New Hampshire Secretary of State
New Hampshire Business Entity Search
Last updated . Register data is refreshed nightly.
Check whether a business name is already on file with the New Hampshire Secretary of State. Free, no account, all entity types.
New Hampshire Business Entity Search
Search the state's official business records.
New Hampshire's register is at quickstart.sos.nh.gov, free and without an account. It holds the most detailed company records of any state we have looked at, behind the narrowest default setting.
The one setting to change before you search
The match mode is set to Starts With, and it is the narrow one.
Four modes sit across the top (Starts With, Exact Match, Contains, All Words), and the default will miss every company that has your word in the middle of its name. If you are checking whether a name is taken, switch to Contains before you do anything else.
Two tick boxes offer similar-sounding matching, one for business names and a separate one for registered agent names. Both are worth using on a name that matters.
Why a search for Acme returns ACM Equipment
Because New Hampshire matches with the spacing taken out. ACM EQUIPMENT reads as ACMEQUIPMENT, which does start with Acme.
That looks like the search misfiring and it is the opposite: it is the state showing you how it reads names. Spacing is not a difference. Neither is punctuation in Ohio, or an ampersand in South Carolina. If a result looks like your name said out loud, treat it as a conflict whatever the typography.
Three versions of a name, side by side
This is the thing that makes New Hampshire unusual, and it solves a problem other states leave you to discover.
The results grid carries three name columns: the current Business Name, the Previous Name, and the Homestate Name, meaning what a foreign company is called in the state it was actually formed in, which is often not what it is called here.
Compare Hawaii, where a search matches names companies have dropped and the results screen never says so. You open a record expecting one company and find another. New Hampshire puts the answer in the row: if your hit is on an old name, the Previous Name column tells you before you click.
Trade names come back in the same result set, marked Trade Name in the type column with N/A for the agent.
Read the status as a group, not as a string
The wording is not consistent, and it is worth knowing before you try to match on it. The same page of results carries Administratively Dissolved and Admin Dissolution (two spellings of the same thing) alongside Dissolved, Expired, Admin. Suspension, Good Standing and Active.
Read them as a family. A company in any of them still holds its name.
The fullest record of any state
Open a record and New Hampshire gives you more than anywhere else we have looked.
Business Details carries the name, ID, type and status, the management style (member managed or manager managed, which few states publish at all), creation date, date of formation in the home jurisdiction, the name used in that jurisdiction, principal and mailing addresses, duration, fiscal year end, and the last annual report year against the next report year, so you can see at a glance whether a company is behind. It also prints the business email address and telephone number.
Principal Purpose gives a NAICS code and a plain-English description of what the business actually does.
Principals Information names every manager and member with an address.
Then Trademark Information, as a section of the entity record. In most states the mark register is a separate search you have to know exists. Here it is attached to the company.
The buttons are at the very bottom
Everything past Business Details is below the fold, and the controls that matter are at the foot of the page: Filing History, Address History, View All Other Addresses, Name History, Shares, and Businesses Linked to Registered Agent.
That last one is a reverse lookup (every company using the same agent), run straight from the record. Very few states have anything like it. If you are checking who you are about to do business with, or working out whether an agent is a one-man band or a commercial service, it is the most useful button on the page.
Who decides
Registration is a decision the Department of State makes when it examines the filing, under the New Hampshire Limited Liability Company Act, RSA Chapter 304-C. A clear search is where you start.
New Hampshire is unusual in setting its fees in the statute itself rather than on a schedule page, so the law is also where the prices live: RSA 304-C:191.
Before you rely on it
Change Starts With to Contains. It is the single biggest cause of a false clear here.
Read the Previous Name and Homestate Name columns, not just the first one.
Scroll to the bottom of a record. The principals, the trademarks and the agent reverse-lookup are all below the fold.
Treat the status wording loosely. Two spellings, one meaning.
New Hampshire filing facts
| Filing | Fee | Set by |
|---|---|---|
| Certificate of Formation | $100.00 | RSA 304-C:191 II(c) |
| Annual Report | $100.00 | RSA 304-C:191 II(f) |
| Annual Report, late | +$50.00 | after 1 April |
| Name Reservation | $15.00 | RSA 304-C:191 II(a) |
At $100 to form and $100 a year New Hampshire is mid-table to start in and on the expensive side to stay in: Nebraska files once every two years at $30, Hawaii charges $15 annually. The $15 name reservation is among the cheapest in the country, and the same fee covers transferring the reservation to somebody else.
Against those figures: 20,610 new applications in the 52 weeks to 26 September 2026, up 25.3%, which comes to 82 a business day and ranks the state 42nd of 51.
What the search will not tell you
New Hampshire holds 10,047 live registered trademarks, and the pattern in them is unusually flat:
| word | live marks | times more common than nationally |
|---|---|---|
| hampshire | 149 | 298x |
| visual | 184 | 52x |
| white | 173 | 9x |
| mountain | 152 | 8x |
| free | 186 | 8x |
| care | 170 | 3x |
| pro | 153 | 3x |
Only the state's own name is heavily contested. After that the list falls away fast, and by care and pro you are at three times normal, which is ordinary. Compare Hawaii, where seven words run at 36 to 438 times the national rate, or Nebraska, where three sit near 300x.
Visual at 52x is the odd one and worth a check if it is in your name. White and mountain at eight or nine times are the New Hampshire landscape showing up in its brands, which is what you would expect and not enough to make either unusable.
Filing is spread rather than concentrated: Portsmouth 8.7%, Manchester 8.5%, Nashua 7.3%. No city dominates the way Omaha dominates Nebraska at 53.7%.
What the New Hampshire portal looks like
Captured from the live register. Personal names and addresses are blacked out; everything else is as the state publishes it.
New Hampshire Secretary of State business services
Business registrations in New Hampshire are held by the New Hampshire 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 | quickstart.sos.nh.gov/online/BusinessInquire |
|---|---|
| Phone | (603) 271-3246 |
| Address | Corporations Division, N.H. Department of State, 107 North Main Street, Concord, NH 03301-4989 |
| Office hours | 8:30 a.m.-4:00 p.m. |
| LLC filing fee | $100 |
| Processing | within 30 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 New Hampshire business entity searches
How do I check if an LLC exists in New Hampshire?
Search the name on this page or on the state's own portal. What New Hampshire does by default is worth knowing before you read the result: starts With. The narrow one, and it is chosen for you. Switch to Contains if you are checking whether a name is taken, or you will miss every company that has your word in the middle. 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 New Hampshire?
Search the name, then open the record rather than reading the results line. The fullest record of any state we have looked at. 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 New Hampshire business name is approved?
Not on its own. A no-match result means the name is not on the New Hampshire register today, which is a preliminary answer rather than approval: New Hampshire Secretary of State decides when it reviews the filing. Worth knowing about New Hampshire in particular: a Starts With search for Acme returns ACM EQUIPMENT LLC. That is not a bug and it is worth understanding: New Hampshire matches with the spacing taken out, so ACM EQUIPMENT reads as ACMEQUIPMENT, which does start with Acme. Names that look different on the page are the same name to this portal. Ohio does the same thing with punctuation.
Can I look up who owns a business in New Hampshire?
New Hampshire lists every manager and member by name and address under Principals Information, and states the management style.
How much does it cost to register a business name in New Hampshire?
New Hampshire Secretary of State charges $100 to file the Certificate of Formation, which is the document that forms the company, and is processed within 30 days. Reserving a name beforehand is a separate and smaller fee. Confirm the figure with the state before you file: schedules move.
Sources
- New Hampshire business entity search, the official register this page queries.
- Filing fees and processing times: New Hampshire RSA 304-C:191, Fees, verified 2026-09-10. Current schedules are published by the New Hampshire 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: New Hampshire Secretary of State, confirmed against the office’s own contact page.
- Naming and reporting rules: New Hampshire RSA 304-C:191, Fees.
- Naming statute: N.H. RSA 304-C:32, published by the state.
- State seal: public domain image via Wikimedia Commons.