Tennessee Secretary of State
Tennessee Business Entity Search
Last updated . Register data is refreshed nightly.
Check whether a business name is already on file with the Tennessee Secretary of State. Free, no account, all entity types.
Tennessee Business Entity Search
Search the state's official business records.
Tennessee's register is at tnbear.tn.gov, free and without an account. It tells you how current it is, and it prices companies by how many members they have.
It tells you how current it is
At the top of the search page Tennessee prints the date through which filings have been processed.
We watched it move during a single day: it read 7 September at around 10am and 8 September by around 11am. So the register catches up in the course of a working morning, and the figure on screen is live rather than nightly.
That is worth knowing in both directions. A company formed yesterday may not be there yet, and the page tells you exactly how far behind it is, rather than leaving you to guess.
Two settings narrow the search without saying so
It matches on Starts With. Change it to Contains, or Exact if you want the opposite.
There is an Active Entities Only tick box. It is unticked by default, which is the right way round, but people tick it to clean up a messy result list, and that is exactly the wrong move when you are checking a name. An inactive company still holds its name. Filtering them out will show you a clear result for a name that is not available.
Page size runs 10, 20, 50 or 100.
Previous legal names are spelled out
The results carry an Other Names Used column, and it labels what kind of other name each one is: PREVIOUS LEGAL against an old name.
So if your search matched a name a company used to hold rather than the one it uses now, the grid says so. Hawaii is the cautionary case here: it matches on dropped names and never tells you, so you open a record expecting one company and find another. Tennessee, South Carolina and New Hampshire all put the warning in the row instead.
Alongside it: a Details button, the control number, the name, the entity type, the status, where it was formed, and the registration date.
The record counts the members
Open an entity and Tennessee gives you the entity type and where it was formed, term of duration, whether it is member managed or manager managed, whether it is a series LLC, and (unusually) how many members it has.
That member count is not decoration. It is the number Tennessee's fees are built on, and it is the only state where that is true.
Who decides
The processing date tells you how current the register is; it does not tell you what the state will accept. That is judged under the Tennessee Revised Limited Liability Company Act, Tenn. Code Title 48, Chapter 249.
Before you rely on it
Read the processing date at the top before concluding a recent company is absent.
Change Starts With to Contains.
Leave Active Entities Only unticked. Ticking it hides names that are still taken.
Read the Other Names Used column. PREVIOUS LEGAL means your hit is on an abandoned name.
Tennessee filing facts
| Filing | Fee | Form |
|---|---|---|
| Articles of Organization | $300.00 minimum | SS-4270 |
| Annual report | $300.00 minimum, up to $3,000.00 | |
| Amended articles | $20.00 | SS-4701 |
| Name reservation | $20.00 | SS-9425 |
| Name cancellation or transfer | $20.00 | SS-4406 |
| Obligated member entity addendum | no fee | SS-4600 |
Tennessee is the only state where both the formation fee and the annual report scale with the number of members.
The $300 minimum covers up to six members. Each member above six adds $50, to a ceiling of $3,000.
So a ten-member LLC pays $500 to form and $500 every year, and a sixty-member one pays the $3,000 maximum on both. A two-person company pays $300 either way. No other state prices membership at all. Wyoming scales its annual fee with assets, which is the closest anyone else comes, and everyone else charges flat.
If you are choosing a state and expect a large membership, that arithmetic is worth doing before you file. If you are a two-person LLC, Tennessee's $300 is simply expensive: Iowa and Arizona charge $50.
A note on sourcing: the $300 minimum and the form number are read off the state's fee table. The per-member structure and the $3,000 ceiling come from the table's footnote and the state FAQ, which we located through search rather than reading directly. Confirm the bands with the Secretary of State before relying on them for a large membership.
Member-count pricing applies to 114,230 applications' worth of new companies over the 52 weeks to 26 September 2026, 457 a business day, up 17.3%, 17th of 51.
What the register will not tell you
Tennessee has 44,297 live registered marks, and one industry runs through them:
| word | live marks | times more common than nationally |
|---|---|---|
| tennessee | 970 | 61x |
| nashville | 737 | 59x |
| music | 1,067 | 7x |
| country | 597 | 6x |
| health | 981 | 3x |
| big | 551 | 2x |
| center | 609 | 2x |
Music appears in 1,067 marks, more than the state's own name, at seven times the national rate, with country behind it at six. No other state in this set has an industry word at the top of its list. Oregon has brewing at 4x; Arizona has golf at 5x. Tennessee has music ahead of everything.
Nashville at 59x sits level with the state name, and the city files 26.6% of Tennessee's marks against Memphis at 13.5% and Knoxville at 8.1%.
The practical reading: if you are naming a Tennessee business anywhere near music, country or Nashville, you are in the most contested naming ground the state has, and it is contested by people who litigate. Check the federal register.
What the Tennessee portal looks like
Captured from the live register. Personal names and addresses are blacked out; everything else is as the state publishes it.
Tennessee Secretary of State business services
Business registrations in Tennessee are held by the Tennessee 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 | tncab.tnsos.gov/business-entity-search |
|---|---|
| Phone | (615) 741-2286 |
| Address | 312 Rosa L. Parks Avenue, Snodgrass Tower, Nashville, TN 37243-1102 (walk-in service on the 3rd floor) |
| Office hours | 8:00 a.m.-4:30 p.m. |
| LLC filing fee | $300 |
| Processing | 5-10 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 Tennessee business entity searches
How do I check if an LLC exists in Tennessee?
Search the name on this page or on the state's own portal. What Tennessee does by default is worth knowing before you read the result: starts With. Active Entities Only is unticked by default. 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 Tennessee?
Search the name, then open the record rather than reading the results line. You get entity type and where it was formed, term of duration, whether it is member managed or manager managed, whether it is a series LLC and how many members it has. 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 Tennessee business name is approved?
Not on its own. A no-match result means the name is not on the Tennessee register today, which is a preliminary answer rather than approval: Tennessee Secretary of State decides when it reviews the filing. Worth knowing about Tennessee in particular: two things narrow a Tennessee search without saying so. It matches on Starts With, and there is an Active Entities Only tick box. An inactive company still holds its name, so filtering them out is how a taken name comes to look free.
Can I look up who owns a business in Tennessee?
The Tennessee 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 Tennessee?
Tennessee Secretary of State charges $300 to file the Articles of Organization, which is the document that forms the company, and currently takes 5-10 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
- Tennessee business entity search, the official register this page queries.
- Filing fees and processing times: Tennessee Secretary of State, Business Forms & Fees, verified 2026-09-10. Current schedules are published by the Tennessee 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: Tennessee Secretary of State, confirmed against the office’s own contact page.
- Naming and reporting rules: Tennessee Secretary of State, Business Forms & Fees.
- Naming statute: Tenn. Code 48-249-106, full text via Justia.
- State seal: public domain image via Wikimedia Commons.