| vegas | 1,884 | 58x |
| las | 1,122 | 35x |
| casino | 982 | 27x |
| poker | 846 | 40x |
| gold | 734 | 5x |
| club | 729 | 3x |
Las Vegas files 62.5% of Nevada's marks, the most concentrated single city in this entire project. Nothing else comes close: Sioux Falls takes 36.8% of South Dakota's, Atlanta 35.6% of Georgia's, Chicago 34.9% of Illinois's. Reno is a distant second here at 14.5%, Henderson third at 9.1%.
The concentration shows in the words. Vegas appears in 1,884 marks, better than one Nevada mark in twenty, and las in another 1,122: the same phrase counted twice.
Poker at 40x and casino at 27x make Nevada the only state where a single industry's vocabulary reaches the top of the list on its own. Kentucky's bourbon runs at 82x and still sits below kentucky at 177x and louisville at 205x. Here the sector is the register.
The class split says it outright. Nevada's filings cluster in class 41, entertainment, at 28.8% and class 28, games and toys, at 13.2%, a combination no other state produces. Most registers lead with class 35, business services, the way Oklahoma, South Dakota and Maine all do.
Gold at 5x and club at 3x are the only mild words on the list, and they read as gaming-adjacent rather than independent.
The practical reading: anything reaching for Las Vegas or gaming is crowded ground, and a name that avoids both has more room here than the register's size suggests.
What the Nevada portal looks like
Captured from the live register. Personal names and addresses are blacked out; everything else is as the state publishes it.
Nevada Secretary of State business services
Business registrations in Nevada are held by the Nevada 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 | orion.nv.gov |
|---|---|
| Phone | (775) 684-5708 |
| Office hours | 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. |
| LLC filing fee | $75 (plus a $150 initial list and a $200 state business licence, so $425 in the first year and $350 a year after) |
| Processing | 2-3 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 Nevada business entity searches
How do I check if an LLC exists in Nevada?
Search the name on this page or on the state's own portal. What Nevada does by default is worth knowing before you read the result: starts With (seen on screen 14 Sep). 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 Nevada?
Search the name, then open the record rather than reading the results line. You get entity name, entity number and NV Business ID, entity type and status, formation date and the annual renewal due date, accounting, administrative and compliance holds and whether it is a series LLC, and its management…. 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 Nevada business name is approved?
Not on its own. A no-match result means the name is not on the Nevada register today, which is a preliminary answer rather than approval: Nevada Secretary of State decides when it reviews the filing. Worth knowing about Nevada in particular: it now makes you create an account before it will run a search, and the search starts on Starts With, so switch it to Contains before you conclude a name is free. Name reservations appear in the same results marked Reserved, and a reserved name is not free while the reservation lasts.
Can I look up who owns a business in Nevada?
The Nevada 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 Nevada?
Nevada Secretary of State charges $75 (plus a $150 initial list and a $200 state business licence, so $425 in the first year and $350 a year after) to file the Articles of Organization, which is the document that forms the company, and currently takes 2-3 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
- Nevada business entity search, the official register this page queries.
- Filing fees and processing times: Nevada Secretary of State, Limited-Liability Company Fee Schedule (effective 7-1-08), NRS 86, verified 2026-09-10. Current schedules are published by the Nevada 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: Nevada Secretary of State, confirmed against the office’s own contact page.
- Naming and reporting rules: Nevada Secretary of State, Limited-Liability Company Fee Schedule (effective 7-1-08), NRS 86; state business licence fee from the SOS state business licence FAQ.
- Naming statute: Nev. Rev. Stat. Ch. 86, published by the state.
- State seal: public domain image via Wikimedia Commons.